The new Internet archive

[Bill Stewart]

The article title was "web.archive.org Internet archive to open"....

At 03:57 PM 10/25/2001 -0300, Pier Carlo Montecucchi wrote:
>Do you know the URL address of this new Internet archive?
>
>Pier Carlo
>
>Email: pcmontecucchi at compuserve.com
>
>"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in
>having new eyes " (Marcel Proust)
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>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Subcommander Bob" <bob at black.org>
>To: <cypherpunks at lne.com>
>Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 11:45 AM
>Subject: web.archive.org Internet archive to open ---google + archeology
>
>
> >
> > Hey Mitch  --Another part of your permenant record
> >
> > http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-102501archive.story
> > By JOSEPH MENN, Times Staff Writer
> >
> > SAN FRANCISCO -- An Internet archive containing more text than any
> > library in history will open its digital doors today, giving researchers
> > and the public access to just about everything posted on the World Wide
> > Web over the last five years.
> >
> > The free archive, created by a San Francisco computer entrepreneur named
> > Brewster Kahle, allows academics to conduct the electronic equivalent of
> > archeological digs, rooting through reams of material illustrating the
> > evolution of the Web and its role in American society.
> >
> > The Internet Archive, informally called the Wayback Machine, holds more
> > than 10 billion Web pages dating to 1996, including millions that had
> > vanished as dot-coms collapsed, big companies scaled back or updated
> > their offerings, and hobbyist Webmasters lost interest.
> >
> > Researchers and academics have likened Kahle to a modern-day Andrew
> > Carnegie, the steel baron who endowed many of the nation's finest
> > libraries.
> >
> > "Libraries are dedicated to collecting and making available the
> > permanent historical record," said Diane Kresh, the Library of Congress'
> > director for public service collections. She said trolling the Net is as
> > significant as gathering books or periodicals.
> >
> > Want to see what the Heaven's Gate cult page looked like before the
> > group's mass suicide? There it is. Want to see how Yahoo's pages have
> > changed since 1996? Step this way. Pages published by everyone from
> > Fortune 500 companies to renegade porn merchants are stashed in the
> > Internet Archive.
> >
> > The five-year, multimillion-dollar project has amassed five times as
> > much text as the Library of Congress, which helped fund the archive
> > along with Compaq Computer Corp., the National Science Foundation and
> > the Smithsonian Institution. The more-than 100 terabytes of data are
> > housed on 300 modified Hewlett-Packard desktop computers in a basement
> > at San Francisco's Presidio.
> >
> > The effort to record Internet history has been directed and largely
> > financed by Kahle, a 41-year-old former supercomputer technologist who
> > sold one Web firm to America Online and another to Amazon.com.
> >
> > "The opportunity of our time is to offer universal access to all of
> > human knowledge," Kahle said Wednesday from his office in the Presidio,
> > a decommissioned military base near the Golden Gate Bridge. "We're at a
> > unique point in time to offer universal access to anyone who walks into
> > a library in Uganda."
> >
> > The Internet Archive uses automated "bots" to scour the Web. They
> > capture sites and return what they find to the computers at the
> > Presidio. The archive updates every two months. Once captured, the sites
> > are organized chronologically. Users type in a Web address, and the
> > archive displays versions of that site since 1996.
> >
> > Sites that require passwords or block bots are not captured. And if
> > someone objects to their site being copied, the archive removes it.
> >
> > As smaller, less accessible versions of the archive were being compiled,
> > Kahle's 30 staffers got a few complaints. After the staff explained that
> > it wasn't personal, that they were copying everyone's sites, the vast
> > majority decided they didn't mind, Kahle said.
> >
> > "Most people say, 'You're crazy, but go for it,' " Kahle said. "People
> > want to be part of history."
> >
> > Candidates to use the service, at web.archive.org, include academics,
> > journalists and researchers.
> >
> > "It will allow researchers to study the evolution of the Web in a way
> > that is unprecedented," said research scientist Ed Chi of the Xerox Palo
> > Alto Research Center. He said Xerox PARC scientists already are working
> > on new user interfaces based on what the archive showed them about how
> > people looked for information.
> >
> > Early on, "we suspect people will go look for their own pages and see if
> > they can get copies of things that they've lost," Kahle said. "We're not
> > exactly sure how this is going to be used. We're looking forward to
> > being surprised."
> >
> > Like many Internet pioneers, however, Kahle faces unfamiliar risks along
> > with the opportunities. The Internet Archive may be a massive violation
> > of copyright law.
> >
> > "Brewster is taking an extraordinarily personal risk, because this is
> > potentially a criminal offense," said Lawrence Lessig, an expert on
> > intellectual property in cyberspace at Stanford University.
> >
> > Kahle doesn't anticipate getting sued, let alone serving jail time. His
> > plan is to post whatever he can--and keep the archive growing.
> >
> > "We're not here to test laws," Kahle said. "We're trying to build a
> > world we want to live in. The world without a library is a world without
> > a memory, and that would be tragic."
> >
> > The legal questions may take years to resolve, Kahle and Lessig said.
> >
> > Consider the Industry Standard. At least some of that defunct magazine's
> > articles are back online through Kahle's archive. But shareholder IDG
> > paid more than $1 million for the Standard's assets, including rights to
> > those stories. An IDG spokeswoman declined to say whether the company
> > would ask the archive to drop the articles.
> >
> > Kahle said he isn't worrying about the hypotheticals. He's more excited
> > about finding early www.whitehouse.gov pages from 1996 that dealt with
> > airport safety and bioterrorism.
> >
> > Even better is what's to come.
> >
> > "The woman who is going to be elected president in 2024 is in high
> > school now, and I bet she has a home page," Kahle said. "We have the
> > future president's home page!"