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)
Re:Scope (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't worry about it, politicians don't read the technical details of the laws they pass either.
Think of all those poor Brits who are going to be sued or imprisoned because they have a browser cache.
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Who cares *where* it's archived anyway. British law shouldn't pertain to an archive based in any other nation of the world, so does it matter anyway?
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Browser caches are permitted under the EU Copyright Directive.
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Well, if I were an archivist in Britain, I’d just run a proxy in the US. And then only “archive that US proxy”. ;))
There definitely is a way to make it legal.
On the other hand, of course the concept of copyright is completely absurd, and must be taken out of law. People don’t need compensation for their already released works. They have to ask for compensation when releasing them the first time. Or not. But not bitch later.
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Sure, these kinds of tricks always work so well...
It wasn't torture, we just blindfolded him... Oh - and occasionally, out of pure care for the prisoner, gave him a splash of water while he was lying down there blindfolded... It was just due to budgetary constraints, that we felt unable to first untie him, take off his blindfold, and sit him at a table with the glass of water in front of him to drink at his own leisure...
There - waterboarding isn't torture, it's perfectly legal - it's just giving someone
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Well, it may be that because they are a public institution they want to keep everything above board... ...even if you thought, our laws were wrong, that wouldn't mean it would reflect well on you to, say, murder someone and keep quiet about it for 100 years hoping that the law would be changed in the meantime...
Also, you might want to think about that the British Library started archiving the Internet anyway, keeping it out of public view is one thing - doing it without ever making budged audits cause probl
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.even if you thought, our laws were wrong, that wouldn't mean it would reflect well on you to, say, murder someone and keep quiet about it for 100 years hoping that the law would be changed in the meantime...
I'm pretty sure there's a corollary to Godwin's Law about comparing copyright infringement to physical violence.
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Then prepare to be invaded, have your government crushed and replaced by a corrupt kleptocracy and all your civil rights replaced with those of second-class serfs. Not as if you'd notice any significant change.
Oh, we'd have to sprinkle a few tons of depleted-uranium dust around the place too. That'll be nice.
On Interwebz = No Control (Score:2)
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There's a considerable difference between allowing people to download and view content and allowing them to put it up in a publicly available archive. As British law reads (No, IANAL, but unlike most Slashdotters, I RTFA before posting.) you have to get permission for each and every site you archive this way, making any British archive strictly opt in. It would quite literally take an act of Parliament to change this.
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While it might take an act of Parliament to change that law, the law seems to be akin to mandating that the wind must travel west to east, only.
The Internet is a meta-national repository. Hell, we can't even get people to respect robots.txt..... so if somebody wants to snapshot you, they'll do it. It is the very nature of the web that this can be done, should be done, or can be laughably avoided: user choice. If they want to put it in an archive, there's little to prevent it. Worse, a challenge not to do so
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It would quite literally take an act of Parliament to change this.
As TFA says, it wouldn't take an act of Parliament - the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries act gives the government the power to issue regulations concerning the archiving of non-print media.
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Funny you should mention that, back in the 70's and 80's the police used to tell us that recording Registration Numbers of cars was illegal.
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Really? Where? On what grounds?
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If I remember correctly, cars were on the same types of grounds in the 70's and 80's as they are on today, mainly roads, parkings, etc.
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So I guess it's okay for me to distribute Internet Explorer, and also distribute Linux in violation of the GPL? I mean, I find it on a public website, obviously copyright doesn't apply, right?
In most countries, including the US, putting something on the web doesn't make it public domain - this is a surprisingly common myth. It would make sense to allow an exception for search and archive purposes (subject to obeying the robots.txt file - i.e., still allowin opt-out), but your argument is nonsense.
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Licence for websites (Score:2)
That seems stupid as everyone can do it for themselves, but not everyone will, so you then end up with a problem of accessing information when a website is gone.
For me it seems more important is the use. All free-access websites are by definition used to convey information and to anyone who is interested. Therefore dissemination of that information by means of an ar
Addition (Re:Licence for websites) (Score:2)
Just to make it clear: By publishing a free access website, in effect you are giving a licence to copy. However, how broad this is isn't clear. That's what the licence could be for. Perhaps by default some sort of (to be d
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There is NOT a lot of restrictions with the GPL license; in fact it is quite simple. If you want to distribute a program using GPL code or derived GPL code, you release the component (or derivative) as GPL, including source. That is not a lot of restrictions. All it does is ensure that people share and share alike, something most people learn by kindergarten
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Umm if you include one GPL library, you have to GPL the whole she-bang. The other X% of code that you wrote must now become GPL*. Good luck selling your software now that you have to release the code. That is what I would call a serious restriction.
