Nieman covers the growing rebellion against Archive.org by newspapers. Over half of all papers are now blocking all bots that seem to be serving Archive.
The article also brings up the relevant pre-AI history. Archive was founded in the hacker culture with the motto that everything should be free, which means that people shouldn’t expect to be paid for their work. AI multiplies the crime by trillions.
Newspapers want to search the morgues of other newspapers, and want to protect their own morgues from being stolen by AI or other sources that won’t respect copyright. This is proper and normal business! Each newspaper has the same interest in both directions: we need to look at other papers while respecting their copyrights, and we need to be sure our own copyrights are respected.
Hmm. Since both ends have the same need and the same caution, it seems like somebody could invent a way of transferring information between newspapers without going through Archive.org. I wonder if such a thing is possible? Nah, it’s a sci-fi dream. Nobody has invented such a thing before.
In fairness, which the papers don’t deserve: It appears that some papers simply eliminated their own morgues when Archive started its Wayback Machine. Well then, too fucking bad. Storing a record of past activity is an essential part of life, from bacteria to businesses. Amortize, amortize, amortize!
Polistra's Mill 