[HN Gopher] Internet Archive is now a federal depository library
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Internet Archive is now a federal depository library
https://blog.archive.org/2025/07/24/internet-archive-designa...
Author : XnoiVeX
Score : 189 points
Date : 2025-07-25 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kqed.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kqed.org)
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Is it likely that the Executive Branch would try to exert control
| over it to remove "inconvenient" data?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Imagine having to delete their 100PB of warez.
| rwmj wrote:
| Wait til you hear about my local library. You can walk in and
| read or borrow any book without paying!
| natas wrote:
| I wish my public library was free...
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| Sounds VERY Communist, or Socialist, or some other scary
| thing. Are you sure it's legal? Why, the AUTHORS and
| PUBLISHERS are being denied the revenues they would get if
| you would buy the book; or at least rent it. So, are
| libraries theft of Authors' and Publishers' renumeration?
| (And, to think, the richest man in the world at the time,
| Andrew Carnegie, endowed so many Libraries!)
| nope577 wrote:
| Your shift key seems to keep getting stuck.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Sounds outdated! My library doesnt even require me to walk
| in anymore, they send any book I want to read or listen to
| straight to my phone, and if they don't have it I can
| request they acquire it and send it to me for free
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Wait until you hear about my private library that resides
| on a Synology NAS. I can access it from anywhere in the
| world, on any device, and it's filled with whatever books I
| can bother to decide that I want that title. I have about
| 20,000 (not counting periodicals) all carefully curated and
| retail quality. I even got rid of those annoying generic
| Bantam Press covers and replaced them with the high-res
| stuff off the publisher's site.
|
| Not sure what the appeal of the public library is, when you
| can have your own.
| BSOhealth wrote:
| given this is already happening with many other taxpayer funded
| datasets, will pretty on brand with this group
| jahewson wrote:
| Doubtful. They're not part of the government so the 1st
| amendment applies.
| odo1242 wrote:
| I mean, what would they do to exert control? Remove their
| federal depository status?
| layman51 wrote:
| They already remove "inconvenient" webpages on the Wayback
| Machine if someone asks nicely enough. If I remember correctly,
| if you use it to save a software company's documentation pages
| or evidence of something embarrassing like a potential data
| breach, they could remove it if the company asks. I think
| Oracle might have done something like this before.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| If anyone reading knows an easy way to download and mirror IA
| pages please make it easier to find. A bot told me they offer
| downloads of the underlying WARC files but I could not find
| it
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| There are utilities to help, waybackpack comes to mind, but
| I haven't looked in a while.
| https://github.com/jsvine/waybackpack
| tech234a wrote:
| A community-maintained list collecting examples of such
| exclusions: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/List_of_we
| bsites_excl...
| genter wrote:
| Can't say I blame them, I wouldn't want to go up against
| Oracle's lawyers either.
| chrisg23 wrote:
| I've heard it has already happened. Specifically the internet
| archive removed vidoes of the TempleOS developer Terry Davis'
| live streams because of problematic content.
|
| If the internet archive is already curated for content then
| yeah there is a 100% chance that there will be more curation of
| content.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Kiwifarms as well. They are a bit of a pushover when it comes
| to controversy.
| jprd wrote:
| I thought Archive just removed access, but kept the
| content. I know that from a user perspective that is a
| distinction without a difference, but for posterity it
| matters.
|
| Does anyone have any facts/citations on if this is a
| myth/coping mechanism I created, or reality?
| cwillu wrote:
| "2023 The Internet Archive, a non-profit research
| library, makes use of internal processes and tools,
| including human review and hash-matching, as well as
| reports from external parties to identify, disable access
| to, and limit the reappearance of illegal and/or
| proscribed violent extremist material on archive.org"
|
| https://help.archive.org/help/tco-transparency-reports/
| chrisg23 wrote:
| I wonder how many gems like this
| https://archive.org/details/youtube-moXX8lbnmHs that
| could have been saved have been lost. (Obviously this one
| is saved, for now.)
|
| This is not to disparage the tremendous work done and
| being done by the IA, it's more of me lamenting the trend
| of our society and societies to mentally babysit people
| lest their mind gets exposed to something bad, with the
| implicit assumption that adult humans can't be trusted to
| see some stupid bs and react with "that was some stupid
| bs. I am moving it into the stupid bs bucket of things I
| know about".
