Response to Techdirt's web archive worries -- by Mark Graham, Director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive.
Previous OP on Techdirt: https://www.democraticunderground.com/11745422
" ... For three decades the Wayback Machine has peacefully coexisted with the development of the web, including the websites mentioned in the article. Our mission is simple: to preserve knowledge and make it accessible for research, accountability, and historical understanding.
As tech policy writer Mike Masnick recently warned, blocking preservation efforts risks a profound unintended consequence: “significant chunks of our journalistic record and historical cultural context simply… disappear.” He notes that when trusted publications are absent from archives, we risk creating a historical record biased against quality journalism.
There is no question that generative AI has changed the landscape of the world wide web. But it is important to be clear about what the Wayback Machine is, and what it is not.
The Wayback Machine is built for human readers. We use rate limiting, filtering, and monitoring to prevent abusive access, and we watch for and actively respond to new scraping patterns as they emerge.
We acknowledge that systems can always be improved. We are actively working with publishers on technical solutions to strengthen our systems and address legitimate concerns without erasing the historical record.
What concerns me most is the unintended consequence of these blocks. When libraries are blocked from archiving the web, the public loses access to history. Journalists lose tools for accountability. Researchers lose evidence. The web becomes more fragile and more fragmented, and history becomes easier to rewrite.
Generative AI presents real challenges in today’s information ecosystem. But preserving the time-honored role of libraries and archives in society has never been more important. We’ve worked alongside news organizations for decades. Let’s continue working together in service of an open, referenceable, and enduring web."
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