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Comment by nikanj | Hacker News Reader

archive.is is frequently used to bypass paywalls, I wonder if this is motivated by that somehow

That's most likely the reason pressure is being put on them. Big media companies successfully shutdown 12ft.io, which was used to bypass paywalls, and forced the BPC (Bypass Paywalls Chrome) browser extension off the Mozilla Extension store, then Gitlab, then Github. Now the dev is hosting it on a Russian Github clone, presumably making it untouchable.

Since archive[.]today is using some very obscure hosting methods with multiple international mirrors, it makes it incredibly difficult for law enforcement to go after.

What obscure methods are they using?

I guess it might fall under a bulletproof hosting type of setup. [1] There have been many people investigating to try and figure out who owns & operates who is actually behind archive[.]today and how they're continuously able to bypass the paywalls of paid sites, continue operating with such large infrastructure with no apparent income source.

There was quite a good article posted here on HN about someone trying to figure out those questions, but I can't seem to find it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletproof_hosting

Isn't it just a question of pretending to be a search bot ? Sites will allow google bot to bypass the paywall so stuff gets indexed.

You could easily test your hypothesis yourself. It's not gonna work very well.

The owner must have subscriptions to these services. Some paywalls are absolute and it bypasses all of them with ease. I don't see it now but there was a time when archiving a reddit page showed the username that their bot was using.

100%. It's like Lenin said, you look for the person who will benefit… and, uh, uh, you know… You know, you'll uh, uh—well, you know what I'm trying to say…

I’m not sure what you’re referencing, but the principal goes back way back to the Romans: Cui bono? [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono%3F

They're referencing this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HlZhPuDYqbU

It's a valid way to look for probable cause but it's important differ "you know" and "you assume" - I'm all for accountability but most conspiracy theories thrive exactly because of that sort of framing.

As to Lenin: The mouse died because it didn't understand why the cheese was free

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