Thread

An update on Wayback Machine access

685 points · 362 comments · ChrisArchitect

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.
    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.

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