Skip to main content

View Post [edit]

Poster: Jeff Date: Sep 23, 2002 8:00am
Forum: web Subject: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive archives data that is publicly available to provide services, such as the Wayback Machine, that are useful to researchers, historians and scholars.

While we endeavor to provide as a complete a record of the Web as possible, we are a small, non-profit, largely volunteer
organization with limited resources.

While we collect publicly available Internet documents, sometimes authors and publishers express a desire for their documents not to be included in the Wayback Machine (by tagging a file for robot exclusion or by contacting us or the original crawler group). If the author or publisher of some part of the Archive does not want his or her work in the Wayback Machine, then we may remove that portion from Wayback Machine without notice.

Lawyers for the Church of Scientology contacted the Internet Archive, asserted ownership of materials visible through the Wayback Machine, and those materials have been removed from the Wayback Machine.

The library we are building will help future historians, researchers, and scholars, but we do not see this as the only digital library researchers will use. We encourage others to create digital archives of materials they find of value.

Thanks for your continued interest in and support of the Internet Archive.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Bedford Date: Sep 23, 2002 10:33am
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

"Lawyers for the Church of Scientology contacted the Internet Archive, asserted ownership of materials visible through the Wayback Machine, and those materials have been removed from the Wayback Machine."

Is that all it takes? Why do you betray your fundamental purpose so easily? You should be ashamed. Clearly, most of the material blocked was NOT authored by the COS, let alone owned by them. Are you folks just plain clueless about "Fair Use?" Amazing.

You are setting a course for your own irrelevance.

"The library we are building will help future historians, researchers, and scholars,"

...unless they want to study one of the most notorius internet battles of the 90's, criticism of the COS's heavy handed tactics to block critical information on the internet. Make sure you note clearly your cooperation in that effort.

Maybe you should stop using the terms "historians, researchers, and scholars" because, frankly, your action is insulting to them.

"but we do not see this as the only digital library researchers will use. We encourage others to create digital archives of materials they find of value."

My, what an easy road to take. No, the IA was _the_ opportunity; the trust was given to you who professed such lofty objectives and were given the resources to accomplish same.

And you just dropped the ball, big time.

I encourage you to do your homework (study the Google response to the same thing you went through). You are going to have to come up with better processes to handle this kind of nonsense. It's not too late to get it right.

Reply [edit]

Poster: ChrisO Date: Sep 24, 2002 4:50am
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

How can I put this simply? You've been lied to. My own website at http://www.demon.co.uk/castle/audit/ is one of those excluded. There is not one single item on that website to which the Church of Scientology owns the copyright, and more to the point the Church has *never* attempted to claim copyright on the items on my website. It comprises essays by myself (which are 100% my own copyright), plus reports from a number of governments and parliaments around the world, which are in the public domain.

What most disturbs me about this is that the Internet Archive has apparently followed only half of the DMCA procedure - taking down material without allowing the content owner (in this case, myself) an appeal. The DMCA explicitly provides a counter-notification procedure under sections 512(g)(2) and (3) of the Act, which is meant to deter abusive use, such as individuals claiming to own copyrights to which they do not in fact have any rights. Why has the IA ignored this?

I note that your copyright statement (http://www.archive.org/about/terms.php) does not comply with the terms of the DMCA - see Google's (at http://www.google.com/dmca.html) for an example of how it should be done. This needs to be fixed, as it is a real legal vulnerability for the IA.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Jeff Licquia Date: Sep 24, 2002 3:23pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

I am absolutely outraged by this response.

Scientology has often threatened, harassed, and lied to anyone and everyone they can in order to stifle criticism and discussion of their church and its beliefs. If you would read the site you have just censored, you would see conclusive proof of this: court decisions, witness reports, and news stories from such sources as TIME Magazine and 60 Minutes, among others. In one case, they attempted to frame, dope, and murder one particularly prominent critic of theirs. They have even harassed the families of members who have died under suspicious circumstances.

You are now a supporter of their cause. By not cooperating with the site owner, by not checking on their facts, by accepting their filing at face value, you proclaim either your allegiance to their cause or your disdain for others. Do you support their effort to cover up their sordid history? Do you care that the information they gave you is most likely full of lies?

Reverse the decision you have made, and put back the Scientology criticism sites. If your archive is to be of any value, it must not cave in so easily to censorship disguised as copyright enforcement.

Reply [edit]

Poster: roger gonnet Date: Sep 23, 2002 6:22pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

Dear Sirs,
I don't understand at all how the archive.org and the wayback.machine can have taken the pack of evident lies sent by some scientology attorneys.
Since my first site has been published, they have always pretended that I was violating their copyrights, but they have always lied, and never taken any valid complaint to a court.
And now, I searched for my sites in archive.org, and none can be found, and no trace of why they could'nt be found is visible.
How is it possible? It looks that it's a worse situation than those whose sites have been illegaly deleted trhu scientology falsities.

