Ladies, gentlemen, and others, We interrupt our usual program of Newgrounds-related self-publishing advice and anime-opinions to bring you another special bulletin:
archive.org, which many of you will know as the "Wayback Machine" or the "Internet Archive", is facing an existential threat: A $700 million lawsuit, filed by major record labels.
Some of the people reading this News Post will already have received a PM from me about it the day before yesterday - because frankly, I did not want to write this article. I was already utterly drained by the weekend and I am even more drained today. I hope that it shows you how important this is to me (and you!) that I still set my mind in motion regardless.
Here is the actual article I'll be referring to:
Take Action: Defend the Internet Archive
If you haven't already signed the petition and you do not have a lot of time on your hands, I would prefer you to primarily invest your time there and (hopefully) sign their petition for the record labels to drop their lawsuit. But at this stage of events, the most important thing you can do and that will make a difference is to inform others. Raising awareness right now will help with the impact of any further steps archive.org will take from here on out.
I am totally fine if you set a bookmark to this article (the Newgrounds News Post you are reading at this moment) and return when you have the headspace.
If you need some convincing and don't just want to take my word for it being important, I'd like a shot at convincing you.
@TangoStar already wrote a post about this from a very personal, nostalgia-related perspective:
Internet Archive is in danger, and needs your help!
@ADR3-N wrote a post from the perspective of a freelance music producer and archivist:
Record Labels are once again trying to burn the Library of Alexandria
@ShangXian has also written a piece that would not look out of place on a website that publishes news articles and will show you yet a different perspective:
Other users, like @Zordoo99, have made a more... "URL forwarding"-style News Post, which I also think is completely valid for raising/spreading awareness. (It's just not my personal style.):
At the time of you reading this, other articles might be available as well:
(Most likely tagged with #internet-archive)
What I want to offer will be more of a "bigger perspective piece" with some explanations and future outlook.
Let me quickly set the scene...
Who are the Companies Responsible for this?
They organize under the name of "Recording Industry Association of America" (RIAA) and their leading members are:
Sony Music Entertainment (SME) [AKA: Sony Entertainment/"Sony" - the company that builds the PlayStation if they do not run out of microchips]
Universal Music (UMG) [You know... "Universal". The people who make money from movies.]
Warner Music Group (WMG) [Actually not owned by Time Warner/"Warner Bros." but rather by a group of private investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr.]
There are others and it gets more complicated, but these are the "Big Three". These are the companies we can boycott (if we like) and "get the most angry at" for this.
Why is this important? What are the "Wayback Machine" and the "Internet Archive" for?
Now this is a question I heard from some of you yesterday and it honestly hit me with surprise. While I do not use the site more than once a month myself, at the times when I use it, there is literally no alternative. Anywhere.
You know Wikipedia and whatever tragedy you use for online searches (DuckDuckGo, Startpage, or even Google)?
When one of those where to "go away", you'd still have alternatives. Large parts of Wikipedia get mirrored by some chancers ("opportunists") and people who want to sell you something (or just want to fill your head with propaganda at opportune intersections). Losing Wikipedia would severely diminish the quality of information available to you.
Search engines are a mixed bag, and many are... "improvable..." but you actually have quite a range to choose from.
If archive.org "goes away" that will have been it. That is why this threat is so dramatic.
@ADR3-N likened the Internet Archive to the Great Library of Alexandria. And that is not just hyperbole, it's a pretty apt comparison: The Library of Alexandria was one of the largest and most significant libraries of its time.
And you know artists? The people that give the site you are currently browsing the reason to exist. As an artist, you do not just sit in an empty room and "get ideas". There is a quote that summarizes the foundation of creative work quite nicely:
"The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write:
A man will turn over half a library to make one book."
– Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a British author, linguist and lexicographer,
Life of Samuel Johnson (Vol II) (by James Boswell)
Now... What libraries or museums would you recon resourceful artists visit when they need to look up all kinds of art in various media for educational purposes or the purpose of creating art? Will they spend the larger part of a decade to travel half the world and explore the great libraries, museums, and cultures of our time...?
No, of course not! The term "starving artist" wasn't coined from nothing. Almost every artist you will meet on any website that host art of any kind works a regular day job for a living, barely gets by (just like the rest of us), has crazy expenses and time investment for their art and operates at a loss - for doing what they are passionate about. 'Cause none of us have any money. So the place they go to is, often enough, archive.org.
Archive.org in a Nutshell
The Internet Archive
On the "Internet Archive", you are able to find countless resources creating fundamentals for artists of pretty much all sorts of media, stylistic directions, and walks of life.
You find installers and manuals for "old" and "ancient" games that you would often not be able to recover otherwise. (If you say "GOG" I will scream! The number of games that never got there or simply vanished from that site over licensing and royalty disputes... Or forcefully replaced by the new rights holder with a "remade" version that nobody wanted...)
You can find videos that are no longer (or were never) protected by copyright, or are no longer available through the hosters they were originally available through. (Most of the time YouTube.) Seriously: Their library on these things are huge. And unlike the former hosters, archive.org has a lot of search options, so you can narrow down search parameters until you get a manageable number of results.
"Music and "Audio stuff" freelance music producers would use. As well as "Art stuff"..." (I got to stay honest here: I am just not somebody who looks those up, as I am more interested in other forms of art.)
The Wayback Machine
The "Wayback Machine" lets visitors see archived internet sites. Sometimes including massive files that were part of that website (like videos and music). And if the same site (or part of a site) was archived at different dates, you can find parts of a site's history what were lost. Or in other words:
"It's a Time Machine...!"
This is the closest you or me will ever get to traveling back in time to witness events from the past "for the first time" and at our own pace and discretion without having to experience it through the lens and filters of somebody else.
I'm not suggesting you shouldn't cherish the present, but if this does not excite you, I can only assume you are suffering from a severe lack of imagination.
This is why preservation matters. This is why archive.org matters!
...And this is why I'd like your help spreading the word. Maybe write PMs and emails to friends who are interested in these sorts of things.
If you are thinking about writing an article, you'll reach more people if you don't write your articles at the same day you've already seen two others. Spread them out a little.