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's a one way street. This provides more access to materials
| held by the federal gov for ingest into IA's storage system.
| Bit of a policy interconnect, if you will. Reminder to donate
| to the Archive.
| themgt wrote:
| If you see a bank that says "federally chartered" or "federal
| deposit insurance corporation", stay clear!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Official post: https://blog.archive.org/2025/07/24/internet-
| archive-designa...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44677535)
| m3kw9 wrote:
| do we need an internet archive, archive now?
| doener wrote:
| Back in the days when things were sane my first thought reading
| this headline would have been: Nice, that's sounds official and
| important. Nowadays my first thought is: Wait, does this mean
| Trump can mess around with this?
| dsadfjasdf wrote:
| yes trump is on the computer messing around with this
| stillwzcited wrote:
| I'm still excited about it.
|
| I hope that all of the world libraries join with the internet
| archive into a global cooperative.
|
| I also hope there is a secret sub-basement in a different
| dimension that contains powerful artifacts, guarded by a master
| librarian.
|
| A man can dream can't he?
| lucb1e wrote:
| I'm having trouble finding what this means. Does IA now have new
| obligations, or gets new information, or something else, or all
| of the above?
|
| The submission says:
|
| > These records account for "millions and millions of pages" that
| can take up entire floors of public libraries, Kahle said. San
| Diego's public library gave up its federal depository status in
| 2020 because its government documents took up so much space and
| often went unused. [...] The GPO [...] has ramped up efforts to
| digitize the Federal Depository Library Program.
|
| Does IA now have to store floors upon floors of paper copies of
| information, at least until it got digitized? Or are they now
| merely obliged to host the digital materials insofar as they
| already exist? That sounds like what they are doing already _for
| the whole web_ , and also apparently since 2022 when they started
| "Democracy's Library, a free online compendium of government
| research and publications", just that now they're legally obliged
| to do this or something?
|
| What I find on doi.gov[1] is "The mission of Federal depository
| libraries is to provide local, free access to information from
| the Federal government" and nothing really further on what this
| concretely means. Sounds like just an obligation though?
|
| What I find on gpo.gov[2] is "The Federal Depository Library
| Program [ensures] that the American public has access to
| Government information in depository libraries". Could mean
| anything. The _program_ ensures that, but let 's assume that
| means the _designated libraries_ ensure that, so then do these
| libraries get extra info that the public doesn 't get (but in
| order to disseminate them to the public)? Makes no sense either
|
| The GPO page and the submission also say that "Members of
| Congress may designate up to two qualified libraries." Did they
| get picked and now it's IA's obligation, or did IA ask for this?
| What do they get out of it?
|
| [1] https://www.doi.gov/library/collections/federal-documents
|
| [2] https://www.gpo.gov/how-to-work-with-us/agency/services-
| for-...
| braiamp wrote:
| Did you read the accompanying article?
| https://www.kqed.org/news/12049420/sf-based-internet-archive...
| lucb1e wrote:
| I quoted from there, so yes
| bmurray7jhu wrote:
| Unneeded materials from other depository libraries can now be
| transferred to the Internet Archive. Under 44 USC SS 1912,
| depository libraries may dispose of outdated material, but must
| first offer to transfer to nearby depository institutions.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "California Sen. Alex Padilla made the designation in a letter
| sent Thursday to the Government Publishing Office"
|
| What does this mean. U.S. Senators can unilaterally designate
| federal depositories?
| ssalka wrote:
| It sounds like it was at the request of IA:
|
| > "...in response to the enclosed letter I received from the
| Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, Mr.
| Brewster Kahle, I am designating the Internet Archive as a
| federal depository library in California."
|
| Which seems a lot more agreeable than unilateral designation
| (which is also how I initially read this).
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