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The Internet Is Failing The Website Preservation Test (archive.ph)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is something that keeps me worried at night. Unlike other historical artefacts like pottery, vellum writing, or stone tablets, information on the Internet can just blink into nonexistence when the server hosting it goes offline. This makes it difficult for future anthropologists who want to study our history and document the different Internet epochs. For my part, I always try to send any news article I see to an archival site (like archive.ph) to help collectively preserve our present so it can still be seen by others in the future.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

How does authentication factor into this?

That's where it gets complicated. Git sidesteps the problem by simply being a file format, the downloading still happens over regular old HTTP, so you can apply all the same restrictions as on a regular website. IPFS on the other side ignores the problem and assumes all data is redistributable and accessible to everybody. I find that approach rather problematic and short sighted, as that's just not how copyright and licensing works. Even data that is freely redistributable needs to declare so, as otherwise the default fallback is copyright and that doesn't allow redistribution unless explicitly allowed. IPFS so far has no way to tag data with license, author, etc. LBRY (the thing behind Odysee.com) should handle that a bit better, though I am not sure on the detail.