WebCite: Difference between revisions
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'''WebCite''' |
'''WebCite''' was an on-demand [[archive site]], designed to digitally preserve scientific and educationally important material on the web by taking snapshots of Internet contents as they existed at the time when a blogger or a scholar cited or quoted from it. The preservation service enabled verifiability of claims supported by the cited sources even when the original web pages are being revised, removed, or disappear for other reasons, an effect known as [[link rot]]. |
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Sometime between 9 and 17 July 2019, WebCite stopped accepting new archiving requests.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-07-17 |title=WebCite 17th July 2019 |url=https://webcitation.org/index |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190717131123/https://webcitation.org/index |archive-date=July 17, 2019 |access-date=2021-01-17}}</ref> In a further outage, as of 29 October 2021, all previously archived content is no longer available, only the home page still works. |
Sometime between 9 and 17 July 2019, WebCite stopped accepting new archiving requests.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-07-17 |title=WebCite 17th July 2019 |url=https://webcitation.org/index |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190717131123/https://webcitation.org/index |archive-date=July 17, 2019 |access-date=2021-01-17}}</ref> In a further outage, as of 29 October 2021, all previously archived content is no longer available, and only the home page still works. |
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== Service features == |
== Service features == |
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All types of web content, including [[HTML]] web pages, [[PDF]] files, [[style sheet (web development)|style sheets]], [[JavaScript]] and [[digital image]]s |
All types of web content, including [[HTML]] web pages, [[PDF]] files, [[style sheet (web development)|style sheets]], [[JavaScript]] and [[digital image]]s could be preserved. It also archived [[metadata]] about the collected resources such as access time, [[MIME type]], and content length. |
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WebCite |
WebCite was a non-profit [[consortium]] supported by publishers and editors,{{who|date=July 2019}} and it could be used by individuals without charge.{{clarify|reason=Does it charge for institutional use?|date=July 2019}} It was one of the first services to offer on-demand archiving of pages, a feature later adopted by many other archiving services, such as [[archive.today]] and the [[Wayback Machine]]. It did not do web page crawling. |
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== History == |
== History == |
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Conceived in 1997 by [[Gunther Eysenbach]], WebCite was publicly described the following year when an article on Internet [[quality control]] declared that such a service could also measure the [[citation impact]] of web pages.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Eysenbach |first=Gunther |author-link=Gunther Eysenbach |last2=Diepgen, Thomas L. |date=November 28, 1998 |title=Towards quality management of medical information on the internet: evaluation, labelling, and filtering of information |journal=[[The BMJ]] |volume=317 |issue=7171 |pages=1496–1502 |doi=10.1136/bmj.317.7171.1496 |issn=0959-8146 |oclc=206118688 |pmc=1114339 |pmid=9831581 |id=BL Shelfmark 2330.000000}}</ref> In the next year, a pilot service was set up at the address webcite.net. Although it seemed that the need for WebCite decreased when Google's ''short term'' copies of web pages began to be offered by [[Google Cache]] and the [[Internet Archive]] expanded their crawling (which started in 1996),<ref name="IA-2013-10">{{Cite web |date=October 25, 2013 |title=Fixing Broken Links on the Internet |url=http://blog.archive.org/2013/10/25/fixing-broken-links/ |website=Internet Archive blog}}</ref> WebCite was the only one allowing "on-demand" archiving by users. WebCite also offered interfaces to scholarly journals and publishers to automate the archiving of cited links. By 2008, over 200 journals had begun routinely using WebCite.<ref name="JMIR">{{Cite journal |last=Eysenbach |first=Gunther |author-link=Gunther Eysenbach |last2=Trudel, Mathieu |year=2005 |title=Going, Going, Still There: Using the WebCite Service to Permanently Archive Cited Web Pages |journal=[[Journal of Medical Internet Research]] |volume=7 |issue=5 |pages=e60 |doi=10.2196/jmir.7.5.e60 |issn=1438-8871 |oclc=107198227 |pmc=1550686 |pmid=16403724}}</ref> |
