I completely understood. No one is going to IA as their first stop. They’re only going there if they want to see a history change or if the original site is gone.
Yes, some wikipedia editors are submitting the pages to archive.org and then linking to that instead of to the actual source.
So when you go to the Wikipedia page it takes you straight to archive.org – that is their first stop.
Because if you’re referencing something specific, why would you take the chance that someone changes that page? Are you going to monitor that from then on and make sure it’s still correct/relevant? No, you take what is effectively a screenshot and link to that.
You aren’t really thinking about this from any standpoint except your advertising revenue.
I’m thinking about it from the perspective of an artist or creator under existing copyright law. You can’t just take someone’s work and republish it.
It’s not allowed with books, it’s not allowed with music, and it’s not even allowed with public sculpture. If a sculpture shows up in a movie scene, they need the artist’s permission and may have to pay a licensing fee.
Why should the creation of text on the internet have lesser protections?
But copyright law is deeply rooted in damages, and if advertising revenue is lost that’s a very real example.
And I have recourse; I used it. I used current law (DMCA) to remove over 1,000,000 pages because it was my legal right to remove infringing content. If it had been legal, they wouldn’t have had to remove it.
