Monthly Archives: November 2016

Help Us Keep the Archive Free, Accessible, and Reader Private

The Web Needs a MemoryThe history of libraries is one of loss.  The Library of Alexandria is best known for its disappearance.

Libraries like ours are susceptible to different fault lines:

Earthquakes,

Legal regimes,

Institutional failure.

So this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in another country. We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because, to quote our friends at LOCKSS, “lots of copies keep stuff safe.” This project will cost millions. So this is the one time of the year I will ask you: please make a tax-deductible donation to help make sure the Internet Archive lasts forever. (FAQ on this effort).

On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change. It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change.

For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions.

It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase.

Throughout history, libraries have fought against terrible violations of privacy—where people have been rounded up simply for what they read.  At the Internet Archive, we are fighting to protect our readers’ privacy in the digital world.

We can do this because we are independent, thanks to broad support from many of you. The Internet Archive is a non-profit library built on trust. Our mission: to give everyone access to all knowledge, forever. For free. The Internet Archive has only 150 staff but runs one of the top-250 websites in the world. Reader privacy is very important to us, so we don’t accept ads that track your behavior. But we still need to pay for the increasing costs of servers, staff and rent.

You may not know this, but your support for the Internet Archive makes more than 3 million e-books available for free to millions of Open Library patrons around the world.

Your support has fueled the work of journalists who used our Political TV Ad Archive in their fact-checking of candidates’ claims.

It keeps the Wayback Machine going, saving 300 million Web pages each week, so no one will ever be able to change the past just because there is no digital record of it. The Web needs a memory, the ability to look back.

If you find our work has been useful to you, please take a minute to donate whatever you can afford today. Help ensure the Internet Archive lasts forever.  I promise you—It will be money well spent.

[modified 2021 to remove a statement about IP address collection which was surfaced by a reader, which is not correct for we may collect IP addresses in our main web logs for instance if we are diagnosing an attack on our services or errors occur.  There are other systems that may collect IP addresses, though we try to limit them. For more information please see our privacy policy.   -brewster]

National Security Letter to Us from FBI Includes Error – How Many Like it were Sent to Others?

The Internet Archive, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is making public the second National Security Letter (NSL) issued to the Archive in our history (we received our first NSL in 2007 and successfully contested it with help from EFF and the ACLU). In response to our challenging this new NSL, the FBI has agreed to correct its standard NSL template and send clarifications about the law to potentially thousands of communications providers who have received NSLs in the last year and a half.

NSLs are a controversial tool that the FBI uses to demand specific types of private account information from service providers without a judge’s prior approval. NSLs also come with a gag order on the recipient. Their constitutionality is currently being litigated in courts.

The NSL we received includes incorrect and outdated information regarding the options available to a recipient of an NSL to challenge its gag. Specifically, the NSL states that such a challenge can only be issued once a year. But in 2015, Congress did away with that annual limitation and made it easier to challenge gag orders. The FBI has confirmed that the error was part of a standard NSL template and other providers received NSLs with the same significant error. We don’t know how many, but it is possibly in the thousands (according to the FBI, they sent out around 13,000 NSLs last year). How many recipients might have delayed or even been deterred from issuing challenges due to this error? Thankfully, the FBI says that they will now be issuing corrections regarding the law. You can see their letter to us here.

Publishing this NSL is also important because only a few have ever been made public due to their across-the-board gag restriction, in spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands of NSLs have been issued since 2001.

Information regarding the individual targeted by this NSL and the issuing office is redacted in the version that we are releasing. We didn’t find any documents in our records responsive to the NSL, so nothing was turned over.

We are deeply appreciative for the assistance of EFF in this matter, enabling us to make public an example of a mostly obscured practice with very significant implications for individual privacy and civil liberties.  See EFF’s press release  as well their excellent collection of blog posts for more background and analysis.

The Internet Arcade becomes an Archive Reality

A couple years back, we introduced the Internet Arcade, which enabled people around the world to play a number of Arcade titles from the last 40 years in their browsers, instantly. We’ve also had collections of console games, and a general library of tens of thousands of software programs which has also proven very popular.

