Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved; CNN, November 16, 2025

 Hadas Gold , CNN; Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved

"The Wayback Machine, a tool used by millions every day, has proven critical for academics and journalists searching for historical information on what corporations, people and governments have published online in the past, long after their websites have been updated or changed.

For many, the Wayback Machine is like a living history of the internet, and it just logged its trillionth page last month.

Archiving the web is more important and more challenging than ever before. The White House in January ordered vast amounts of government webpages to be taken down. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is blurring the line between what’s real and what’s artificially generated — in some ways replacing the need to visit websites entirely. And more of the internet is now hidden behind paywalls or tucked in conversations with AI chatbots.

It’s the Internet Archive’s job to figure out how to preserve it all."

Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost; Ars Technica, November 3, 2025

 ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

"This month, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine archived its trillionth webpage, and the nonprofit invited its more than 1,200 library partners and 800,000 daily users to join a celebration of the moment. To honor “three decades of safeguarding the world’s online heritage,” the city of San Francisco declared October 22 to be “Internet Archive Day.” The Archive was also recently designated a federal depository library by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who proclaimed the organization a “perfect fit” to expand “access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape.”

The Internet Archive might sound like a thriving organization, but it only recently emerged from years of bruising copyright battles that threatened to bankrupt the beloved library project. In the end, the fight led to more than 500,000 books being removed from the Archive’s “Open Library.”

“We survived,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told Ars. “But it wiped out the Library.”

An Internet Archive spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the archive currently faces no major lawsuits and no active threats to its collections. Kahle thinks “the world became stupider” when the Open Library was gutted—but he’s moving forward with new ideas."

The Internet Archive is in danger; WBUR, January 7, 2025

 

Claire Donnelly 

Meghna Chakrabarti, WBUR; 

The Internet Archive is in danger

"More than 900 billion webpages are preserved on The Wayback Machine, a history of humanity online. Now, copyright lawsuits could wipe it out.

Guests

Brewster Kahle, founder and director of the Internet Archive. Digital librarian and computer engineer.

James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School. Studies how laws regulating software affect freedom, wealth, and power."

Column: Here’s why you can’t ‘own’ your ebooks; Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2022

 MICHAEL HILTZIK, Los Angeles Times; Column: Here’s why you can’t ‘own’ your ebooks

"What’s really happening here is that everyone involved — publishers, online distributors, authors and readers — is trying to come to terms with the capacity of digital technology to overthrow the traditional models of printing, selling and buying readable content. 

Publishers and authors are predictably, and rightly, fearful that they’ll lose out financially; but it’s also quite possible that, properly managed, the technological revolution will make them more money."

Internet Archive to Publishers: Drop ‘Needless’ Copyright Lawsuit and Work with Us; Publishers Weekly, July 23, 2020

Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; Internet Archive to Publishers: Drop ‘Needless’ Copyright Lawsuit and Work with Us

"During a 30-minute Zoom press conference on July 22, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle urged the four major publishers suing over the organization’s book scanning efforts to consider settling the dispute in the boardroom rather than the courtroom.

“Librarians, publishers, authors, all of us should be working together during this pandemic to help teachers, parents, and especially students,” Kahle implored. “I call on the executives of Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the challenging problems of access to knowledge during this pandemic, and to please drop this needless lawsuit.”

Kahle’s remarks came as part of a panel, which featured a range of speakers explaining and defending the practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), the legal theory under which the Internet Archive has scanned and is making available for borrowing a library of some 1.4 million mostly 20th century books."

[Podcast] Providing Universal Access to Modern Materials – and Living to Tell the Tale, Spring 2015

[Podcast] Providing Universal Access to Modern Materials – and Living to Tell the Tale:

"The Internet Archive (IA), an independent non-profit, provides access to digital materials (including books, websites, music, video, TV and software) on the Internet. In this plenary talk from CNI's recent spring meeting, digital library pioneer and IA founder Brewster Kahle describes the particular challenge of providing open access to modern materials, particularly in light of repeated admonishments by legal advisors that, in doing so, "bad things would happen."

Providing Universal Access to Modern Materials – and Living to Tell the Tale is now available online:

YouTube: https://youtu.be/-bW0v2F9Rgc

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/125044497"

Google Books Is Not a Library; Huffington Post, 10/13/09

Pamela Samuelson, Huffington Post; Google Books Is Not a Library:

"Sergey Brin published an op-ed in the New York Times last Friday likening the Google Book initiative to the famous ancient library of Alexandria. Brin suggested that Google Books would be "a library to last forever," unlike its Alexandrian counterpart that was ravaged by fire...

