The Internet Archive Is Under Attack.

AllTheWay

BackVille

Most of us, especially reader NVG, who use the Internet Archive use the Wayback Machine which allows you to fight link rot and figure out exactly what was originally uploaded to the tubes.

But the Archive is much more than that:

We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 26+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 1,000+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages.

As our web archive grew, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of other published works. Today our archive contains: 

• 735 billion web pages
• 41 million books and texts
• 14.7 million audio recordings (including 240,000 live concerts)
• 8.4 million videos (including 2.4 million Television News programs)
• 4.4 million images
• 890,000 software programs

Anyone with a free account can upload media to the Internet Archive. We work with thousands of partners globally to save copies of their work into special collections...

And now, as you might expect, the Archive is under attack from the Mr. Potters and Greedheads of the publishing world who just can't fathom why someone should be allowed to do something of value that they can't get their hands on for their own aggrandizement:

The Internet Archive, a nonprofit library in San Francisco, has grown into one of the most important cultural institutions of the modern age. What began in 1996 as an audacious attempt to archive and preserve the World Wide Web has grown into a vast library of books, musical recordings and television shows, all digitized and available online, with a mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge.”

Right now, we are at a pivotal stage in a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive, still pending, brought by four of the biggest for-profit publishers in the world, who have been trying to shut down core programs of the archive since the start of the pandemic...

In other words, anything that is good, especially if it enhances the public good, and is free of the profit motive must be destroyed to ensure that we, the public, don't start to demand such good things, unfettered and greed-free.

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