Conceived in 1997 by [[Gunther Eysenbach]], WebCite was publicly described the following year when an article on Internet [[quality control]] declared that such a service could also measure the [[citation impact]] of web pages.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Eysenbach |first=Gunther |author-link=Gunther Eysenbach |last2=Diepgen, Thomas L. |date=November 28, 1998 |title=Towards quality management of medical information on the internet: evaluation, labelling, and filtering of information |journal=[[The BMJ]] |volume=317 |issue=7171 |pages=1496–1502 |doi=10.1136/bmj.317.7171.1496 |issn=0959-8146 |oclc=206118688 |pmc=1114339 |pmid=9831581 |id=BL Shelfmark 2330.000000}}</ref> In the next year, a pilot service was set up at the address webcite.net. Although it seemed that the need for WebCite decreased when Google's ''short term'' copies of web pages began to be offered by [[Google Cache]] and the [[Internet Archive]] expanded their crawling (which started in 1996),<ref name="IA-2013-10">{{Cite web |date=October 25, 2013 |title=Fixing Broken Links on the Internet |url=http://blog.archive.org/2013/10/25/fixing-broken-links/ |website=Internet Archive blog}}</ref> WebCite was the only one allowing "on-demand" archiving by users. WebCite also offered interfaces to scholarly journals and publishers to automate the archiving of cited links. By 2008, over 200 journals had begun routinely using WebCite.<ref name="JMIR">{{Cite journal |last=Eysenbach |first=Gunther |author-link=Gunther Eysenbach |last2=Trudel, Mathieu |year=2005 |title=Going, Going, Still There: Using the WebCite Service to Permanently Archive Cited Web Pages |journal=[[Journal of Medical Internet Research]] |volume=7 |issue=5 |pages=e60 |doi=10.2196/jmir.7.5.e60 |issn=1438-8871 |oclc=107198227 |pmc=1550686 |pmid=16403724}}</ref> |
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WebCite |
WebCite was formerly a member of the [[International Internet Preservation Consortium]].<ref name="faq">{{Cite web |title=WebCite Consortium FAQ |url=http://www.webcitation.org/faq |website=WebCitation.org |publisher=WebCite |via=archive.org}}</ref> In a 2012 message on Twitter, Eysenbach commented that "WebCite has no funding, and IIPC charges €4000 per year in annual membership fees."<ref>{{Cite web |date=June 11, 2012 |title=Twitter post |url=https://twitter.com/eysenbach/status/212380809464782849 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305130446/https://twitter.com/eysenbach/status/212380809464782849 |archive-date=March 5, 2016 |access-date=March 10, 2013}}</ref> |
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WebCite "feeds its content" to other [[digital preservation]] projects, including the [[Internet Archive]].<ref name=faq /> [[Lawrence Lessig]], an American academic who writes extensively on copyright and technology, used WebCite in his [[amicus brief|''amicus'' brief]] in the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] case of ''[[MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.]]''<ref>{{Cite news |last=Cohen |first=Norm |date=January 29, 2007 |title=Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29wikipedia.html}}</ref> |
WebCite "feeds its content" to other [[digital preservation]] projects, including the [[Internet Archive]].<ref name=faq /> [[Lawrence Lessig]], an American academic who writes extensively on copyright and technology, used WebCite in his [[amicus brief|''amicus'' brief]] in the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] case of ''[[MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.]]''<ref>{{Cite news |last=Cohen |first=Norm |date=January 29, 2007 |title=Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29wikipedia.html}}</ref> |
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== Usage == |
== Usage == |
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WebCite |
WebCite allowed for on-demand prospective archiving. It was not crawler-based; pages were only archived if the citing author or publisher requested it. No cached copy would appear in a WebCite search unless the author or another person had specifically cached it beforehand. |
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To initiate the caching and archiving of a page, an author |
To initiate the caching and archiving of a page, an author used WebCite's "archive" menu option or a WebCite [[bookmarklet]] that allowed web surfers to cache pages just by clicking a button in their bookmarks folder.<ref>{{Cite web |date=January 28, 2018 |title=WebCite Technical Background and Best Practices Guide |url=http://www.webcitation.org/doc/WebCiteBestPracticesGuide.pdf |website= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180128125241/http://www.webcitation.org/doc/WebCiteBestPracticesGuide.pdf |archive-date=28 January 2018 |url-status=dead}}</ref> |
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One |
One could retrieve or cite archived pages through a transparent format such as |
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: <code><nowiki>http://webcitation.org/query?url=URL&date=DATE</nowiki></code> |
: <code><nowiki>http://webcitation.org/query?url=URL&date=DATE</nowiki></code> |
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or the alternate short form <code>http://webcitation.org/5W56XTY5h</code> |
or the alternate short form <code>http://webcitation.org/5W56XTY5h</code> |
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retrieved an archived copy of the URL <code>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page</code> that was closest to the date of March 4, 2008. The ID (5W56XTY5h) is the [[UNIX time]] in [[base 62]]. |
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WebCite |
WebCite did not work for pages that contain a [[no-cache tag]]. WebCite respected the author's request to not have their web page cached. |