The work continues to expand the emulated systems and refresh what titles are available, but a project we’ve had going on the side for a while just came to fruition.

Among the organizations that turned out to benefit from having our browser-based emulations was X-Arcade, manufacturers of high-quality joysticks and control panels for use with computers and software. Meant to have the original Arcade feel, a few examples of these controllers were gifted to the Archive and we’ve used them pretty extensively in demonstration days and special events.

Last year, X-Arcade announced an old-school full-sized arcade machine case for sale, and generously offered to send one to the Archive as well. We contacted an excellent artist, Mar Williams of Sudux.com, who has done excellent art for the DEFCON hacking conference and many other events, and she put together custom Internet Archive-themed arcade side art for the machine. Here’s what she came up with:

ia-mockup

The machine has made its way through shipping and moving companies and arrived at the Internet Archive’s 300 Funston Avenue headquarters in great shape, along with all the electronics and parts to make it go soon.

It’s one thing to see a mockup, and another to see the actual machine in your lobby:

img_2662

Over the next few weeks, the system will be set up to run with the Internet Archive systems and provide a really nice demonstration station for the many guests and visitors we see. It really jazzes up the place!

In the meantime, we’re now providing you with links to download the artwork files, in case you want to use them yourself.

Thanks again to X-Arcade for the lovely addition to our lobby, and to Mar Williams for such fantastic art!

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Please: Help Build the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Web Archive

seal_of_the_president_of_the_united_states-svgHelp us build a web archive documenting reactions to the 2016 Presidential Election. You can submit websites and other online materials, and provide relevant descriptive information, via this simple submission form. We will archive and provide ongoing access to these materials as part of the Internet Archive Global Events collection.

Since its beginning, the Internet Archive has worked with a global partner community of cultural heritage institutions, researchers and scholars, and citizens to build crowdsourced topical web archives that preserve primary sources documenting significant global events. Past collections include the Occupy Movement, the 2013 US Government Shutdown, the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. These collections leverage the power of individual curators and motivated citizens to help expand our collective efforts to diversity and augment the historical record. Any webpages, sites, or other online resources about the 2016 Presidential Election are in scope. This web archive will build upon our affiliated efforts, such as the Political TV Ad Archive, and other collecting strategies, to provide permanent access to current political events.

As we noted in a recent blog post, the Internet Archive is “well positioned, with our mission of Universal Access to All Knowledge, to help inform the public in turbulent times, to demonstrate the power in sharing and openness.” You can help us in this mission by submitting websites that preserve the online record of this unique historical moment.

US Election Results

I am a bit shell shocked– I did not think the election would go the way it did.   I want to reassure everyone– we are safe– funding, mission, partners have no reason to change.   I find this reassuring, hopefully you do as well.

As we take the next weeks to have this sink in, I believe we will come to find we will have new responsibilities, increased roles to play, in keeping the world an open and free environment.

We are well positioned, with our mission of Universal Access to All Knowledge, to help inform the public in turbulent times, to demonstrate the power in sharing and openness.

I look forward to working with our staff, our partners, and the new partners that this creates, to see what our role should be to build the best damn library we can to serve the Maximum Public Good.

Over the next couple of weeks, please think through what we might do.  Looking forward to your ideas.

yours,

Brewster Kahle
Digital Librarian
brewster@archive.org

Aaron Swartz Weekend

by Lisa Rein, Cofounder and Coordinator, Aaron Swartz Day

In memory of Aaron Swartz, whose social, technical, and political insights still touch us daily, Lisa Rein, in partnership with the Internet Archive, will be hosting a weekend of events on Saturday, November 5 and Sunday, November 6. Friends, collaborators, and hackers can participate in a two-day Hackathon and Aaron Swartz Day Evening Reception.

Schedule of events held at the Internet Archive:

Saturday, November 5, from 10 am – 6 pm and Sunday, November 6, from 11am – 5pm — Participate in the Hackathon, which will focus on SecureDrop, the whistleblower submission system originally created by Aaron just before he passed away.

