I hope they have an overseas mirror beyond the reach of the censors.
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Is this something the Internet Archive wanted? And why?
Yes they wanted it. If they're legally considered a library, copyright holders can't sue them for copyright infringement.
There have been a couple of lawsuits against the internet archive in this vein.
"The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, people with print disabilities, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge." - from their About page.
I don't think that is how it works
Publishers have been suing libraries
Publishers have been suing libraries for book ban BS. Not for copyright infringement.
Yes, because it gives them full legal access to share basically everything ever published by the US government. It's not a magic bullet for all their woes or anything, but it is one less thing to worry about.
I don't think it's so much one less thing to worry about, rather it gives them some way to argue that they shouldn't be shut down as the result of any lawsuit. But that doesn't mean such an argument would be successful.
I'm waiting to learn more about what this means, but I assume it gives the Internet Archive some degree of support from the government. Whether that's financial or just a protected status I dunno. I tentatively think this is a good thing.
There was a link at the bottom of the OP article: https://www.kqed.org/news/12049420/sf-based-internet-archive-is-now-a-federal-depository-library-what-does-that-mean
Thanks for highlighting this. Too bad the link wasn't between the article and the letter. It'd be more noticeable.
“By being part of the program itself, it just gets us closer to the source of where the materials are coming from, so that it’s more reliably delivered to the Internet Archive, to then be made available to the patrons of the Internet Archive or partner libraries,” he continued.
Ok, so it sounds like they'll have a more direct line to government documents, which by law have no copyright because they belong to the people. That's a good thing.
The Internet Archive has also been targeted by major music labels, including Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, over the Great 78 Project, an initiative to preserve 78 RPM records. Though most of the records are out of print, 4,000 of the 400,000 digitized recordings are copyrighted, including Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” The organization could owe upwards of $700 million in damages if the labels win the lawsuit — a financial hit that would threaten to shut it down.
I've been aware of this lawsuit for a while. I donated to help the legal battle. It's absurd that copyright can be flexed against works that are out of print and mostly unavailable. I've long argued that we're going to have a gap in our history between when lots of works went digital-only and when we actually enshrine laws that protect them from disappearing. How large a gap depends on how quickly lawmakers address this issue vs copyright. Given the current climate, important legislation such as this isn't happening any time soon.
You know how we find stone tablets and ancient scrolls with historical information from thousands of years ago? We even find "nonessential" stuff like recipes and trading documents and tax records. Stuff like that likely won't be preserved from our modern age if anyone is still around to investigate our times in two thousand years.