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So the IA should be forked; you can support the fork and people like me Brewster Kahle's original.

People who frequent libraries think CDL at retail prices is just; others that it is an end-run around publisher's rights.

But libraries pay so much for their limited-lending copies! Why isn't there any support for regional or global libraries? Publishers are like a syndicate but there's no opposing union so they run ramshod over the proletariat. Are libraries not good things? Beacons of culture and so forth? The IA clearly can't afford to fund CDL at library rates, but can't it get funding! Why won't the government step in and decree a federal library? Depending on geography, you're local library is probably already funded at the state and federal level.

Whether I think that the CDL or NEL is a good idea or not is irrelevant, and orthogonal to my point.

The fact that IA disregards copyright law and seems to have a "wait to be sued" mentality means that the donations end up feeling more like lobbying money and less like funding an actual Archive. I'd be totally fine with a CDL being codified into law, and I'd even be fine with IA's version of it, but it doesn't change the fact that Brewster is treating IA like an ideological mission now more than an Archive.

If you want to donate your money to it, that's obviously fine, but I think that it's important to be honest about it.

> IA will let you download full video games for the switch that are still being actively sold [1]

I am not seeing that anywhere. I see a file called “My Nintendo Switch games collection” and it is a big jpeg photo of a bookshelf. Is this what you mean?

It's harder to find them than I expected, but one search with a result is "super mario wonder nsp". I had the advantage of knowing the format(s) Switch game dumps come in, though, so the average person might not find much.

I’m getting a “no results found” response from that search. Maybe it has already been taken down?

Did you accidentally search in the Wayback Machine search box instead of in the Internet Archive search box below it? The former searches website snapshots, the latter searches books, films, audio, etc that is in the part of the Internet Archive that contains itemized data.

Woops. I am apparently an idiot!

Here ya go:

https://archive.org/details/super-mario-bros.-wonder-nspe-sh...

Note to dang and friends: Not condoning piracy or whatever, this is simply to prove a point that Internet Archive hosts and distributes warez with wanton abandon.

I’m kind of curious how this indicates “wanton abandon”

Have you downloaded and checked this file to make sure that it is a playable copy of Super Mario Wonder rather than some other file labeled as such? Have you reported it, and if so how long ago?

All you have to do to find warez of all sorts is take a casual browse through their software library.

Most of it is actually supplied by ordinary users unrelated to Internet Archive with little to no oversight or curation. I have no idea how effective reporting is, but I would bet it's not meaningful given the prevailing prevalence of warez.

And yes, I've downloaded some of those warez and they have all worked.

I would advise not white knighting for Internet Archive and instead judge them for what they actually are.

I honestly think the software library is actually a far bigger liability risk than the book piracy scheme. Software developers and publishers are just as vindicative as book authors and publishers if you paint a big enough target on your stupid ass and there's a lot more dollars at play.

Did you verify or report the link to what you claim is a working and playable copy of Super Mario Wonder for Nintendo Switch that you posted here as proof that IA “wantonly distributes warez”?

Here you go, 500GB of warez in just one link: https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp

But wait, there's more!: https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp-part2

And more!: https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp-part3 and https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp-part4

2TB of warez in just four links.

But that was way too easy, I just listed 2TB of mostly Japanese eroge. What about more mainstream stuff?

Presenting the PS1 release of Castlevania - Symphony of the Night, and in fact you can only play it on Internet Archive in the browser: https://archive.org/details/psx_sotn

And there's a lot more PS1 games where that came from: https://archive.org/details/psxgames

You can also enjoy a collection of Game Boy Advance games, nevermind that Nintendo is really draconian about ROMs right?: https://archive.org/details/gba_rpg_pack

But I've only linked to games so far, how about something proper adults would use? Here's Photoshop CS8 and it even comes with a keygen!: https://archive.org/details/photoshop-cs-8.

Actually, you know what? Just going through the latest uploads also proves my point: https://archive.org/search?query=mediatype:software&sort=-pu...

