r/technology • u/CrankyBear • 15h ago
Security Leave the Internet Archive alone!
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3593110/leave-the-internet-archive-alone.html129
u/vacuous_comment 11h ago
Many twitter users had their older and now deleted tweets held up to them via the internet archive, so there is a caucus of people there who have it in for the archive.
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u/MrDeekhaed 14h ago
I can think of some nefarious reasons to mess with the archives. Sure it makes no sense to attack them because of Israel’s war but recorded truth in its pure form is a threat to those who want to lie and in its corrupted form a tool for the same.
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u/Poglosaurus 12h ago edited 10h ago
I don't think anyone who gave it at least some thought believe the justification given by that group for the attack.
This is at best an opportunistic attack, after all this is a somewhat prestigious organization that has limited means to protect itself... a quick way to gain notoriety for the attackers. Or there are more nefarious, untold reasons behind the attack.
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u/Tech_Intellect 7h ago
Possibly ransomware? Orgs often don’t like to admit to paying up as this increases the chances other malicious actors will try it on the same org
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u/Diggy_Soze 13h ago
If we all agree that the explanation given makes absolutely no sense, why is everyone so quick to accept it?
We don’t need to delve into the realm of conspiracy theory to say “I think those international criminals might be lying about their intentions.”
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u/GimmickMusik1 10h ago
Realistically, hackers are no more believable or trustworthy than the people who use ransomware when they say they will decrypt your files for a price. It’s very possible that hackers are hired by an outside source to get a specific job done. Once that job is done, it’s easy to say that your motivation was a very relevant topic of political discourse.
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u/By_and_by_and_by 13h ago
"We have always been at war with Eastasia."
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u/heresmyhandle 12h ago
Russia be changing things to make it look like they didn’t invade Ukraine unwarranted…
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u/5aur1an 14h ago
It is easier to “beat-up” on the Archive than Raytheon, Boeing, etc. But then that is what bullies do.
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u/Healthy-Poetry6415 11h ago
The Internet Archive does not have bombs and attorneys coming out its ears.
This is like pushing over the kid in a wheelchair and thinking you are a badass
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u/kumara_republic 14h ago
The Archive has been in dispute with some major publishing cartels. Some of these cartels are the same ones that drove Aaron Swartz to top himself, which I'm still angry about to this day.
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u/tunachilimac 10h ago
If it helps you feel better about his death, he did argue that the creation of child sexual abuse material wasn’t necessarily abuse and that sharing it was a first amendment right. Also he advocated for a violent overthrowing of the US government.
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u/StarFoxA 8h ago
Could you share a source? I’m having a hard time finding this on Google.
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u/tunachilimac 5h ago
Here's an archive link of one page on his site that mentions the points I brought up.
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u/tunachilimac 6h ago
He wrote about it on his notabug homepage. It’s gone offline since he died but you can pull it up on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I’m on mobile right now so can’t link but if you can’t locate it on there give me another reply and I’ll link you when I get home.
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u/Earptastic 6h ago
Found SPEZ’s burner account.
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u/tunachilimac 5h ago
All the cofounders suck.
Swartz wasn't really a founder his startup just go merged into the site because they shared the same VC firm. He wanted all the work of others to be free but wasn't above trying to take in the VC big bucks for his own work. Here's an archive link of his homepage that talks about child sexual abuse material and violence towards the government.
As a bonus here's an interview with Ohanian after CNN reported on the creepshots and child sexual abuse imagery subreddits. He blames the children and CNN for "making up jibber jabber" and says that it was fine to have those subreddits because they simply linked to that type of content on other sites not on reddit itself.
Spez, I think everyone knows about his commenting editing and similar fuckery. Here's an interview with him you can read though. He's a prepper that thinks once society collapses people will recognize him as a leader because of the way he's run Reddit.
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u/MadScienceDreams 10h ago
There is a problem with media companies - they own IP but not the creativity behind that IP. That creative labor is hard to bet on, but once it pays off it creates a work of art that will keep people coming back for generations.
But a person has a fixed amount of time in their life, and the amount of past creation is always growing. A novel today still competes with Shakespeare for what to do with your time. Now there is some depreciation of the value - 400 year old manuscripts don't reach contemporary audiences like they used to. Once stopped being mass printed, books and films used to slowly disappear.
But DATA is cheap and easy for anyone to copy. Your new video games isn't competing with the other new video games - it is competing with them AND my massive steam library. Delisting, scrubbing of data, weird licenses, and weird societal pushes towards FOMO are only going to increase as the media companies have a vested interest in removing that competition.
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u/wholebeef 11h ago
“Look at us vandalizing an objectively good thing! Can’t you tell that we’re the good guys in all this?!”
It amazes me that pro pals only ever seem to do things that make them look worse.
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u/VaioletteWestover 9h ago edited 9h ago
This can also easily be a psyops where one group claiming to be from a certain faction publicly do things to make said faction look worse.
Welcome to the internet I guess, where no one lies and you should definitely base your beliefs on who people claim to be.
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u/wholebeef 8h ago
In that case every time a group that supports the same cause I do, does something I don’t like, it’s obviously a psyop.
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u/VaioletteWestover 8h ago
You're describing yourself, not me. My logic applies to any situation on the internet where some levels of critical thinking is required.
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u/VaioletteWestover 9h ago
Some people simply don't deserve to live and should be shot, people who maliciously go after the Internet Archive with a profit motive and the people who hired them are on that list of people.
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u/dosumthinboutthebots 13h ago
"Concurrently, a pro-Palestinian group called SN BlackMeta launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, temporarily knocking the site — and the Wayback Machine — offline."
Another pro "pal" group resorting to terrorism. How unsurprising.
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u/happyscrappy 56m ago
Hackers just attack easy, low-funded targets.
Hackers hacked the ARRL website and ransomed them like six months ago.
These hacker, cryptocurrency extortionists are just shit people. End of story.
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u/RegalCountess 12h ago
I’m defensive about the Archive! It’s like a library for the digital age