Thread

1. Onavo · 1789496823 · focus · HN ↗

   Why not just offer a paid endpoint for the crawlers? It's not like the demand is going to go away anytime soon.

   It serves nobody except CloudFlare and hardware companies when one side set up blockers and the other side spend money putting VPN SDKs in consumer TVs.

   I am also curious how the (Russian?) paywall bypass mirror archive.is is doing given that they are probably subject to similar amounts of traffic.

   1. croes · 1789496941 · focus · HN ↗

      It’s one thing to archive other companies content, it’s another to sell the access to it

      1. Onavo · 1789497048 · focus · HN ↗

         That's for the lawyers to sort out, they have a lot of flexibility as a US nonprofit. The case law isn't that clear cut for this.

         1. simonw · 1789497140 · focus · HN ↗

            Internet Archive was almost destroyed by a copyright lawsuit from book publishers within the last few years. I expect they aren't excited to take on any additional risk of similar lawsuits right now.

            1. quotemstr · 1789507147 · focus · HN ↗

               They brought it on themselves by marketing a read-for-free product
         2. xp84 · 1789498047 · focus · HN ↗

            major [citation needed] on that. There are very limited exceptions to the massive power of copyright -- and they're mainly granted to libraries in the form of narrow waivers. And just the cost of fighting the most powerful copyright holders can bankrupt you -- especially if you're a relatively modestly-funded nonprofit.
         3. celsoazevedo · 1789498469 · focus · HN ↗

            They need access to sites to archive them. It's already hard to do it as it is, imagine if they start selling access to content. They'd be shooting themselves on the foot, independently of what the law says.
      2. faefox · 1789497806 · focus · HN ↗

         Yeah, who does the Internet Archive think it is, (insert literally any AI company here)?

         1. bonoboTP · 1789498620 · focus · HN ↗

            Which AI company is selling access to reliable verbatim copies of websites? I don't mean "it may regurgitate a paragraph", but as a reliable service where you can repeatably get website content snapshots to a reliability level that makes such a use case viable?

            Using the information for training purposes is not the same thing. Not legally the same and otherwise.

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