The moral of this digression is this: Internet Archive engages in wanton distribution of warez.

And once again a note to dang and friends: Not condoning piracy, these links are to prove a point.

Have you verified or reported _ANY_ of the links you’ve posted here as proof of “hosting warez with wanton abandon”? It is clear that you have some sort of motivation and knowledge about how to navigate the IA to find what you believe to be infringing content — why are you using it to post links to it on this website rather than reporting it?

The only thing that you have proven is that the IA accepts user uploads. That is it, end of proof. The only party possibly acting irresponsibly here is the user distributing links to what is claimed to be infringing content and not answering a simple question about reporting or verification.

“Watch me distribute what I claim to be ‘warez’ using a neutral file upload service that I will not answer questions about reporting or verification about! My going out of my way to make this available to you is not the issue, this evil host is the problem for existing!” belies either a deep misunderstanding of how the internet works (also kind of indicated by repeatedly using the word ‘warez’ in 2024) as a whole at best or a weird bad faith attack (also kind of indicated by accusing a stranger of “white knighting” for asking if you verified or reported your link to Super Mario Wonder) at worst. So I am a bit confused as to what is going on here

>Internet Archive engages in wanton distribution of warez

So does Google. As long as they take it down when requested, it’s 100% legal, nevermind any moral argument about hosting old software that’s not for sale anymore (HN used to be totally for that…). Some of the links you shared have less than 1000 views. That’s nothing.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Super+Mario+Bros.+Wonder+%28...

Second link on the page. How is this warez distributor still online?

Are you telling me... that an archive has... archived something?

Calling the cops right now!

Internet Archive is engaging in redistribution with flagrant disregard for the law, so it is not an archive despite what it says on the tin.

Note that preservation and redistribution are two very different things, there are very specific limitations to redistributing something you don't have explicit licensing or permissions for.

Further reading: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108

>flagrant disregard for the law

The law should be disregarded. Its stupid.

Public and University libraries are also archives, but they follow strict guidelines to stay within the bounds of copyright law and fair use. There are limitations on how you can view the archived copyrighted material, limitations on how you can do so, etc. No one is claiming that "archives" are a bad thing, at least not that I've seen.

What I'm complaining about with IA specifically is that they're basically taking the MegaUpload approach of pretending that flagrant disregard for copyright law is totally fine, and then hiding behind vague data harboring laws and shouting "We're an archive so it's fine!!!!". Depending on how far you want to go, you can say that ThePirateBay or LimeTorrents is also an archive, but most people don't dispute that those sites are piracy.

If IA broke copyright law only in regards to something like AbandonWare, I wouldn't really be complaining, because that is something that should be archived and if it's truly abandonware then you're not even eating into potential profits, but that's not what's happening. Even the act of archiving copyrighted material that's still for sale is fine, but they should be operating within the bounds of the typical library archiving standards, which I don't think that they're doing.

As I said, if I'm aware of how easy it is to get pirated material on IA, then I'm quite confident that their staff is too.

Right but they are breaking weird dumb specific laws. They arent posting ebooks for free, they are specifically linking them to the number of physical copies they have on hand. Like lending your mate a copy of your own book. The issue seems to be whether they have the specific right to transform a physical book into a digital book for the purposes of lending. Its not the megaupload approach at all.

>they are specifically linking them to the number of physical copies they have on hand.

This lawsuit came about in very large part because Internet Archive stopped linking to physical copies on hand during covid. That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I'm heavy into the tracker and open water scenes.

IA is most certainly holding some amount of content that is copyrighted and currently sold like they mentioned. It's just not easy to find.

> IA is most certainly holding some amount of content that is copyrighted and currently sold like they mentioned. It's just not easy to find.

You could say the same of YouTube. As long as they take down copywritten works when asked, they should be fine.

Afaik they do respond to DMCA requests for the individual uploads, and they do more active curation for the collections where only specific user accounts have upload access.