Saturday night, November 5th, from 6:30pm – 9:30pm — Celebrate and remember Aaron, and also the grand tradition of working hard to make the world a better place, at the Aaron Swartz Day Evening Celebration:

Reception: 6:30pm – 7:30pm – Come mingle with the speakers and enjoy nectar, wine & tasty nibbles.

Migrate your way upstairs: 7:30-8:00pm – We decided to give folks a little window of time to finish up their nibbles and wine at the reception, exchange contact info, and make their way upstairs to grab a seat to watch the speakers, which will begin promptly at 8pm.

Speakers 8:00pm – 9:30pm:

A Special Statement from Chelsea Manning (in celebration of this year’s Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon)

Tiffiniy Cheng (Co-founder and Co-director Fight for the Future)

Cindy Cohn (Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Shari Steele (Executive Director, Tor Project)

Yan Zhu (Security Expert, Friend of Chelsea Manning)

Alison Macrina (Founder and Executive Director, Library Freedom Project)

Conor Schaefer (DevOps Engineer, SecureDrop)

Brewster Kahle (Digital Librarian, Internet Archive) w/Vinay Goel  (Senior Data Engineer, Internet Archive)

Please RSVP to this event

For more information, contact:
lisa@lisarein.com
http://www.aaronswartzday.org

Election Night at the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is informally open to our employees, their families and friends, and our community to watch the election results next Tuesday night. This is a spur-of-the-moment invitation and an experiment. If there are enough people interested, we will use the great room.

To cover the cost of pizza and soda, please purchase a $10 “ticket” on our Eventbrite.

The event will run from 6pm until the election is called — 11pm at the latest. We will limit the number of people and we reserve the right to ask anyone to leave for any reason.

If you are interested in volunteering to help that evening, please contact Salem at salem@archive.org.

GifCities: The GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine

 

underconstruction

dancing_babyhomer_1

 

 

line

skeletonworm          surfcpu       webfun          gif_guitarman

Try the Internet Archive’s animated GIF search engine at GifCities.org!  You can now get your early-web GIF fix and have a fun way to browse the web archive. Search for snowglobes or butterflies or balloons or (naturally) cats. If you click on a GIF, then it brings to you to the original page from the Wayback Machine. (Then please consider donating to the Archive)

One of the goals for our 20th anniversary event last week was to highlight the amusing and wacky corners of the web, as represented in our web archive, in order to provide a light-hearted, novel perspective on the history of this amazing publication platform that we have worked to preserve over the years.

The animated GIF is perhaps the iconic, indomitable filetype of the early web.  Meme-vessel, page-spacer, action-graphic-maker — GIFS are a quintessential feature of the 1990’s web aesthetic, but remain just as popular today as they were twenty years ago. GeoCities, the first major web hosting platform for individual users to create their own pages, and once the third most visited site on the web before being shut down in 2009, occupies a similarly notable place in the history of the web.

So we combined these two aspects of web history by extracting every animated GIF from GeoCities in our web archive and built a search engine on top of them. Behold, for your viewing pleasure, over 4,500,000 animated GIFs (1,600,000 unique), searchable based on filename and URL path, with most GIFs linking to the archived GeoCities web page where it was originally displayed.

Some random staff faves:

dinosaur

 skullmail  dogsruledoorsmor

landing-a

Soft-launched at our anniversary event on Wednesday, where we also projected GifCities on the side of our headquarters in San Francisco, the project has been featured in The Guardian, BoingBoing, the A.V. Club, CNET,  and others. The GeoCities GIF collection was also made available for creative reuse by artists and researchers, and featured in work such as the GifCollider project currently showing at BAMPFA (see the videos online) and the Hall of GIFs data visualization at NCSU. Shout-outs also go to others working with the GeoCities web archive, including the Geocities Research Institute and historians. More details on the project can be found at the GifCities about page.

And yes, like every other upstanding web citizen, we GifCities’ed ourselves:internet1archive1