Thread

An update on Wayback Machine access

685 points · 362 comments · ChrisArchitect

simonw · 1789496872 · focus · HN ↗
> Here’s what’s going on. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been hit by waves of high-volume automated traffic, and we’ve put protections in place to keep the service running.
I'm pretty certain this is scrapers that are trying to workaround blocks on accessing original sites by hitting the Wayback Machine copy instead. Appalling behavior.
In addition to the load it puts on this vital non-profit piece of Internet infrastructure, we've also already seen some sites opt out of the Wayback Machine to prevent their content from being scraped via this alternative route.
1. packetslave · 1789496974 · focus · HN ↗
  This is absolutely something that's happening. There are even paid scraper API's that offer "Wayback Machine fallback" as a feature.
  1. bsimpson · 1789498205 · focus · HN ↗
    It's an open secret that you can often circumvent paywalls by searching Wayback.
    koolala · 1789530248 · focus · HN ↗
    One site was doing that which archive in their name but wasn't apart of archive.org
    sam_lowry_ · 1789530453 · focus · HN ↗
    archive.is or archive.today?
    Why being shy in the era of stealing AI?
    LoganDark · 1789534509 · focus · HN ↗
    archive.today uses clients to perform DDoS, I would not recommend using their site.
    schnebbau · 1789535928 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    jimmydorry · 1789546015 · focus · HN ↗
    It's been posted multiple times of the last few months as they were removed from wikipedia and cloudflare. [1] [2] [3]
    1. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843805">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843805
    2. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092006">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092006
    3. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47474255">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47474255

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