*For example see http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/12/10/186245/Microsoft-Finally-Open-Sources-Windows-7-Tool where Microsoft just got burned by this.
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Anything that is linked to it, not items which use the library in other ways (such as tcp/ip, etc.). In those cases it becomes "mere aggregation." There is always a LEGAL way around the GPL when you really, absolutely must make closed source software and rely on GPL.
Otherwise, commercial software for Linux couldn't exist, period.
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That seems stupid as everyone can do it for themselves
I don't think that's true. I would have thought that making a copy of a website, for anything other than transient use in the course of normal access to the site, would require permission of the copyright holder, even if you don't make the copy available to anyone else (much like keeping recording of TV and the radio for longer than is required for time-shifting purposes is copyright infringement, too; actually, I'm not even sure if time-shifting is explicitly legal under UK law).
Google FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, it's the regular copyright law that legitimizes the dumbassery. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act provides a partial relief from this, in that it exempts deposit libraries from aspects of copyright law in copying online material if they are doing so for the purposes of archiving materials covered by the act. The problem is that, at the moment, websites are not specifically covered by the act, which gives the government the power to set up regulations covering non-print media, without specifying any partic
Re:Google FTW (Score:5, Funny)
Google is so going to gaol.
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Just read it. Very good. Completely applicable and even specifically mentions works on the internet.
Non-story. /thread.
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How the hell is this a troll?
I'm AGREEING with the parent post.
The Act specifically mentions works on the internet and says they can be archived.
'Redundant' or 'Overrated' maybe.
'Troll'? WTF?
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!"
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.
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Steve
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The problem is with the level of intelligence on the Internet today you will find someone that posted some incredibly lame comment when they are 10 years old. Then, 20 years later a prospective employer finds this, ignores the context (and the age when it was posted) and drops the resume in the trash.
Some things are meaningful to archive. Others are, well, stupid. Today, we focus mostly on the stupid and ignore the things that would be good to archive.
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But then to store the content, that's another copy, not the same as the bits transmitted over the wire. There may be other copies made in the process of making that copy, which may or may not count. Copyright is completely and irretrievably broken where computers and the web are conc
Save Page As... is illegal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Save Page As... is illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
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God... people are DUMB...
How do you, and those who made that “law” think that page gets onto your screen?
By storing an copying it! In your network chip’s cache. In your CPU’s cache. In your RAM. On your hard disk (browser cache!). In your graphics RAM. On your screen. In your brain. And in ever place that you talk to, about it.
Information that can not be copied, can not be proven to exist (to anyone outside of those already holding it). Simple as that.
Why do people such a hard time,
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Oops. Sorry, I missed the typos even in the preview. ;)
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Ok, I’ll go to bed!
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God... people are DUMB...
Sure. Some can't even see the difference between cache and archive.
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An archive is a cache with no expiry time. Now who's dumb ?
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Okay, set the expiry time as 99 years then, same as land leases. Is it *still* a cache, or is it an archive. There is *no* legal difference until a court has to make the decision and set a precedent for this case. Until then, it's pure opinion by /.tters
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.
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Oh piss off.
Funnily enough people from other sovereign states don't react well to being blanket judged by (I'm gonna take a likely stab here) an American. You go fix your problems and leave us to fix ours.
In the scope of unexpected law consequences
is this even surprising? That if you were going to take a copy of someone else's copyrighted material and redistribute it you need the holder's permission? Yes, the internet works like this, but it's the only thing that does, and compared with the speed of legal c
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im not an american. do not give knee jerk responses. EVEN if i was an american, this wouldnt change anything, since a fact is a fact, regardless of who says it.
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Fail. (Score:2)
To quote you from one of your previous postings, "There's a saying, better to be thought of as stupid than open your mouth and confirm it.".
There's no such thing as "British law". There's English law, Scots law, and Northern Ireland law. Fail.
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SO .
there is no such thing as british law. there's english law, scots law, northern ireland law, and what changes ? semantics.
the main core of the 'union' that is there is england. if the disparage in between england's and other member's laws increase, it will either lead to the adoption of same laws in the other members or dissolution of the union at its ultimate end.
