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 FieryBirdyThing    |
I've already made a brief bibble about this, but here is some more information regarding what is happening with the Internet Archive. On the 1st of June, four book publishers - Hachette Book Group, Inc., Harpercollins Publishers LLC, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and Penguin Random House LLC - filed a lawsuit again the IA regarding their 'Open Library' project, and copyright concerns. IA blog post about the news Article on the news from Niche Gamer (includes quotes from an article by Ars Technica) I felt this was worth noting, since the IA's Wayback Machine has been useful in helping to archive old Creatures sites and downloads, and if something goes wrong, the costs involved could potentially affect the rest of the site outside the Open Library. There isn't really much more information to go on for now, it appears. This is mainly a heads-up to what is happening. CeeGee Toons | Club Nintendo Archives |
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 Jabber |
In light of this, it's probably worth saying... there is a project I am aware of, but could only very charitably be considered part of, involving an automated method of saving everything that was archived on website snapshots as well as periodically re-checking for new downloads from active sites (given the sudden disappearance of Treesprite's Creatures Grove). It's not my place to say who or how many people are involved or where this is being coordinated, given the potentially controversial nature of the project, and as of right now there have been no decisions made on what to do with the accumulated content. IA has been sued many times before to no real effect, including by the infamously ruthless cult of Scientology in the early 00s, but in the event that this current lawsuit turns out to be a serious threat efforts could be escalated to grab everything possible before snapshots become unavailable. The suit was only started on the 1st of June, so we're gonna have to wait and see how the situation develops. Don't DM me to ask for more details about the project or to relay anything to those involved--I'm barely a part of it and not really at liberty to reveal even as much as I just did. I just felt that it was important to let people know that something is in the works to "counter" this Library of Alexandria-esque possibility, at least to the degree that is relevant to Creatures. |
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 xan |
Automated scraping/rechecking/archiving is not in any way a secret technology. The main issue with that approach is that IA's content totals in the petabytes (thousands of terabytes); it's difficult to *get* all of it, much less store it for a nontrivial period of time. It requires making tough decisions about what to grab and what to leave. The size of its Creatures-related content is undoubtedly more modest. Has anyone collected links to it in one place? I'm hoping for an out of court settlement or simply for the case to be dropped. At this point, I couldn't care less about what legal precedent the publishers stand to withhold; this lawsuit is greed, pure and simple. |
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 Lacota |
Hello! I've been working on an archive for the better part of a decade, and it's out now http://eemfoo.org. I'm working on scraping the way back machine, and have talked with the creatures.wiki staff in migrating links to eemfoo, so that regardless of the IA's status, the content will live on. |
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Linnet |
That's very cool, thank you for releasing that! Can I suggest the use of multiple mirror links for the wiki instead of replacing existing archive links? Redundancy is good- multiple mirror links helps cover outages and can be easier to fix if one goes down. Internet Archive has announced their emergency library project will be ending early as a result of the lawsuit. To be honest I'm not concerned that this lawsuit will take down the Archive as a whole- I'd expect it to be more likely to end in a settlement possibly involving the takedown of their lending library section, which would be really unfortunate, and it might have unfortunate implications for more traditional digital lending libraries. |
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Lacota |
That's a good point, i'll make sure to preserve the wayback links until such time as they no longer work. I'm currently sorting through what site backups are available. it's pretty hit or miss, sometimes websites are just broken. I have the majors though, treesprite.com, ccaves here, and a bunch of others. The newer the site, and the more likely that it uses scripting like PHP, the less likely it's backup-able without direct intervention by the owner. *looks at rascii* I'd have more faith in the wayback machine, but it's hit or miss with proper files and images, and is difficult to navigate. Having to fight with snapshots to find the functional website in the sea of 404s. |
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FieryBirdyThing |
Linnet wrote: Thank you for the update. Hopefully, this might help make things go smoother. My concerns aren't so much that the publishers would eventually target other parts of the site, but that the potential costs of sorting this particular lawsuit out could eat into the funds that are otherwise used for the wider site. Your archive also sounds very interesting, Lacota. In some ways, it kinda makes me wish other fandoms were this interested in preserving their history and community... CeeGee Toons | Club Nintendo Archives |
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Lacota |
FieryBirdyThing wrote: My concerns aren't so much that the publishers would eventually target other parts of the site, but that the potential costs of sorting this particular lawsuit out could eat into the funds that are otherwise used for the wider site. Same here. Steve Grand has even checked out and said he loved the archive  It was nice to hear from him, and to have his blessing if you will. |
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