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Internet Archive

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File:Ia logo.jpg
The logo of Internet Archive
File:Internet Archive Sheridan.jpg
Internet Archive headquarters

The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining an on-line library and archive of Web and multimedia resources. Located at the Presidio in San Francisco, California, this archive includes "snapshots of the World Wide Web" (archived copies of pages, taken at various points in time), software, movies, books, and audio recordings. To ensure the stability and endurance of the archive, The Internet Archive is mirrored at Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, the only library in the world with a mirror.[1] The Internet Archive makes the collections available at no cost to researchers, historians, and scholars. The Internet Archive is a member of the American Library Association and is officially recognized by the State of California as a library.[2]

History

The Internet Archive was founded by Brewster Kahle in 1996.

According to its website:

Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture and heritage. Without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form. The Archive's mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars. The Archive collaborates with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.

Because of its goal of preserving human knowledge and artifacts, and making its collection available to all, proponents of the Internet Archive have likened it to the Library of Alexandria.

Wayback Machine

Examples from the Wayback Machine's archives:

The "Wayback Machine" is the name for the Internet Archive's snapshot archives of the World Wide Web, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet. This service allows users to see archived versions of web pages across time—what the Archive calls a "three dimensional index."

The Wayback Machine's archive is gradually made available. It can take from six to 12 months for an archived snapshot to appear. As an alternative, librarians and scholars who want to permanently archive material and immediately cite an archived version can use the Archive-It system instead.

As of 2006 the Wayback Machine contained almost two petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month, a two-thirds increase over the 12 terabytes/month growth rate reported in 2003. Its growth rate eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress. All the data are stored on Petabox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies.[1]

The name "Wayback Machine" is a reference to a segment from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show in which Mr. Peabody, a bow tie-wearing dog with a professorial air, and his human "pet boy" assistant, Sherman, use a time machine called the "WABAC machine" to witness famous events in history.[2]

Media collections

In addition to their web archives, the Internet Archive maintains extensive collections of digital media, all of which are either public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons License or equivalent license that allows redistribution. The media are organized into collections by media type (moving images, audio, text, etc.), and then into sub-collections by various criteria. Each of the main collections includes an "Open Source" sub-collection where general contributions by the public can be stored.

Moving image collection

Aside from feature films, their Moving Image collection includes: newsreels; classic cartoons; pro- and anti- war propaganda; Skip Elsheimer's "A.V. Geeks" collection; and ephemeral material from Prelinger Archives, such as advertising, educational and industrial films and amateur and home movie collections.

Their Brick Films collection contains stop-motion animation filmed with LEGO bricks, some of which are 'remakes' of feature films. The Election 2004 collection is a non-partisan public resource for sharing video materials related to the 2004 United States Presidential Election. The Independent News collection includes sub-collections such as the Internet Archive's World At War competition from 2001, in which contestants created short films demonstrating "why access to history matters." Among their most-downloaded video files are eyewitness recordings of the devastating 2004 tsunami.

Some of the films available on the Internet Archive are:


Audio collection

The audio collection includes music, audio books, news broadcasts, and a wide variety of other audio files. The Live Music Archive sub-collection includes concert recordings from independent artists, as well as more established artists and musical ensembles with permissive rules about recording their concerts.

Texts collection

The texts collection includes texts from Project Gutenberg as well as texts from various libraries around the world, and a collection of papers and memoranda from the Arpanet.

Open Library

The Internet Archive is a member of the Open Content Alliance, and operates the Open Library where more than 100,000 scanned public domain books are made available in an easily browsable and printable format.[3] Their "Scribe" book imaging system was used to digitize most of these books [3], and the software that runs it is free/open source software[4].

Controversies

Scientology sites

See also: Scientology versus the Internet

In late 2002, the Internet Archive removed various sites critical of Scientology from the Wayback Machine.[4] The error message stated that this was in response to a "request by the site owner."[5] It was later clarified that lawyers from the Church of Scientology had demanded the removal, on unknown legal grounds, and that the actual site owners did not want their material removed.[6]

Archived web pages as evidence

In an October 2004 case called "Telewizja Polska SA v. Echostar Satellite", a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, perhaps for the first time. Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia, and EchoStar operates the Dish Network. Prior to the trial proceedings, EchoStar indicated that it intended to offer Wayback Machine snapshots as proof of the past content of Telewizja Polska’s website. Telewizja Polska brought a motion in limine to suppress the snapshots on the grounds of hearsay and unauthenticated source, but Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys rejected Telewizja Polska’s assertion of hearsay and denied TVP's motion in limine to exclude the evidence at trial. [7] However, at the actual trial, district Court Judge Ronald Guzman, the trial judge, overruled Magistrate Keys' findings, and held that neither the affidavit of the Internet Archive employee nor the underlying pages (i.e. the Telewizja Polska website) were admissible as evidence. Judge Guzman reasoned that the employee's affidavit contained both hearsay and inconclusive supporting statements, and the purported webpage printouts themselves were not self-authenticating. [8]