You should read up about the differences (Score:2)
Actually there are some quite significant differences between the legal systems. Scots law draws more on Roman law, English law more on Norman law. English courts judge you guilty or not guilty, Scots courts guilty, not guilty, or not proven. A spoken word is legally binding in Scotland, not so in England.
Much, much more than merely semantics.
The different legal systems across the UK have always been evolving and changing and I don't think this in itself will change the relationships between the countries o
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the main issue here is, england is the dominating economic and political entity there.
Speaking as a UK citizen .... (Score:2)
Speaking as a UK citizen who has lived in England and Scotland I can tell you the legal systems are different and Scots law doesn't bow to English law. English politics doesn't influence Scots law to any great extent to my understanding.
A good example was the Lockerbie bomber trial where the Libyan suspect was tried under Scots law and not English law, and there was general agreement that the legal system and judges came up with a different result than may have been found in the English system.
I am not a la
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irrelevant.
as said, it is a union in which the most dominant member economically, militarily, and politically is great britain. it doesnt matter how much autonomy is allowed for other union members. if matters take a certain route in regard to internet in britain, and gets settled there, it wont take too long before the perpetrators and private interests in britain to try to force same things in the other members, either over the union, or through those members' own parliaments.
they wont let scotland, n ire
eeeeeh (Score:2)
great britain = england in the second sentence.
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if you havent been following the news coming up in slashdot about britain in the last 2 years, noone can take the time to give you a briefing. just search for UK or britain or something in search engine and youll get your fix yourself.
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again, you need a lot of catching up to do. just search slashdot for britain. im turkish, and as a turkish citizen i have more rights in turkey now than a british citizen has in britain. considering turkey has been behind europe in most respects in these matters, it makes your situation much more appalling.
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Except almost every story about the UK in slashdot is wrong or inaccurate in some way.
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.
grrr. s/UK Internet Archive/UK Web Archive/ (Score:2)
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Exactly what I was coming here to say. The only people I've heard complaining about this are the Internet archivists who work for the British Library. The law in question doesn't even apply to the Internet Archive as referred to in the summary, as it is a law concerning deposit libraries, which IA ain't.
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
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Technically programs recorded on the TV have to be deleted once watched (and within 48 hours of recording) too. A lot of what people assume is fair use rights here is actually a case of rights holders and/or courts not wanting to waste time prosecuting trivial offences
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Unless the UK has no fair use provision at all
We have no fair use provision, that's correct. Copying a CD you bought to your mp3 player is copyright infringement, according to the law.
Anarchy in the UK... (Score:1)
Anarchivists Unite!
"The first thing we do... (Score:2)
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Robots.txt (Score:3, Informative)
Why not update robots.txt to flag that permission is granted to archive the site?
Historical Black Hole (Score:3, Informative)
Does anyone else worry that in the current age with technology constantly butting heads with rights holders that in the future historians will likely find large gaps of history simply missing? I have a feeling things will end up very similar to the hollywood and the bbc in the 60's and 70's when vast amounts of movies and television episodes were destroyed or wiped simply to clear space in the vaults. Take Dr Who for instance, most of the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton seasons are gone forever. In the states nearly all of the Jack Parr episodes of the Tonight Show are gone as well.
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But how much of it will be knowledge worth keeping?
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Re:Historical Black Hole - still the same (Score:2)
So nothing has really changed with technology then.
Current historians would absolutatly love it if we had better coverage of many periods of human history - much of it (even the written records) has been lost, blown up, burnt, flooded, lost in the deserts, built over, eroded, probably even eaten, ... over the years.
Historians are able to get lots of information from the little that remains - piecing together partial fragments, cross-references, stories, even boxes in attics can hold wealth of information.
hehe... (Score:1, Flamebait)
I get to say it again...
Fuck Britain!
Selective Enforcement (Score:2)
My UK websites have been archived for years (Score:1)
Identity problem (Score:1)
I heard there was this news corporation... (Score:2)
...that didn't like having its web sites cached...awkward, when people used cached content to say "But that isn't what you were saying back...".
I cannot seem to remember the name of that news corporation...but as I recall, it has a presence in England, America, and Australia.
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When the singularity happens and everyone is plugged into the HiveMind, I'll be driving around in a Lexus stealing all of their cool stuff and raiding their fridges.
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How can you steal something if a copy of it appears as soon as you take it?
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Well unless magic 3-D printers that crank out HDTVs and Rolexes exist by then, I'll have plenty of stuff to steal.
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I think you missed the "When the singularity happens and everyone is plugged into the HiveMind" part of the parent comment I was replying to.