Robbbert wrote on 2024-10-10, 14:28:

Makes me wonder who would benefit from making the site unavailable ... besides copyright holders, that is.

In the hacking scene, everything is about clout and credit. You do anything and demonstrate proof that you did it, you get some street cred and clout. It doesn't matter if you hacked the Wisconsin DMV or Larry's Lawn Service website, every action counts in that arena.

Anyway I think that Archive.org should consider splitting the Wayback Machine and the Open Library into 2 entirely separate entities, perhaps even on separate servers. The Wayback Machine isn't contentious, and should be able to happily exist without enemies.

The Open Library, on the other hand, may have gone too far, as the court loss shows.

Latest update on the DDOS attack from Brewster Kahle (Oct 11 @ 10:22am PT):

"The data is safe.

Services are offline as we examine and strengthen them. Sorry, but needed. @internetarchive staff is working hard.

Estimated Timeline: days, not weeks."

Based on their claims it's one of those political activist orgs that likes to actively harm their own cause by pulling stunts like this.

Or someone else trying to harm said cause by doing this and claiming to be for it lol.

Sorry...I have to quote some posts I second...because especially the Wayback Machine is one of the best inventions since sliced bread or even the wheel, it (with its monstrous database) is the most important part of archive.org! Personally I use the Wayback Machine virtually every day and I'm f***** up like a junkie missing his drugs when it doesn't work...it is important to me, to many of us - my website is based on it in large parts.

tauro wrote on 2024-10-11, 10:28:

The prospect of losing archive.org (including the web archive) is hard to accept but, I think we should prepare ourselves.

keropi wrote on 2024-10-11, 10:34:

it would be a huge loss if the archive is gone...

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-11, 12:12:

It would be a huge loss if archive.org went down permanently. Mostly because of The Wayback Machine, which holds a lot of information that's no longer available anywhere else. Such as Creative's EAX Featured Games list and developer interviews. Also, archived support pages of motherboard manufacturers that are no longer in business, which are sometimes complete with BIOS images and release notes.

I couldn't care less about copyrighted games or whatever being removed from there, but not having access to the archived driver CDs and BIOS files for retro motherboards and GPUs would be a pretty big issue for me.

Robbbert wrote on 2024-10-11, 13:07:

Anyway I think that Archive.org should consider splitting the Wayback Machine and the Open Library into 2 entirely separate entities, perhaps even on separate servers. The Wayback Machine isn't contentious, and should be able to happily exist without enemies.

The Open Library, on the other hand, may have gone too far, as the court loss shows.

I also got in doubt when I heard they made copies of nearly everything...so a split could save one from the other. As said above I consider the Wayback Machine extremely important as it's the only (such complete) of its type.

MAZter wrote on 2024-10-11, 18:10:

Latest update on the DDOS attack from Brewster Kahle (Oct 11 @ 10:22am PT): […]
Show full quote

Latest update on the DDOS attack from Brewster Kahle (Oct 11 @ 10:22am PT):

"The data is safe.

Services are offline as we examine and strengthen them. Sorry, but needed. @internetarchive staff is working hard.

Estimated Timeline: days, not weeks."

Hopefully...and thanks for their work. A couple years back (since I have some money for that) I started to donate some dozen bucks to projects I like (CPU-Z, WinSCP, MSFN, ...) - I should also do this to archive.org (and Wikipedia...and other instances).

kind regards
soggi

Robbbert wrote on 2024-10-11, 13:07:

Anyway I think that Archive.org should consider splitting the Wayback Machine and the Open Library into 2 entirely separate entities, perhaps even on separate servers. The Wayback Machine isn't contentious, and should be able to happily exist without enemies.

Yes, that is probably an excellent idea. Splitting the projects will probably not guarantee safety from attacks like this, but indeed the rest of IA has become embroiled in too much shaky stuff, and the Wayback Machine needs to be insulated from those risks as well.

Every so often the IA suffers a "DDOS" but they manage to quickly put up a donate page. It's shakedown. IA does some shady stuff and shouldn't be relied upon.

Before Twitter got ruined and changed to X, I used to follow a few IA guys, like Jason Scott. They were constantly saying conspiratorial, inflammatory stuff. They were all trolls. I do not trust people like that with data.

You can always donate to archive.org, thre's no special "donate page" in the actual situation and they periodically have donate challenges like Wikipedia also has.

kind regards
soggi

soggi wrote on 2024-10-15, 21:18:

You can always donate to archive.org, thre's no special "donate page" in the actual situation and they periodically have donate challenges like Wikipedia also has.

kind regards
soggi

You're wrong. Try visiting the site yourself.