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One |
One could archive a page by simply navigating in their browser to a link formatted like this: |
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: <code><nowiki>http://webcitation.org/archive?url=</nowiki>''urltoarchive''<nowiki>&email=</nowiki>''youremail''</code> |
: <code><nowiki>http://webcitation.org/archive?url=</nowiki>''urltoarchive''<nowiki>&email=</nowiki>''youremail''</code> |
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: <code><nowiki>https://web.archive.org/</nowiki>''urltoarchive''</code> |
: <code><nowiki>https://web.archive.org/</nowiki>''urltoarchive''</code> |
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replacing ''<code>urltoarchive</code>'' with the full URL of the page to be archived, and ''<code>youremail</code>'' with their e-mail address. This is how the WebCite [[bookmarklet]] |
replacing ''<code>urltoarchive</code>'' with the full URL of the page to be archived, and ''<code>youremail</code>'' with their e-mail address. This is how the WebCite [[bookmarklet]] worked.<ref>{{Cite web |title=WebCite Bookmarklet |url=https://www.webcitation.org/bookmarklet |access-date=May 14, 2017 |website=WebCitation.org |publisher=WebCite}}</ref> |
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Once archived on WebCite, users |
Once archived on WebCite, users could attempt to create an independent second-level backup copy of the starting URL, saving a second time the new WebCite's domain URL on [[Internet Archive|web.archive.org]], and on [[archive.is]]. Users could more conveniently do this using a browser add-on for archiving.<ref>{{Cite web |title=GitHub – rahiel/archiveror: Archiveror will help you preserve the webpages you love. |url=https://github.com/rahiel/archiveror |access-date=December 12, 2018 |website=GitHub}}</ref> |
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== Business model == |
== Business model == |
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The term "WebCite" is a registered trademark.<ref name="wc_license">{{Cite web |title=WebCite Legal and Copyright Information |url=http://webcitation.org/license |access-date=June 16, 2009 |website=WebCitation.org |publisher=WebCite}}</ref> WebCite |
The term "WebCite" is a registered trademark.<ref name="wc_license">{{Cite web |title=WebCite Legal and Copyright Information |url=http://webcitation.org/license |access-date=June 16, 2009 |website=WebCitation.org |publisher=WebCite}}</ref> WebCite did not charge individual users, journal editors and publishers<ref name="wc_MEMBERS">{{Cite web |title=WebCite Member List |url=http://webcitation.org/members |access-date=June 16, 2009 |website=WebCitation.org |publisher=WebCite Consortium |quote=Membership is currently free}}</ref> any fee to use their service. WebCite earned revenue from publishers who wanted to "have their publications analyzed and cited webreferences archived".<ref name="faq" /> Early support was from the [[University of Toronto]].<ref name="faq" /> |
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== Copyright issues == |
== Copyright issues == |
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WebCite |
WebCite maintained the legal position that its archiving activities<ref name="JMIR" /> are allowed by the copyright doctrines of [[fair use]] and [[implied license]].<ref name="faq" /> To support the fair use argument, WebCite noted that its archived copies are [[Transformativeness|transformative]], socially valuable for academic research, and not harmful to the market value of any copyrighted work.<ref name="faq" /> WebCite argued that caching and archiving web pages was not considered a copyright infringement when the archiver offers the copyright owner an opportunity to "opt-out" of the archive system, thus creating an implied license.<ref name="faq" /> To that end, WebCite would not archive in violation of Web site "do-not-cache" and "no-archive" [[metadata]], as well as [[robot exclusion standard]]s, the absence of which creates an "[[implied license]]" for web archive services to preserve the content.<ref name="faq" /> |
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In a similar case involving Google's web caching activities, on January 19, 2006, the [[United States District Court for the District of Nevada]] agreed with that argument in the case of ''[[Field v. Google]]'' (CV-S-04-0413-RCJ-LRL), holding that fair use and an "implied license" meant that Google's caching of Web pages did not constitute copyright violation.<ref name="faq" /> The "implied license" referred to general Internet standards.<ref name="faq" /> |
In a similar case involving Google's web caching activities, on January 19, 2006, the [[United States District Court for the District of Nevada]] agreed with that argument in the case of ''[[Field v. Google]]'' (CV-S-04-0413-RCJ-LRL), holding that fair use and an "implied license" meant that Google's caching of Web pages did not constitute copyright violation.<ref name="faq" /> The "implied license" referred to general Internet standards.<ref name="faq" /> |
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===DMCA requests=== |
===DMCA requests=== |