Thanks for your help in reestablishing my sites:
www.hol.fr/gonnet
www.worldnet.fr/gonnet~
www.antisectes.net
www.span.ch/~spaw1736/sciento-vs-internet

Reply [edit]

Poster: Andreas Heldal-Lund Date: Sep 24, 2002 12:46am
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

I understand that the threats from the Cult of Scientology might scare some. The facts of the matter is still:

1. I, as the author of www.xenu.net, have never requested any of my page was removed. Still all are removed and on the Wayback Machine/the Internet Archive it is claimed that it is I who have requested so. My request for this claim to be removed has not been replied.

2. Data I have written has been removed. I was not informed when it was removed and I have not been given a copy of the request that asks for my data to be removed. I have asked for this but have not even got a reply from the people here. If the Cult of Scientology has claimed that web pages I have made is made by them then they are lying and I would like to know!

3. I have suggested to the Wayback Machine that this is sorted in a better way before it becomes public, but this has been ignored AFAIK.

Please reply to e-mails! I tried to talk to you about this many months ago.

Best wishes,
Andreas Heldal-Lund
www.xenu.net

Reply [edit]

Poster: Hartley Patterson Date: Sep 24, 2002 3:40am
Forum: web Subject: Re: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

Let's be clear about this. We object to the present situation in which you are claiming that certain websites have been blocked at the request of the owners when this is untrue. You need to provide a new notice which states clearly that websites are being blocked because of alleged copyright infringement. You might like to consider taking the line Google did, clearly identifying the person or organisation requesting the block.

This problem will not go away. The Church of Scientology are not the only people who will be sending lawyers after you. You will also find yourselves having to make value judgements - if I claimed www.microsoft.com was violating my copyrights would you block it?

Reply [edit]

Poster: Valerie Date: Sep 24, 2002 7:53pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

Hi. Remember me? I'm the one who has been writing you for months, wondering why--when I tried to access my site on your 'wayback machine'--it showed that I had asked that it be blocked?

I even wrote you a 'snail mail' letter. Now I get this wussie link to a chatty little post-a-note ng, with a wiggle-out-of-it lie about the cult?

No no, buster. My site has NOTHING the cult can lay claim to on it. They've tried. Shall I tell you what my ISP told them, that their attempts to toss me off the Internet, to block my site, where simply 'attempts to block my 1st Amendment Rights'?

I deserve a better answer than this.

1) When precisely did they bitch about me.
2) Who bitched
3) Copy of the bitch
4) May I respond

Funny--have you knuckled under for ALL the anti-cult sites, or is Clambake still on your 'machine'?

Valerie Emanuel

Reply [edit]

Poster: m1t0s1s Date: May 24, 2006 12:56pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

This won't help, but maybe you can fight them with this tool:

http://www.ipnic.org/

http://www.runme.org/project/+ipnic/


is there any web-site you wanna take off the web using a highly subversive method?

on our server, you auto-generate an "INJUNCTION" [.pdf/.rtf format], a standard court-order, claiming the target-website to operate on an illegal basis. this document will then be sent to the appropriate dns-registrar [dns=domain name service], to the owner of the web-site and to some journalists and lawyers for legal and public processing. all you have to do is to simply fill out a form and send it off, it will take you not more than 15 minutes. if the web-site is taken down we will inform you via email.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Jens Tingleff Date: Sep 23, 2002 4:18pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

"Lawyers for the Church of Scientology contacted the Internet Archive, asserted ownership of materials visible through the Wayback Machine, and those materials have been removed from the Wayback Machine."

OK. I can sort of appreciate your position.

However, you could try one tactic: publish the commmunications from the Scientology organisation. Have a look at http://chillingeffects.org/ for inspiration ;-)

The 'net is full of people who have spent huge amounts of time researching the (ahemm!) controversial claims of ownership made by the organisation. Also, as the claims made by the organisation are made public, interesting facets pop up which are the stuff that researchers thrive on.

Best Regards

Jens

Reply [edit]

Poster: Bedford Date: Sep 24, 2002 12:46am
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

I would think that the minimum first response for the IA folks would be to create a page that lists sites that have been blocked, and for each the date of the blocking, who requested the blocking, and the rationale given.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Brehob Date: Sep 24, 2002 7:36pm
Forum: web Subject: Re: exclusions from the Wayback Machine

[AOL]
I agree with this. Google did it. It would also be nice to add something which indicates that the web site owner did not request this, but that some other organization did.