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Archive.org feels like the only website truly for the people

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
It fucking rules. I was listening to a 3 hour radio show from 2009 at work on my airpods and realized it’s one of the only websites that really feels like it only exists to serve the public. An endless fountain of legally questionable content just sitting there with no ads, memberships, or anything.

Those ps3 bios files you needed? We got you
Wanna listen to a bunch of audio books for free? No problem
Wanna play the wonderswan color dragon ball Z games in a browser with an Xbox controller? Go ahead
Need a textbook pdf? Right this way bro
Wanna view your myspace page as it existed in 2005? Ok

And to what end? They’re hosting an absolute shitload of data and seem to have no endgame of making money. Remember years ago you could listen to audio on YouTube with your phone closed? They stopped letting you because fuck you thats why. Pay up suckers. Long live the archive.

solid-snake-salute.gif
 

DrFigs

Member
Idk how they haven't gotten into trouble for breaking copyright laws. There's a ton of movies/tv shows on archive.org that should definitely not be there.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I thought they were found to be removing sensitive topics? People seem to use archive.ph for news now
Archive.ph/is/today or whatever domain it's currently on is popular because it ignores robots.txt and will archive pages that the owner doesn't want to have archived where Wayback Machine honors robots.txt. it doesn't fully archive copies of embedded content, though, so it's less valuable for archiving the things OP is enjoying on the Wayback Machine.

It also snitches on the people who use it and forwards IP the address of computers using the x-forwarded-for header, so if you archive something that maybe you shouldn't you could potentially be tracked down.
 
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Kenpachii

Member
It fucking rules. I was listening to a 3 hour radio show from 2009 at work on my airpods and realized it’s one of the only websites that really feels like it only exists to serve the public. An endless fountain of legally questionable content just sitting there with no ads, memberships, or anything.

Those ps3 bios files you needed? We got you
Wanna listen to a bunch of audio books for free? No problem
Wanna play the wonderswan color dragon ball Z games in a browser with an Xbox controller? Go ahead
Need a textbook pdf? Right this way bro
Wanna view your myspace page as it existed in 2005? Ok

And to what end? They’re hosting an absolute shitload of data and seem to have no endgame of making money. Remember years ago you could listen to audio on YouTube with your phone closed? They stopped letting you because fuck you thats why. Pay up suckers. Long live the archive.

solid-snake-salute.gif

Ty completely forgot about this, incredible.
 

Dr.D00p

Gold Member
I had to go into my local Mobile Phone store to get the 'Porn Filter' lifted to gain access to the archive after it got put on their block filter, for god knows what reason.

..Felt like a dirty old man, looking to get his wanking privileges restored.

What made it more embarrassing was the girl who processed it all was a major fucking hottie..
 
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jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I had to go into my local Mobile Phone store to get the 'Porn Filter' lifted to gain access to the archive after it got put on their block filter, for god knows what reason.

..Felt like a dirty old man, looking to get his wanking privileges restored.

What made it more embarrassing was the girl who processed it all was a major fucking hottie..
This story is 100% foreign to me. Why does your mobile phone company block porn? Or anything at all?
 

Mr1999

Member
I have thought about buying old lto tape drives, like lto 5 or 6 since they can be found used for few hundred dollars now and just copying everything i come across that I think is worth saving onto a cartridge. I'm using M-DISC for now, which 100GB is nothing. Having this stuff accessible online is what makes it great but id rather have backup copies, especially with family photos but its pretty much everything.

Some stuff just end up getting lost forever. Im assuming in the future you'll have everything locally if you really wanted to. Just recently one of my large drives failed and lost everything, thankfully I had backups of all the important stuff, but if I didn't, I would have lost literally everything, all my family pictures, id be in ruins. I feel like its unlikely but the same can happen here too, and once its gone its gone, goodluck finding the person who still has it and if he does, is willing to share.
 
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Soltype

Member
I'm on there more and more lately. The have so much old media it's crazy, they also have some older japanese dramas.Hope it never goes away.

I had to go into my local Mobile Phone store to get the 'Porn Filter' lifted to gain access to the archive after it got put on their block filter, for god knows what reason.

..Felt like a dirty old man, looking to get his wanking privileges restored.

What made it more embarrassing was the girl who processed it all was a major fucking hottie..
Who put a filter on your phone?
 

BlackTron

Member
I have thought about buying old lto tape drives, like lto 5 or 6 since they can be found used for few hundred dollars now and just copying everything i come across that I think is worth saving onto a cartridge. I'm using M-DISC for now, which 100GB is nothing. Having this stuff accessible online is what makes it great but id rather have backup copies, especially with family photos but its pretty much everything.

Some stuff just end up getting lost forever. Im assuming in the future you'll have everything locally if you really wanted to. Just recently one of my large drives failed and lost everything, thankfully I had backups of all the important stuff, but if I didn't, I would have lost literally everything, all my family pictures, id be in ruins. I feel like its unlikely but the same can happen here too, and once its gone its gone, goodluck finding the person who still has it and if he does, is willing to share.

There came a point I got worried about the fragmented way I had all my data and decided to simplify, I have 2 drives, one for media (which can be replaced) and one for my own personal files (which can't). EVERYTHING in either category got consolidated onto one of the two drives. The media drive gets copied once, the "backup" doubles as the external drive for traveling with a laptop or using a TV. Mostly videos, music, game ISOs, one backup is enough there.

The other drive, personal files like photos and records, is much smaller but there are 3 copies.

The system worked...sure enough my media drive decided to die last week, but it had about 95% parity with the data on the external. Actually, I have refused to plug in the external since then, until I get around to buying a replacement drive ready to copy files off of it lol.

You REALLY need at least one copy...and in this age of cheap data...seriously just get one big drive and copy everything, so it won't take so much attention.

I also tend to use "temp drives" like beater external HDDs for downloading and unzipping and organizing stuff. Before it gets copied to where it actually goes. Saves a lot of wear and tear on the drive. The one that died was on for over 10 years...
 
It's a true gem of the Internet. Tons of useful and unique stuff related to gaming like old beta disks, press kits, abandonware you can't find anywhere else etc. Feels like the feds are gonna kick down the door any day now though...
 

Krathoon

Member
I suspect that archive.org is funded by the government and that is why it has not shut down. They are above the law.

I may be wrong.
 

Krathoon

Member
It seems like the site's purpose it to backup media eventhough it violates copyright. It is about preservation.
 
It kind of goes against the purpose of the site, but there is so much duplicated junk on there that sometimes searching is a complete nightmare. I wonder if they could implement something like Twitter Community Notes for duplicate data - not only would it make the user experience better, but it would save them considerably on server costs.
 

dave_d

Member
Another thing I've found on there is school year books. I found my high school year book up there.(weird to see it so many years later.)
 

Kadve

Member
They are also one of the few websites exempt from DMCA takedowns (falling under Section 512, aka classified as a Online Library run through non-profit). Which is really nice.
 
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