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According to their policy, after receiving legitimate [[DMCA]] requests from the copyright holders, WebCite |
According to their policy, after receiving legitimate [[DMCA]] requests from the copyright holders, WebCite would remove saved pages from public access, as the archived pages are still under the safe harbor of being citations. The pages were removed to a "dark archive" and in cases of legal controversies or evidence requests, there was pay-per-view access of "$200 (up to 5 snapshots) plus $100 for each further 10 snapshots" to the copyrighted content.<ref>{{Cite web |title=WebCite takedown requests policy |url=https://www.webcitation.org/policy.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210422075627/https://www.webcitation.org/policy.php |archive-date=2021-04-22 |access-date=May 14, 2017 |website=WebCitation.org |publisher=WebCite}}</ref> |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
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Revision as of 20:10, 11 August 2022
 | |
| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Owner | University of Toronto[1] |
| Created by | Gunther Eysenbach |
| URL | webcitation |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | 1997 |
| Current status | Offline, home-page only |
WebCite was an on-demand archive site, designed to digitally preserve scientific and educationally important material on the web by taking snapshots of Internet contents as they existed at the time when a blogger or a scholar cited or quoted from it. The preservation service enabled verifiability of claims supported by the cited sources even when the original web pages are being revised, removed, or disappear for other reasons, an effect known as link rot.
Sometime between 9 and 17 July 2019, WebCite stopped accepting new archiving requests.[2] In a further outage, as of 29 October 2021, all previously archived content is no longer available, and only the home page still works.
Service features
All types of web content, including HTML web pages, PDF files, style sheets, JavaScript and digital images could be preserved. It also archived metadata about the collected resources such as access time, MIME type, and content length.
WebCite was a non-profit consortium supported by publishers and editors,[who?] and it could be used by individuals without charge.[clarification needed] It was one of the first services to offer on-demand archiving of pages, a feature later adopted by many other archiving services, such as archive.today and the Wayback Machine. It did not do web page crawling.
History
Conceived in 1997 by Gunther Eysenbach, WebCite was publicly described the following year when an article on Internet quality control declared that such a service could also measure the citation impact of web pages.[3] In the next year, a pilot service was set up at the address webcite.net. Although it seemed that the need for WebCite decreased when Google's short term copies of web pages began to be offered by Google Cache and the Internet Archive expanded their crawling (which started in 1996),[4] WebCite was the only one allowing "on-demand" archiving by users. WebCite also offered interfaces to scholarly journals and publishers to automate the archiving of cited links. By 2008, over 200 journals had begun routinely using WebCite.[5]
WebCite was formerly a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium.[1] In a 2012 message on Twitter, Eysenbach commented that "WebCite has no funding, and IIPC charges €4000 per year in annual membership fees."[6]
WebCite "feeds its content" to other digital preservation projects, including the Internet Archive.[1] Lawrence Lessig, an American academic who writes extensively on copyright and technology, used WebCite in his amicus brief in the Supreme Court of the United States case of MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.[7]
Fundraising
WebCite ran a fund-raising campaign using FundRazr from January 2013 with a target of $22,500, a sum which its operators stated was needed to maintain and modernize the service beyond the end of 2013.[8] This includes relocating the service to Amazon EC2 cloud hosting and legal support. As of 2013[update] it remained undecided whether WebCite would continue as a non-profit or as a for-profit entity.[9]
Usage
WebCite allowed for on-demand prospective archiving. It was not crawler-based; pages were only archived if the citing author or publisher requested it. No cached copy would appear in a WebCite search unless the author or another person had specifically cached it beforehand.
To initiate the caching and archiving of a page, an author used WebCite's "archive" menu option or a WebCite bookmarklet that allowed web surfers to cache pages just by clicking a button in their bookmarks folder.[10]
One could retrieve or cite archived pages through a transparent format such as
http://webcitation.org/query?url=URL&date=DATE
where URL is the URL that was archived, and DATE indicates the caching date. For example,
or the alternate short form http://webcitation.org/5W56XTY5h
retrieved an archived copy of the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page that was closest to the date of March 4, 2008. The ID (5W56XTY5h) is the UNIX time in base 62.
