Well, if google controls usenet history, why wouldn't a violence monopoly control logs and the history of the lands it ... controls ? (for all practical purposes the government is a corporation with a very effective PR department and pesuasive means, which it uses to successfuly convince customers that it works for them, that it is even controlled by them. And as we know, branding ... er patriotism ... works) Back to archives. One of the solutions was described in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: memorize the stuff. It's much easier with computers these days. Download and backup the information YOU deem valuable. It's your fucking choice, don't expect others to do it. It is trivially easy, maybe as easy as whining about bookburning. Look at JYA - all he does is memorize, memorize. Archiving is a valuable service. The Unsolved Problem The most serious problem is getting out of the reach ("juristiction") of a particular Violence, Inc. franchise. Not just storage-wise, but access-wise. Even if I rent a server in Tripoli, the access to it goes through wires controlled by my local ViolCo. It is not filtering out Tripoli now, but I have no doubt that it will should the need arise. You can hide bits by encryption, but you (still) can't hide wires. unrelated - did you notice that "for the children" meme is almost gone and replaced with "against the terrorism" ?