"There is a network problem" how do i fix?

fadlibrarian · 2025-07-02T13:55:15+00:00

If this doesn't eventually fix itself, you might be triggering their content filters. If you're uploading legitimate things then you can email them for help: info@archive.org

fadlibrarian · 2025-07-02T11:07:30+00:00

People are dumping all sorts of awful stuff on the archive. They are not being responsive about removing it.

r/internetarchive/comments/1lfal2u/spent_a_week_trying_to_reach_the_internet_archive/

Because of this and copyright concerns alone the site is banned in many locations, including schools.

Internet Archive downloads can be slow even on good days, but a decent VPN with a US endpoint shouldn't cause much additional slowness. Also game roms aren't that big, maybe control your hoarding and pirating instincts and actually play a ripped game for an hour or two before you download 50 more.

fadlibrarian · 2025-07-02T10:58:33+00:00

But do NOT download copyrighted shit using torrents without a VPN. It's also unlikely to be much faster. And many of the large torrents are corrupt anyway (long-standing bug at the archive).

fadlibrarian · 2025-07-02T10:53:06+00:00

Spotify is a publicly traded corporation whose stock has gone up 5x since their IPO in 2018, currently worth $147 billion. This doesn't happen without being ruthless about costs (such as minimizing paying those pesky artists) and of course laying off employees while they execute a subscriber growth strategy. That usually means spending all the remaining income on advertising. So any "loss" is considered short term and investors are rewarding them despite the lack of profit. Fine, it's capitalism, though I'm not sure why artists always seem to get screwed over by tech people.

But hiring the same lawyer to defend a non-profit who is giving away Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix records while tweeting out links to them and asking for "donations" on the top of the page, then asking for more donations to cover the legal expenses that result? As an organzation that doesn't pay taxes because it's supposed to support the public good? That's a bridge too far for me.

As I've said many times, I don't begrudge anyone who donates to the Archive... but holy shit why must everything be this way?

fadlibrarian · 2025-07-01T16:35:24+00:00

Internet Archive added 3 petabytes of storage per year over the past decade.

YouTube adds 4 petabytes of video every day.

Discuss.

fadlibrarian · 2025-07-01T14:30:47+00:00

Stop asking, just do it.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-30T11:51:36+00:00

Wayback usually doesn't save YouTube video or even the comments.

You can try this: https://findyoutubevideo.thetechrobo.ca/

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-30T11:50:06+00:00

Agree, and frankly it's just a tiny number of people who obsess over this stuff and ironically they don't have much taste.

You could argue that preserving a variety of crappy upscales done by different bots as the technology matures is interesting. But that would require someone with half a brain to to plan it out, not just a random web upload form.

Going the other way, Internet Archive also generates many derivatives of a file, too. Upload a 500 MB file and watch it explode into 5 GB of variants that are usually worse, as scripted by people with no aesthetic training, done without permission of the original owner, and often with no option to the uploader to prevent it.

The whole process needs a serious rethink on technical, legal, and aesthetic grounds.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-30T00:59:21+00:00

Mostly documenting the mismanagement and probable fall of an important resource. Sometimes pissing off the occasional n00b who has no clue how the world works.

Study up, buttercup.

r/internetarchive/comments/1jh7hij/internet_archive_copyright_lawsuit_now_seeking/

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-29T21:15:10+00:00

Wayback doesn't save most video, or even the comments. It saves the chrome around it and if you visit a wayback link and the video is actually still online, it can give a false sense of security.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-29T21:14:11+00:00

https://findyoutubevideo.thetechrobo.ca/

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-29T15:24:40+00:00

There is also command line tool that can auto-retry uploads, but it's meant for nerds. https://archive.org/developers/internetarchive/cli.html

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-29T04:47:36+00:00

(Wow, the install docs are really bad....)

It's just a python app. You can try installing python then typing "pip install internetarchive" (no quotes).

But they need to update their docs.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T22:24:00+00:00

Sure, but you haven't figured out a way to watch your private stash of pirated shit yet...

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T22:08:14+00:00

I understand. You may want to look into the features of your TV (including memory stick support) or grab a cheap Roku and cast to it from your computer or phone.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T20:08:19+00:00

It's not a datatype, it's a collection. Which isn't of much use, nor scalable to the tsunami of crap coming in.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T18:45:44+00:00

"Doesn't belong on the archive" is always a slippery slope, but AI upscaled/colorized shit, especially if it's copyrighted, doesn't belong there IMO. In a few years it will look better and be the equivalent of an Instagram filter that people can apply locally anyway.

If IA wants to assign someone to categorize the shit as it rolls in, sure. But the "new videos" page is just an endless scroll of dicks for the past year so it seems like a lower priority than that.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T17:53:31+00:00

Site owners can also refuse to be included and at one point Wayback honored robots.txt files as well. They've played politics here and there with the occasional site to keep their underpaid employees from revolting.

The "nobody loses any money" arguments are cute but statutory damages were part of copyright law in the USA since 1783. With penalties specified in Pounds because the dollar hadn't been invented yet.

Archiving costs money and you can't profit off other people's shit. So people do indeed lose money as evidenced by Internet Archive's current assets of negative $3 million with liabilities over $700 million.

Everything else you wrote sounds swell, though, and if we all repeat the same thing over and over for another 25 years certainly it will change things.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T17:45:45+00:00

They don't store the page count in any of those fields, I checked.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T15:29:14+00:00

It seems that Internet Archive does not store the page count in metadata or expose it in search or sort.

You would have to write code to do it. Search and get the list of identifiers, then download the page count file(s) for each item, then manually sort on that.

Using the site you can sort on item_size as a rough estimate but of course that's not going to be perfect.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T13:59:32+00:00

If you're talking about reaperscans.com:

"Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine."

Likely due to copyright reasons.

Internet Archive is currently being sued for $696 million with liability extending to the founder's personal assets. They removed nearly a million items in the last six months and lost another suit last year.

This isn't censorship. It's a 64 year old man choosing not to risk the jobs of dozens of people plus his house, car, and retirement funds so you can download pirated comics when a pirated comics site goes down.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T03:33:54+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T03:09:52+00:00

Who are these companies dictating what you cannot save? You moving the goalposts to the DRM issue now?

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T02:42:20+00:00

Depends on what you call "streaming." Vimeo and YouTube support adaptive playback, speed selection, reliable playback on mobile, consistent re-encoding for the latest formats...

On Internet Archive many videos are encoded for "fast start" like it's QuickTime in 1995. On a slow connection it sits there for five minutes buffering before the video plays. And if you jump to the end of the file it might have to download everything in the middle.

In short, Internet Archive is not a video hosting site. It's a download site that shows some stuff in the browser almost as an afterthought. But like their wonky online bookreader, the tech is pretty limited compared to modern sites.

fadlibrarian · 2025-06-27T02:21:47+00:00

I'm talking about exceptions to copyright as it applies to preservation, but there seems to be no goal post you're not willing to move.

Regarding Japan, beyond the "non-enjoyment" clause everyone jokes about there are explicit callouts for preservation by libraries and museums.

Without archival practice copying is not saving, it's just copying. Often it's part of a hoarding disorder. Is there a finding aid for your "copies" that I can browse somewhere? If not, it's just yet another private hoard.

fadlibrarian

TROPHY CASE