I don't think that YouTube is a fair comparison. YouTube very proactively tries to avoid copyright infringement, going so far as to allow copyright holders to upload copies of their media so that it be used to detect potential copyright violations. This obviously can lead to a lot of false positives, and I'm not claiming it's in any way perfect, but it more or less ensures that YouTube stays within compliance of copyright law, or at the very least makes it fairly unlikely that they will be directly sued for hosting copyrighted material.

> As long as they take down copywritten works when asked, they should be fine.

I think that's broadly true, but if they're aware of copyrighted material being distributed on their platform and they choose not to do anything about it, data harboring laws only go so far. If there are internal emails of employees noticing violations, and choosing not to do anything, then it's more like Napster or Megaupload, and less like YouTube.

In some sense, I think even ThePirateBay might be less guilty of distribution of copyrighted material, simply because ThePirateBay doesn't actually host any of the copyrighted material themselves, simply torrents/magnet links that point to peers that have it.

The thing is, I really don't want to shit on IA, and I don't even personally have much issue with people violating US copyright law, but my opinion on this really doesn't matter. The law is the law, if you break it you risk criminal charges or lawsuits. That's just kind of how society works, and I feel that IA's flagrant disregard for it is going to get them sued to oblivion, taking down stuff like The Wayback Machine with it.

I really don't think it's hard to find at all. I just Kagi'd "PS3 games internet archive" and found a big download of hundreds of games that, as far as I'm aware are still copyrighted, and some of which are (I believe) still being commercially sold on the Playstation Store. This took about ten seconds on my end, but admittedly I'm a pretty fast typist.

Same here, long time supporter for many years. Stopped donating after they announced the emergency library thing during covid, it was immediately obvious that they were shooting themselves in the foot with it and the IA was cooked.

I will admit that I am personally on the fence. I knew for a while that IA was in legal crosshairs and I actually encouraged people to donate to it on this very forum. I am not sure it is fair to stop donations over one miscalculation. Their core mission remains in place and IA is more important to the ecosystem than wikipedia. Not to mention, with this appeal lost, it is not unlikely other entities will try take IA out.

Fair though to hesitate over donating if you believe that your donations are not going to go towards the valueable core mission, and instead be misdirected to ill advised legal crusades.

That's the thing.

Extreme hyperbolic example, and to be clear I am not actually accusing anyone of anything, but imagine that there were evidence that Brewster was using IA donations to fund a meth addiction. I don't think anyone would blame me for stopping donations to that because my intent was for the money to go to archiving, not drugs.

I don't think Brewster does meth, and even if he does I don't think that he's spending IA money to do it, but I do think he's spending IA money in pursuit of a lot of lawsuits that are a result of flagrant disregard for copyright law, at which point it feels more like I'm funding a lobbyist group, not an archive.

To be clear, I really dislike US copyright law, and I'm not even really opposed to people breaking it, but my opinion of of the law is somewhat irrelevant. The fact is that flagrant disregard for it at the level of IA means that lawsuits are going to happen. I don't really want to spend money on that, though obviously it's fine if other people want to.

> IA will let you download full video games for the switch that are still being actively sold

That's a weak argument that is the same as saying "BitTorrent is bad because you can download illegal stuff" or" file hosters should be banned because I found $illegal_thing on this one"

Yes, a free upload service will get abused. And yes, they are very quick to take these kinds of warez downloads offline when someone notifies them.

That example isn't the same at all. BitTorrent is just an application for torrenting. It isn't an organization centrally hosting content like IA is. Both Megaupload and Rapidshare are much more similar examples of sites that allowed anonymous distribution from central servers. Megaupload was taken down and Rapidshare ended anonymous file sharing after the Megaupload takedown.

MEgaupload and Rapidshare were taken down because they ignored takedown requests from rights holders and just gave them the middle finger. That was obviously a very bad idea. OTOH all the hundreds of free file hosters that exist today don't get into trouble, simply because they take stuff down when notified.