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Comment by lincon127 | Hacker News Reader

Where's the idea?

the page is poorly coded and later paragraphs load and unload making it seem as if the article prematurely finishes, which explains why you might have missed it. the idea is for the Library of Congress to buy the Internet Archive to protect it from legal action

my thoughts on this are that it's a good idea, but it can't be the only solution. moving from a single point of failure to a more secure single point of failure is okay, but a better solution would be for the Library of Congress and similar public bodies around the world to be able to buy/obtain a copy of the archive and the protocols it uses to do the archiving. this would practically guarantee the permanency of the data and, if it was deemed legally viable, provide a decent revenue source

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. There is no enumerated power which gives the federal government the authority to manage an internet archive. So this isn't just crazy and dangerous, it's illegal as well.

It's alway funny to see people suggest things the federal government should do without considering its deliberately limited nature and why that should go out the window with a constitutional amendment. This isn't the UK where we can just make up the law however we want. 10th amendment anyone? Enumerated powers?

this is a patently bizarre comment. so the library of congress too is illegal? perhaps the federal government shouldn't be able to take photos, or tell the time or keep records

Every creation of the federal government is presumptively unlawful unless and until it is rooted reasonably within one of the enumerated powers. The federal government has speech rights, obviously. It can pick up a camera and take photos like anyone else. It can keep records only in keeping with the constitution (e.g. 4th amendment) and statutory authorization. E.g. no national gun registry and no cell phone location data without a warrant.

Only to the extent that the library of congress is necessary and proper to regulating interstate commerce are its activities authorized. As soon as it strays from that, it must find another enumerated power with which to justify its actions. For instance, if the library of congress were to begin deporting illegal aliens, that would be incontrovertibly within the enumerated powers. To say nothing of the will of Congress.

A centralized copyright register is obviously something important to interstate commerce. Existing internet archives do not keep track of whose copyright is whose. So to transfer ownership of such a thing to the library of congress would not serve any copyright function related to interstate commerce. Surely even you can see that. So you're going to have to get real fucking creative, buddy!

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