Unlike the Alexandria library or modern public libraries, the Google Book Search (GBS) initiative is a commercial venture that aims to monetize millions of out-of-print books, many of which are "orphans," that is, books whose rights holders cannot readily be found after a diligent search...

If Google Books was just a library, as Brin claims, library associations would not have submitted briefs expressing reservations about the GBS settlement to the federal judge who will be deciding whether to approve the deal. Libraries everywhere are terrified that Google will engage in price-gouging when setting prices for institutional subscriptions to GBS contents. Google is obliged to set prices in conjunction with a newly created Registry that will represent commercial publishers and authors. Prices for these subscriptions are to be set based on the number of books in the corpus, the services available, and prices of comparable products and services (of which there are none). Given that major research libraries today often pay in excess of $4 million a year for access to several thousand journals, they have good reason to be concerned that Google will eventually seek annual fees in excess of this for subscriptions to millions of GBS books. This is because Google will have a de facto monopoly on out-of-print books. The DOJ has raised concerns that price-setting terms of the GBS deal are anti-competitive.

Besides, Google can sell the GBS corpus to anyone without anyone's consent at any time once the settlement is approved...

Brin and Google's CEO Eric Schmidt have also been saying publicly that anyone can do what Google did--scanning millions of books to make a corpus of digitized books. They perceive Google to have just been bolder and more forward-looking than its rivals in this respect. But this claim is preposterous: By settling a lawsuit about whether scanning books to index them is copyright infringement or fair use, Google is putting at risk the next guy's fair use defense for doing the same...

Brin forgot to mention another significant difference between GBS and traditional libraries: their policies on patron privacy. The proposed settlement agreement contains numerous provisions that anticipate monitoring of uses of GBS content; so far, though, Google has been unwilling to make meaningful commitments to protect user privacy. Traditional libraries, by contrast, have been important guardians of patron privacy...

Anyone aspiring to create a modern equivalent of the Alexandrian library would not have designed it to transform research libraries into shopping malls, but that is just what Google will be doing if the GBS deal is approved as is."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-samuelson/google-books-is-not-a-lib_b_317518.html

Google's Sergey Brin lashes out at critics of $125m book deal; Guardian, 10/9/09

Bobbie Johnson, Guardian; Google's Sergey Brin lashes out at critics of $125m book deal:

"Google co-founder Sergey Brin has hit out at critics who derailed the company's $125m deal with American publishers to give it the right to digitise millions of books...

In a column published in the New York Times, Brin - who founded the internet giant with Larry Page in 1998 - hit out at those objectors, called many of their accusations "myths" while dismissing other concerns as fantasy...

Brin's comments come a day after he came in for fierce criticism from Brewster Kahle, the founder of the non-profit Internet Archive, which has been working to secure a change in copyright law to help digitisation projects. In particular, the archive has been working to clarify the status of so-called "orphan" works - books whose copyright holder remains unknown - by pushing new legislation through the US Congress.

Under Google's proposal, the Californian internet company would have gained the exclusive right to sell advertising or access to orphan works - something Kahle felt was inappropriate.

"Many of us are objecting because we have been working together for years on the mass scanning of out-of-print books – and have worked to get books online for far longer than Google – and Google's 'settlement' could hurt our efforts," he wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "A major part of our efforts have concentrated on changing the law so everyone would benefit."

"There is an alternative, and they know it — orphan works legislation — that up until the last session of Congress had been working its way through the house and senate. It was not perfect, but was getting close to what we need. Best yet, it passed one house — at least until Google effectively sideswiped the process with their settlement proposal."

In his editorial, Brin admitted that Google would have exclusive rights over such material, at least in the short term - but then suggested that Google's deal would actually help attempts to force through a legislative change.

"While new projects will not immediately have the same rights to orphan works, the agreement will be a beacon of compromise in case of a similar lawsuit, and it will serve as a precedent for orphan works legislation, which Google has always supported and will continue to support.""

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/09/google-books-brin

Free the Orphans: Are we being played for fools in Google Books play?; ZDNet, 9/23/09

Richard Koman, ZDNet; Free the Orphans: Are we being played for fools in Google Books play?:

"I’m reposting an insightful piece about the pull-back of the Google Books settlement by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive. Brewster was among the first to cry foul over the deal and he has been a leading voice throughout the full debate."

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5475

Harvard Slams Google Settlement; Others React with Caution - Library Journal, 10/30/08

Via Library Journal: Harvard Slams Google Settlement; Others React with Caution:

"As LJ noted in its initial report, most observers say that the success of the deal will be in the details—and, as of now, this broad, complex business arrangement, still seeking court approval, simply leaves many questions open—especially for libraries. LJ has put together a quick roundup of thoughtful opinions now circulating about what the settlement means..."

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6610115.html