Internet Archive Switzerland
blog.archive.org
blog.archive.org
This is (AFAIK) basically how Usenet piracy works. You send your warez to one provider, and that provider instantly replicates them to all the providers they peer with, recursively, until they eventually reach the entire network. When any of those providers get a DMCA complaint, they remove the offending files (as they're required to do by law), but they don't inform other providers that they've received a DMCA notice, so those providers keep serving those files. This makes it much harder to remove data from the network than it is to add it.
IMO personal security would only be improved if we diversified away from "the open web".
"Flood the field" with protocols and pre-shared key networks where we have to generate keys together in meat space, make it too expensive to operate the panopticon.
Everyone putting their eggs in the open web basket, gathering in that public commons means all it takes is one bomb on us all, so to speak.
US-centric here: I feel that uploading a small percentage of a file as a condition of downloading the whole thing may very well fall under fair use - most BT traffic is noncommercial, the portion of the covered work uploaded by "leeches" is very small and probably would be covered by the "30-second" rule often quoted in fair use discussions. The only really arguable point is the "effect on the work's value", but then again an average leech is not uploading enough of the work to have that much of a material effect on the work's value.
Softlink data to the appropriate mount
The options are endless and tech nerds can 1:1 help friends and family
Locking the knowledge into corporate silos is a huge security risk. The masses should be just as competent and informed so they don't panic
Minority say over the economy and government is just fascism. These people are not deities. They're normal meat and bone
We have processes to replace politicians and workers; we need processes to replace the rich.
Free speech is a circular right and there is no freedom from consequences of speech. They can face consequences too
It is also not even required to show that that single byte was uploaded, your IP getting logged as part of the swarm suffices. The burden of proof is on you now. It was much, much worse than in the US.
While all this is technically still true today, a new law a few years ago luckily mostly blocked the path. It was badly needed, because the situation was horribly abused by law firms.
10010110
I heard a rumour that this byte also exists in the Legend of Zelda! No go get em Mr Policeman!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadshow_Films_Pty_Ltd_v_iiNet...
Of course Telco's can choose to be involved, perhaps accept payment to lookup and snitch, etc. but for the most part a number of ISPs in Au just wash their hands of devoting resources to play connect the dots for others.
1. Copyright holder files bullshit charges against the IP holder. 2. Police investigates and for this purpose gets the personal data for the given IP address. 3. Copyright holder gets personal data of the subscriber from the police. 4. Copyright holder aborts charges so police stops investigation and is no longer involved. 5. Copyright holder contacts the subscriber to extort money.
Police complained about the many bullshit charges, so of course a law was made so ISPs had to give out personal data directly to the copyright holders.
“Here’s byte 0x67, which is at offset 0x729B1A38 of Copyrighted_Blockbuster.4k.mkv, as requested” is different from “here’s byte 0x67, and it’s the first byte of my text response to your comment”.
What if someone would release software that would connect to random swarms and not upload or download anything? Would they still be criminally liable? You could disguise the purpose by saying it's measuring swarm diversity.
If you receive child porn in your mailbox and the package is caught, you better have a really good story. Like, prior documented proof of harassment.
In regards to your question, and Germany specifically: Media companies hire specialist lawyers. These lawyers prefer to sue in Hamburg, where the courts are known to be very media company friendly. It's just not likely that you ran some experiment and didn't upload anything, so you better have it documented well enough to convince the court.
I would think that at least a couple dozen of those 100 random people will report to the police. These reports can be used in court, and may or may not convince the judge that you're also one of the victims. You'd also think there was other circumstantial material to be used either arguing for or against.
Compare to torrenting: Not a dozen of 100 people will independently and proactively report that they ran some "experiments". You're on your own with that story, and it sure sounds like an excuse (to me) even if it were true. Plenty of people end up in jail (or with fines) being innocent. Real world is not the movies. Real courts do not need 100% certainty to "prove guilty according to law".
If the judge does not believe you, expect to pay something like 3-6 months of income. If he does, you only have to pay your lawyer (the opponent will not). Back then, I'd say it was a 50:50 chance, provided you have excellent documentation and a good lawyer.
Ideally in english but all is translatable.
This is not consistent with current Fair Use application. The TL;DR is that the use must be for a new expression that is protected by either the 1st amendment or copyright itself. I don't know of a single case where it has applied to mere distribution. I would be astounded if there is such a case because that isn't within the expressed purpose of the doctrine.
Hetzner is in Germany, the server is in Finland, the accuser is in the US. The only way to win is to either move away, or lobby for your countries to stop respecting US copyright laws.
It’s centralised in the way you describe now that it’s only used for large files / piracy, but it used to me much more diverse.
> Internet Archive Switzerland joins a growing group of mission-aligned organizations, alongside Internet Archive, Internet Archive Canada, and Internet Archive Europe. Together, these independent libraries strengthen a shared vision: building a distributed, resilient digital library for the world.