WebCite did not work for pages that contain a no-cache tag. WebCite respected the author's request to not have their web page cached.
One could archive a page by simply navigating in their browser to a link formatted like this:
http://webcitation.org/archive?url=urltoarchive&email=youremail
Compared to Wayback Machine
https://web.archive.org/urltoarchive
replacing urltoarchive with the full URL of the page to be archived, and youremail with their e-mail address. This is how the WebCite bookmarklet worked.[11]
Once archived on WebCite, users could attempt to create an independent second-level backup copy of the starting URL, saving a second time the new WebCite's domain URL on web.archive.org, and on archive.is. Users could more conveniently do this using a browser add-on for archiving.[12]
Business model
The term "WebCite" is a registered trademark.[13] WebCite did not charge individual users, journal editors and publishers[14] any fee to use their service. WebCite earned revenue from publishers who wanted to "have their publications analyzed and cited webreferences archived".[1] Early support was from the University of Toronto.[1]
Copyright issues
WebCite maintained the legal position that its archiving activities[5] are allowed by the copyright doctrines of fair use and implied license.[1] To support the fair use argument, WebCite noted that its archived copies are transformative, socially valuable for academic research, and not harmful to the market value of any copyrighted work.[1] WebCite argued that caching and archiving web pages was not considered a copyright infringement when the archiver offers the copyright owner an opportunity to "opt-out" of the archive system, thus creating an implied license.[1] To that end, WebCite would not archive in violation of Web site "do-not-cache" and "no-archive" metadata, as well as robot exclusion standards, the absence of which creates an "implied license" for web archive services to preserve the content.[1]
In a similar case involving Google's web caching activities, on January 19, 2006, the United States District Court for the District of Nevada agreed with that argument in the case of Field v. Google (CV-S-04-0413-RCJ-LRL), holding that fair use and an "implied license" meant that Google's caching of Web pages did not constitute copyright violation.[1] The "implied license" referred to general Internet standards.[1]
DMCA requests
According to their policy, after receiving legitimate DMCA requests from the copyright holders, WebCite would remove saved pages from public access, as the archived pages are still under the safe harbor of being citations. The pages were removed to a "dark archive" and in cases of legal controversies or evidence requests, there was pay-per-view access of "$200 (up to 5 snapshots) plus $100 for each further 10 snapshots" to the copyrighted content.[15]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "WebCite Consortium FAQ". WebCitation.org. WebCite – via archive.org.
- ^ "WebCite 17th July 2019". July 17, 2019. Archived from the original on July 17, 2019. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
- ^ Eysenbach, Gunther; Diepgen, Thomas L. (November 28, 1998). "Towards quality management of medical information on the internet: evaluation, labelling, and filtering of information". The BMJ. 317 (7171): 1496–1502. doi:10.1136/bmj.317.7171.1496. ISSN 0959-8146. OCLC 206118688. PMC 1114339. PMID 9831581. BL Shelfmark 2330.000000.
- ^ "Fixing Broken Links on the Internet". Internet Archive blog. October 25, 2013.
- ^ a b Eysenbach, Gunther; Trudel, Mathieu (2005). "Going, Going, Still There: Using the WebCite Service to Permanently Archive Cited Web Pages". Journal of Medical Internet Research. 7 (5): e60. doi:10.2196/jmir.7.5.e60. ISSN 1438-8871. OCLC 107198227. PMC 1550686. PMID 16403724.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) - ^ "Twitter post". June 11, 2012. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2013.
- ^ Cohen, Norm (January 29, 2007). "Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively". The New York Times.
- ^ "Fund WebCite". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
- ^ "Conversation between GiveWell and WebCite on 4/10/13" (PDF). GiveWell. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
Dr. Eysenbach is trying to decide whether WebCite should continue as a non-profit project or a business with revenue streams built into the system.
- ^ "WebCite Technical Background and Best Practices Guide" (PDF). January 28, 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 28, 2018.
- ^ "WebCite Bookmarklet". WebCitation.org. WebCite. Retrieved May 14, 2017.
- ^ "GitHub – rahiel/archiveror: Archiveror will help you preserve the webpages you love". GitHub. Retrieved December 12, 2018.
- ^ "WebCite Legal and Copyright Information". WebCitation.org. WebCite. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
- ^ "WebCite Member List". WebCitation.org. WebCite Consortium. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
Membership is currently free
- ^ "WebCite takedown requests policy". WebCitation.org. WebCite. Archived from the original on April 22, 2021. Retrieved May 14, 2017.
