Internet Archive Hosts 24-Hour Fund-Raising Telethon (archive.org) 32
martiniturbide writes: The Internet Archive, the online non-profit library that stores almost everything that is digital, the same one that hosts a lot of classic games , hosts a massive collection of MAME ROMs and runs the WayBackMachine to preserve the internet web pages.... started running an old fashioned, 24-hour fundraising telethon earlier today, 19 December, at 12:00 PM PST (20:00 UTC). This live event is being hosted by Michelle Krasowski and Jason Scott (the guy from Textfiles.com that Wants Your AOL & Shovelware CDs) with the support of several guests. You can visit the telethon live video and donate to support this library.
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Why are you so concerned with what other people are doing? Is your life really that empty?
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Actually, archive.org makes a pretty big impact in a lot of fields, most notably data-based journalism and computer-assisted reporting. There are a lot of government agencies that will have story-relevant data up that they then wind up taking down - sometimes because of storage costs, other times because they're trying to hide something.
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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Jason Scott is a cool guy (Score:2)
How do they Regularly Pay for It? (Score:2)
I have to assume this will bring in peanuts. The Internet Archive not only hosts a backup of the entire internet, they host a backup with multiple chronological versions of the internet. I always assumed they must have backers with some huge pockets. How do they normally pay for stuff, and does this fund raising imply that they could be having financial difficulties?
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Dunno but I just sent a donation a few minutes ago. I donated a bit not too long ago to a side-project. I forgot the name but it was for saving some old manuals in text form - the guy from textfiles.com as I recall. I should probably set up a recurring monthly donation but I try to limit my monthly spending and then, at the end of the month, I'll often just donate what I have left to some needy projects or whatnot. I kind of divide it all up between them if I'm under my monthly budget.
Hmm... I wonder how di
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Thanks! I'll have to ask them to put me on a list that they can ping if they have an interesting project coming up and are needing extra funding to assist with that. It's surely part ego but I really prefer those types of targeted donations as opposed to my traditional yearly or monthly giving. I dunno... Something about helping to solve a specific problem just makes me feel good? It's not really easy to explain and I'm not entirely sure why it is that it makes it seem more significant to me.
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Nice info, thanks! To give an example, someone was recently rescuing some documents. Documents I'd never need (probably) but I felt the collection, storage, and archiving of such was important. They wanted donations for that one specific thing and I was quite happy to fire up a burner email (I prefer anonymous donations, I only write off large donations to the major charities) and send some money along.
I can think of a few things that I'd find to be improvements to the system. I prefer anonymous donations b
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That's weird. That's when I do my end of the year drives too!
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The Internet Archive has a variety of funding sources - from individual donations (small and large), to government grants, to their "commercial" Archive-It arm that scans collections for other libraries and such. The donation drive is a yearly thing - they are not in any particular financial hardship right now, but it's important to keep a steady stream of donations going.
As it turns out, it isn't *that* expensive to archive the intenet. You're not going to run it from the average disposable income, of cour
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The Internet Archive not only hosts a backup of the entire internet,
Not only don't they, but they let the current domain holder determine whether content archived when someone else owned the domain determine whether content will be shown. That crops up for me more than half the time. Otherwise, I might donate.
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The Internet Archive not only hosts a backup of the entire internet,
Not only don't they, but they let the current domain holder determine whether content archived when someone else owned the domain determine whether content will be shown. That crops up for me more than half the time. Otherwise, I might donate.
That's not really IA's fault. It's the fault of our copyright regime.
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Not only don't they, but they let the current domain holder determine whether content archived when someone else owned the domain determine whether content will be shown. That crops up for me more than half the time. Otherwise, I might donate.
That's not really IA's fault. It's the fault of our copyright regime.
Bullshit. I am the copyright holder of the material in question, and they are assuming that whoever owns the domain today (which is analogous to a trademark, not copyright) has the right to control it. Explain to me how giving the current holder of the domain (and no trademark is involved, BTW) control over my copyright is the fault of "our copyright regime". You can't, because it isn't. It's the fault of the misguided way in which the IA has chosen to "comply" with copyright law, except it does no such thi
Maybe (Score:3)
Well, if they come off like the pushy elitist "Wikipedians" at Wikipedia, no money from me. But I may toss a Abraham Lincoln or two their way.
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Arguably one of the more important historical archives in the world and your support comes down to if you like the personalities?
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Arguably one of the more important historical archives in the world
It is arguable.
your support comes down to if you like the personalities?
If you want my hard earned money, yes, I expect you to try and no be a bunch of elitist assholes like the average Wikipedia "admin", otherwise you will do without my cash.
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Arguably one of the more important historical archives in the world and your support comes down to if you like the personalities?
Absolutely, when it's relevant. GP mentioned Wikipedia -- the personalities of the people running and managing Wikipedia are shaping the format of the project. Personally, I think that has caused the project to have fundamental flaws and should either die or morph into something better. Until that culture of personalities is changed, there's no way I will support Wikipedia, and in fact I'll argue with anyone I can that they should not only NOT support it but should actively work against it... I think the
Site Down - YouTube Link (Score:2)
The site is down. You can view it on a live YouTube stream. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Check also YouTube Live (Score:2)
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Why? The NSA will store it all for you... (Score:2)
I kinda liked the WayBackMachine when it came out, it was a fun novelty to look back at past web pages and things I used to draw back then, but after 20-30 years on the net or so, I'm inclined to think that we may not WANT to store our every move on the net, what might seem innocent now may not be so in 30 years.
Besides...isn't the NSA already doing that? They've probably got WayBetterFunding than the WayBackMachine folks.
Maybe (Score:3)
but you have no access to the NSA archive...
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but you have no access to the NSA archive...
I have no access to what I want from the wayback machine, either. The current holder of the circus.com domain has set their robots.txt in such a way that the archive has chosen to interpret as "do not serve data from the archive for this domain" ... in spite of the fact that I hold the copyright on the data in question, I am not permitted to access it because of the inexplicable policies of the archive. This is why I will not give them money. They are holding my copyrighted data hostage, if they have it at