Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

In some cases they do appear to delete, on request.

edit: "Other types of removal requests may also be sent to info@archive.org. Please provide as clear an explanation as possible as to what you are requesting be removed for us to better understand your reason for making the request.", https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-som...

Nope. Nothing is deleted, just hidden.

How do you know?

I worked there for a short while.

So if the Internet Archive accidentally archived child porn, they wouldn’t delete it?

I suspect they DO delete some things.

Don't be asinine; of course there are exceptions. But the general rule is that nothing is deleted. Even if you have a fancy expensive lawyer send them a C&D letter asking them to delete something or else, they’ll just hide it. You can’t tell the difference from the outside. In fact there are monitoring alarms that are triggered if something _is_ deleted.

Claiming to have deleted something while just having hidden from public view… that’s basically begging content owners to sue and very easily win damages.

Copyright only regulates the distribution of copies of copyrighted works. Possessing copies and distributing copies to other people are two different things.

If you were photocopying a textbook and giving it to your classmates, the publisher could have their lawyer send you a Cease and Desist letter telling you to stop (or else). But if they told you to burn your copy of the textbook then they would be overreaching, and everyone would laugh at them when you took that story to the papers.

Legal reasoning from made‐up examples is generally a bad idea, but I think you can safely reason from that one.

I’m not privy to the actual communications in these cases, but I suspect that instead of replying back with “we deleted the content from the Archive”, they instead say something anodyne like “the content is no longer available via the Wayback Machine”. Smart lawyers will notice the difference, but then a smart lawyer wouldn’t have expected anything else.

> Legal reasoning from made‐up examples is generally a bad idea

What? That's the only way to do legal reasoning, and as an obvious consequence it's how both lawyers and judges do it.

I would be better to quote the actual text of the law than to make up a silly hypothetical on the spot, but that would be more work.

Even better would be to quote from some case where a judge has applied the law to actual events.

I'm not going to look up legal precedent, hire a lawyer if you want that.

You are wrong, copyright specifically prohibits copying, not distribution. They can get a cease and desist that requests you destroy property and they ca get a court order backing that which will put you into contempt of court if you fail to do so.

Proving damages is easier with distribution, but that is a civil matter not a criminal matter.

They’re not making copies either.

So they aren't making copies? How then do they have an archive of internet resources if not by copying said resources?

You do realise the "downloading" is implicitly a copy.

If you want to actually have a civil discussion then you need to make some reasonable argument than "They're not making copies either."

Sounds like whatever role you played at IA when you were there didn't give you any actual insight into what happens in operation and you simply tried to prove your point with an appeal to authority instead of backing it with facts and reason.

Ahem. We are discussing items which have been hidden. A hidden item which users of the archive cannot access is not being copied. It’s just sitting there on a drive. Occasionally an automated process comes along and computes its hash to make sure there hasn’t been any bitrot. There’s no warehouse of undistributed copies of the thing that a court can order the Archive to destroy.