Grateful Dead

In November 2005, free downloads of Grateful Dead concerts were removed from the site. John Perry Barlow identified Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann as the instigators of the change, according to a New York Times article. [9] Phil Lesh commented on the change in a November 30, 2005, posting to his personal website:

It was brought to my attention that all of the Grateful Dead shows were taken down from Archive.org right before Thanksgiving. I was not part of this decision making process and was not notified that the shows were to be pulled. I do feel that the music is the Grateful Dead's legacy and I hope that one way or another all of it is available for those who want it.[10]

A November 30 forum post from Brewster Kahle summarized what appeared to be the compromise reached among the band members. Audience recordings could be downloaded or streamed, but soundboard recordings were to be available for streaming only. Concerts have since been re-added. [11]

Issues with cybersquatters

Due to the nature of the Internet Archive's policy of removing sites that disallow bots to index pages (through the use of robots.txt) a number of websites over the years have now become inaccessible through the Wayback Machine. This is due to the new cybersquatting domain owner placing a robots.txt file that disallows indexing of the site. This practice is detrimental to researchers looking for information that was available in the past. The administrators claim to be working on a system that will allow access to that previous material while excluding after the point the domain switched hands.[citation needed]

Automatically entered contracts

On December 12, 2005, activist Suzanne Shell demanded Internet Archive pay her $100,000 for archiving her website profane-justice.org between 1999 and 2004.[12] Internet Archive filed a declaratory judgment Action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on January 20, 2006, seeking a judicial determination that Internet Archive did not violate Shell’s copyright. Shell responded and brought a countersuit against Internet Archive for archiving her site, which she alleges is in violation of her terms of service.[13] On February 13, 2007, a judge for the United States District Court for the District of Colorado dismissed all counterclaims except breach of contract.[12] The Internet Archive did not move to dismiss copyright infringement claims Shell asserted arising out of its copying activities, which will also go forward.[14] On April 25, 2007, Internet Archive and Suzanne Shell jointly announced the settlement of their lawsuit. The Internet Archive said, “Internet Archive has no interest in including materials in the Wayback Machine of persons who do not wish to have their Web content archived. We recognize that Ms. Shell has a valid and enforceable copyright in her Web site and we regret that the inclusion of her Web site in the Wayback Machine resulted in this litigation. We are happy to have this case behind us.” “I respect the historical value of Internet Archive’s goal. I never intended to interfere with that goal nor cause it any harm,” said Ms. Shell.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ The Internet Archive at the New Library of Alexandria
  2. ^ " Internet Archive officially a library", May 2, 2007
  3. ^ Gonsalves, Antone (20 December 2006). "Internet Archive Claims Progress Against Google Library Initiative". InformationWeek. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  4. ^ Bowman, Lisa M (24 September 2002). "Net archive silences Scientology critic". CNET News.com. Retrieved 2007-01-04.
  5. ^ Jeff (23 September 2002). "exclusions from the Wayback Machine" (Blog). Wayback Machine Forum. Internet Archive. Retrieved 2007-01-04. Author and Date indicate initiation of forum thread
  6. ^ Miller, Ernest (24 September). "Sherman, Set the Wayback Machine for Scientology" (Blog). LawMeme. Yale Law School. Retrieved 2007-01-04. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) The posting is billed as a 'feature' and lacks an associated year designation; comments by other contributors appear after the 'feature'
  7. ^ Gelman, Lauren (17 November 2004). "Internet Archive's Web Page Snapshots Held Admissible as Evidence". Packets. 2 (3). Retrieved 2007-01-04.
  8. ^ Howell, Beryl A. (2006). "Proving Web History: How to use the Internet Archive" (PDF). Journal of Internet Law: 3–9. Retrieved 2007-01-04. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Jeff Leeds (1 December 2005). "Wrath of Deadheads stalls a Web crackdown". International Herald Tribune (republication of article from New York Times). Retrieved 2007-01-04. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ Phil Lesh (30 November 2005). "An Announcement from Phil Lesh" (Blog). Hotline. PhilLesh.net. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  11. ^ Brewster Kahle (1 December 2005). "Good News and an Apology: GD on the Internet Archive" (Blog). Live Music Archive Forum. Internet Archive. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) Authors and date indicate the first posting in the forum thread
  12. ^ a b Lewis T. Babcock (February 13, 2007). Internet Archive v. Shell Civil Action No. 06cv01726LTBCBS.
  13. ^ Claburn, Thomas (March 16, 2007). Colorado Woman Sues To Hold Web Crawlers To Contracts. InformationWeek
  14. ^ Samson, Martin. Internet Archive v. Suzanne Shell. via Phillips Nizer LLP
  15. ^ Internet Archive and Suzanne Shell Settle Lawsuit, April 25, 2007.

External links

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