"working with dozens of European libraries and government agencies to build web collections, Internet Archive Europe prioritized collaboration with cultural heritage organizations to safeguard our collective history."
In a best case scenario, this eventually becomes the replacement for the (lets be honest) absurdly awful archive.org front and backend.
So: an expansion into the EU market. And yes, a honeypot for grant funds, because why not? Good for them.
This seems very distinct from Internet Archive in the US, I wonder how separate it is.
Internet Archive Canada (I worked there in 2024) operated like it was a subsidiary, even though I think it was technically an independent organization with some shared directors. Same Slack, same archive.org email domain, etc.
IA.ch has Brewster and Caslon on the board.
I suspect that for the political threats of the current decade the different Internet Archive organisations need to start operating more independently, especially when it comes to funding?
The Slack has (had?) hundreds of guest accounts due to volunteers and allied organizations. It’s an interesting (and cool) institution!
For my work, I worked in their Archiving & Data Services department, on https://archive-it.org/ -- I didn't know this before I joined, but Internet Archive offers various for-pay services to other cultural institutions, mostly around archiving their stuff or white-labelling playback of archives.
For example https://webarchiveweb.bac-lac.canada.ca/ (the Government of Canada's own Internet Archive) is actually outsourced to ADS within Internet Archive.
On one hand this is neat, as IA have expertise around this, but on the other hand (as a Canadian) I don't like that it's not actually sovereign and that it looks like it's run by our government but that it's not. Tradeoffs, I guess.
> We are a team of change-makers who believe that every helping hand can raise a child and create a better future for them.
Which I found weird. And searching for this phrase yields many site-hits verbatim, which is even weirder. Anyone know what is up with that? Is it some kind of filler text?
Edit: I guess it's from a template, the Contact section is also mumbo-jumbo (address: 123 Fifth Avenue, NY and so on).
The one in Egypt doesn't get updated.
If tpb dot org can still exist ...
At least these people tried. We need a p2p archive solution ASAP. Before our history is entirely re-written.
No one has cracked this one yet.
The internet itself is the thing we want.
We’re just constantly in denial that the internet actually does the thing we want it to do.
The internet archive is an excellent demonstration of how to do it.
It’s primarily getting a ragtag group to pool resources and manage them and then gossip with other groups that are doing the same thing.
I’ve spent so much time around the archive that I plainly see a divide between internet people online that can’t connect the dots and internet people in real life that are confused as to why the dots aren’t connecting.
The easiest way to see the dots is to:
1. Stop trying to make money
2. Tally the things that cost money
3. Amortize the upkeep over time
E.g. where do we source resources from, where do we store resources and how do we secure them.
Like HTTP, but for physical materials, not digital.
None of those things help with the problem of centralization. Centralization isn't limited to moneymaking enterprises, or the modern internet. A centralized server operated by donations for free can just as easily go down, be seized by law enforcement, have its domain or internet service taken offline by government action, and so on.
The internet is not the thing we want (or not sufficient alone), because the internet's resources, and the communication systems between them, are largely centralized.
Yeah, them as a single instance is centralized, but if you actually go (show up at 300 Funston on a Friday at 1pm) you can hear about the research into how to replicate and become the resiliency in the network to make it decentralized.
A lot of it is ancient Unix philosophy like “this massive text file is a seekable index” and “rsync does basically most of the heavy lifting” and you’ll quickly realize decentralization is a social problem and not a technical one.
They’re shifting more and better data than the centralized services we’re complaining about— we need better education, not innovation at this current juncture.
The technology exists, the will of the people is lacking in spirit.
That’s the crucial social layer that powers all of the everything else on the decentralized internet.
Take git as a social platform.
SSH is the social protocol.
GitHub centralized most of the git+ssh net, but that was a choice and we use all these other git+ssh services to not give them a monopoly.
https://blog.archive.org/tag/decentralized-web/
https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-transports
Third-party attempt:
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK
Turns out it's hard! Or maybe just too niche. But you can also help them today, by seeding some of collections that are available as torrents.
Why would they want to collect the AI wave ?!
But about time the Internet Archive had a US-independent backup.
Agreed!
> The Internet Archive Switzerland, online at https://internetarchive.ch/, is a newly-formed Swiss non-profit foundation that will operate independently within its national context.
I think the Wikipedia Editors will have to decide whether they will add it to the existing page. The Operations section is still listing only U.S. data centers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive#Operations
Edit: now someone is going to tell me how mean internecine Swiss conflict actually is...
I've noticed that this domain now host content subject to copyright.
As a example : entire season of startrek "voyager" are randomly hosted there in direct download.
Why? Is that not a liability?
“We survived,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told Ars. “But it wiped out the Library.” https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/the-internet-arc...
I don't understand what this means?
isn't this a nightmare for privacy