Law Prevents British Websites From Being Archived 107
Lanxon writes "The law that allows the US Internet Archive to collect and preserve websites does not apply to British archivists. In fact, experts from the Archive and many other archivist institutions argue that the only way the millions of Britain's websites could be legally archived is if British law itself was amended, reports Wired in an investigation published today. Currently, archivists have to seek permission from webmasters of every single site before they are able to take snapshots and retain data."
Scope (Score:4, Insightful)
Google FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
They already ask everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"The team currently has to contact the copyright holder of every website it wants to archive and this process has just a 24 percent response rate."
Actually, I'd say they have almost a 100% response rate. They ask the copyright holder, "May I please have a copy of your content?" and in most cases, they receive a response within 500 milliseconds saying, "Sure! Here it is!"
Britain is down the drain already (Score:5, Insightful)
just the laws and motions they have put in motion in the last month are appalling enough. leaving aside what has been happening in the last years. i guess a british citizen's freedoms in britain reached the level that is comparable with a moroccan in morocco. it really feels like a horror movie. albeit, real.
Re:Save Page As... is illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Utterly nonsensical summary (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, TFA talks about a different organization, the UK Internet Archive, which is presumably based in the UK and under UK jurisdiction. The British laws affect the UK IA, not the US IA.
Re:They already ask everyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
let's not assume that permitting someone to view a copy somehow grants them license to retain, redistribute, or otherwise archive that copy. These are very different legal concepts.
Oversimplified (Score:1, Insightful)
Unless the UK has no fair use provision at all, this article blows the issue out of proportion. First, it would appear to apply only to UK 'archivists' of UK sites. More to the point, it's really not about the archiving, it's about what they do with the copies. Your browser keeps an archived copy- are you telling me that's infringement in the UK, or that somehow it's infringement when you direct your browser to store it some non-default location for an indefinite period? No, the infringement comes when the archives are turned into databases and are re-sent by someone other than the original site proprietor. And I'm not sure I see a problem in having to sit on an archived copy until the original is down and the originator is gone.
Re:Save Page As... is illegal? (Score:2, Insightful)
God... people are DUMB...
Sure. Some can't even see the difference between cache and archive.