Not to make a false dichotomy out of this case but it is worrying to me how OpenAI presents itself as a crucial force for humanity's technological progress and then justifying its blatant copyright infringements when doing so (with some people believing the bs). Yet the Internet Archive, with far fewer resources, seems to do a better job of storing and eventually helping in advancing knowledge while fighting tougher copyright battles.

And unlike with OAI, I don't find myself questioning the Archive's motives every other day.

That's what hype does, I guess.

I love the Internet Archive and deeply respect Brewster Kahle, but I think it is time for someone with money to fork it: with the Archive's permission, to make a copy of the Wayback Machine and its data as well as the older books and other resources that aren't vulnerable to copyright claims. The new organization should have a more robust governance structure, too, to ensure its long-term survival.

Does anybody here have a few hundred million dollars to donate to such a project?

I'm fairly anti-copyright as it goes but does anyone else find this whole discussion bizarre?

The site hosts things like full ROM sets, PDFs of in print books, the lot. You can just whack things in a search engine and half of the time an IA page comes up with the goods.

The fact that they've survived this long is baffling to me.

https://archive.ph/Lv3tT

Man we really would deserve it if we let these ghouls destroy the archive