edit: adjusted title slightly
…Google started adding links to archived websites in the Wayback Machine
They better be compensating it…
I don’t agree. Free linking has always been a vitally important part of the open internet. The principle that if I make something available on a specific URL, others can access it, and I don’t get to charge others for linking to a public URL is one of the core concepts of the internet itself.
Google killed off their own cached pages last month and they’re now using IA as a replacement. Free linking is definitely important, but this is Google we’re talking about, and them using IA to save money - this feels a lot more exploitative if Google isn’t funding them in some way.
I think you’re both right. Anyone should be able to link to an IA page, but Google basically was doing the same thing as IA with their cached pages. Now they’ve gotten rid of that service and are simply relying on IA to take all of the load that they had. I think they should help fund IA to compensate for the extra load.
I had not realized that. They should absolutely be allowed to do it, but it’s super shitty of them to basically offload that cost onto IA. IA of course would be well within their rights to try and monetize it. Look at incoming traffic that deep links a cached page and has a Google.com referrer, and throw a splash page or top banner asking for donation.
There’s a difference between your average Joe linking something and a massive tech company linking something. The first should always be allowed, the second should have an expectation of some form of compensation. That’s why there are differences in licensing terms for lots of services, if you’re using something commercially, you pay a different rate than if you’re using something privately.
That said, this is on IA to enforce, and I believe they should.
Strong disagree. If I make a website people like, and Google links to it, should Google have to pay me? If so, Google basically can’t exist. The record keeping of tracking every single little website that they owe money to or have to negotiate deals with would be untenable. And what happens if a large tech journal like CNET or ZDNet Links to the website of a company they are writing an article about? Do they have to pay for that? Is the payment assumed by publicity? Is it different if they link to a deep page versus the front page?
What you are talking opens up a gigantic can of worms that there is no easy solution to, if there is any solution at all.
I will absolutely give you that what Google is doing is shitty. If Google is basically outsourcing their cache to IA, they should be paying IA for the additional traffic and server load. But I think that ‘should’ falls in line with being a good internet citizen treating a non-profit fairly, not part of any actual requirement.
This view is a bit naive in that it doesn’t take into account a lot of variables. It favors established large actors in their ability to extract and accumulate ever more value from the ones they link.
And, with respect, this view is more naive (IMHO) because it’s focused by size of company, and you can’t do that. You can’t have one set of laws for small companies and another set of laws for large companies.
So if Google has to pay to link to IA, then so does DuckDuckGo and any other small upstart search engine that might want to make a ‘wayback machine this site!’ button.
Google unquestionably gets value from the sites they link to. But if that value must be paid, then every other search engine has to pay it also, including little ones like DDG. That basically kills search engines as a concept, because they simply can’t work on that model.
Thus I think your view is more naive, because you’re just trying to stick it to Google rather than considering the full range of effects your policy would have.
I don’t know if there is compensation but the internet archive says it’s a collaboration and they seem to be happy about it.
op forgot to mention that it is a "provisional, read-only manner,” according to founder Brewster Kahle.
I really hope the rest of the archive comes back soon. I was in the middle of a book and it was a book I hadn’t read since I was a kid.
Yeah, I could pay for it or wait for it to come via interlibrary loan (it’s not exactly a well-known book), but I really didn’t need a physical copy. And it isn’t even all that long.
Sigh.
Damn it’d be a shame if someone DM’ed me the name of the book and I had to go looking to see if there’s an epub/pdf version available for download in certain places. A real shame indeed.
I don’t care saying what book it is right here, because I’ve looked for both and came up wanting. It’s not available normally as an ebook for purchase, so I have my doubts.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/997118.Doktor_Bey_s_handbooks_of_strange_sex
Basically, the IA had it because they scan in masses of texts without even caring what they are. As long as they get a copy and it isn’t in the archive yet, they’ll scan it in.
FWIW, it’s pretty amusing.
Oh thats a super off the wall book. It barely exists anywhere let alone an ebook. I stand corrected and humbled.
Capitalism hates a memory. Hates/fears anything it can’t update, whitewash or otherwise directly control or obscure after the fact.
If humanity had any hope, we’d surround this thing with torches to defend it tooth and nail.
Thanks, I just used their PayPal link to send my support and light my torch!
Ok, serious question. Why is it normally read/write? I’ve always treated it as being read only.
You can (well, could) put in any live URL there and IA would take a snapshot of the current page on your request. They also actively crawl the web and take new snapshots on their own. All of that counts as ‘writing’ to the database.
Not just websites. Basically any digital media. From PDFs, book scans, manuals, floppy disks, CDs, basically anything even remotely worth archiving
Yep, but I didn’t mention that because it’s not a part of the “Wayback Machine”, it’s just the general “Internet Archive” business of archiving media, which is for now still completely unavailable. (I’ve uploaded dozens of public-domain books there myself, and I’m really missing it…)
