I'm curious as to how you are dealing with potential copyright issues. (Or, for that matter, how archive.org and the like approach these problems.)
I don't claim copyright over anything but the http://reocities.com/ and http://reocities.com/newhome/makingof.html pages at this point, all the rest is owned by the respective users.
The funny thing is though, that was my question before doing this, and I figured it's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission, first let's get it done.
Much to my surprise the only mail I've got so far is people that are literally ecstatic that their pages weren't lost and people that send me their backups for inclusion.
Not a single removal request. Though I'm sure that in time that will happen.
I didn't figure that you were claiming copyright over any one else's material. I just wasn't sure that removal after the fact was sufficient to avoid legal troubles for "reproducing" their works without permission.
I expect that the vast majority of the content producers will be pleased to see their works live on. I admit to not having checked out the site itself: are you going to provide them means to keep the pages updated, as well? Under similar terms to their Geocities pages.. whatever those were?
In other countries, alone the fact that you are storing the content (without publishing it) is blatant theft.
That being said, a DMCA notice on the site would protect the content provider. The way it works is that if you have a copyright claim against the site, they have a duty to take it down when you inform them. As long as they respect that, they are pretty much covered.
I seem to recall a recent post on another site about this - reddit maybe - about parallel efforts to archive GeoCities, and whether everyone was working together for maximum benefit.
Did you make that post? If you could respond and link to it, I'd appreciate it.
EDIT: Gotta be honest that I don't recall what exactly I'm talking about. Here are a couple reddit links for anyone curious:
The making of Reocities.com - one man's attempt to archive the entire contents of Geocities.com http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/9yne3/the_saving...
The Saving of Geocities, a tale of bandwidth and stress, most if not all Geocities content saved! http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/9yne3/the_saving...
Yes we're pooling resources, good chance that we'll get almost everything.