They're holding our data hostage with a "oh no we're under attack please donate" page.

No, you're wrong! This is a placeholder with actual information (respectively the links to them) and not a donation page, aside from that the sentence "Our patrons have asked how they can support: PayPal." has been added relatively late to the page (I saw this page many times a day the last days).

kind regards
soggi

That's true, they've only recently added that sentence to the website.

But suuure, they're probably making billions from hosting old CD images, constantly dealing with politically motivated attacks and getting a few bucks of support for it...

kingcake wrote on 2024-10-15, 22:37:

They're holding our data hostage with a "oh no we're under attack please donate" page.

Talk about being "conspiratorial and inflammatory".

Maybe not everyone involved with IA is a perfect example of human virtues (I kinda know what you mean), and the system is not without its flaws, but that doesn't make it an evil money making scheme.

VileR wrote on 2024-10-17, 20:04:

kingcake wrote on 2024-10-15, 22:37:

They're holding our data hostage with a "oh no we're under attack please donate" page.

Talk about being "conspiratorial and inflammatory".

Maybe not everyone involved with IA is a perfect example of human virtues (I kinda know what you mean), and the system is not without its flaws, but that doesn't make it an evil money making scheme.

Just make the data available read only until they figure things out. The fact they didn't do that, and how long it's taking, I think things are much, much worse than they are saying.

kingcake wrote on 2024-10-21, 20:28:

VileR wrote on 2024-10-17, 20:04:

kingcake wrote on 2024-10-15, 22:37:

They're holding our data hostage with a "oh no we're under attack please donate" page.

Talk about being "conspiratorial and inflammatory".

Maybe not everyone involved with IA is a perfect example of human virtues (I kinda know what you mean), and the system is not without its flaws, but that doesn't make it an evil money making scheme.

Just make the data available read only until they figure things out. The fact they didn't do that, and how long it's taking, I think things are much, much worse than they are saying.

perhaps this ? https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/securit … -access-tokens/

It seems most of the functionalities are available as of today, though a good portion of it are still read-only (provisional).

Considering the threats are still out there, I don't know how long it can stay up, as well as whether it will fully recover...

kingcake wrote on 2024-10-21, 20:28:

Just make the data available read only until they figure things out. The fact they didn't do that, and how long it's taking, I think things are much, much worse than they are saying.

That could be true, and it wouldn't surprise me, because that's the unfortunate nature of modern web frameworks for dynamic content... read: gigantic trainwrecks with multiple nested levels of interdependent client-side libraries, which in turn depend on an equally convoluted server-side shit show, so it becomes pretty much impossible to untangle the part that delivers you the content from whatever's causing the vulnerability.

VileR wrote on 2024-10-22, 23:04:

kingcake wrote on 2024-10-21, 20:28:

Just make the data available read only until they figure things out. The fact they didn't do that, and how long it's taking, I think things are much, much worse than they are saying.

That could be true, and it wouldn't surprise me, because that's the unfortunate nature of modern web frameworks for dynamic content... read: gigantic trainwrecks with multiple nested levels of interdependent client-side libraries, which in turn depend on an equally convoluted server-side shit show, so it becomes pretty much impossible to untangle the part that delivers you the content from whatever's causing the vulnerability.

That's, unfortunately, very true. Bring back static html tables.

Yeah, you'd expect all content to be in one bucket, and regular users allowed a straw, registered allowed a hose, and admin/dev allowed a pipleline with push and pull pumps and ways to inject or subtract elements from the bucket. All separate mechanisms. Then what is actually going on with these frameworks is that it's all one complicated valving system with one pipe to the content, like one of those over complex kitchen faucets with a lever like a gearshift, now it's gone wrong and putting scalding water out of the water bottle filler, freezing cold out of the spray head and nothing at all coming out the main spout. Plumber comes and looks and goes, well it's unfixable but I can replace the whole thing for $700 with a more sensible arrangement.

Norton Commander wrote on 2024-10-11, 11:21:

To be honest I'm surprised they're still around. There's terabytes of copyrighted software being hosted there. How DMCA hasn't shut them down a long time ago is astounding.

Speaks more to the fact that DMCA shouldn’t exist or should have a statute of limitations reflective of the fact that most software has a usuable life of under 1 year (in most cases)