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The Internet Archive Loses Appeal. As Expected.
With more legal action on the horizon, how long before Archive.org closes?
September 05, 2024
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The United States Court of Appeals (Second Circuit) just issued a ruling against the Internet Archive (Archive.org) -- rejecting their appeal, and upholding a previous ruling against them in the Hachette vs Internet Archive legal battle.

Make no mistake: This is very bad news for both the Internet Archive, Archive.org users, as well as other archival projects.

 

 

 

Hachette v. Internet Archive: The Short, Short Version

 

To make sure everyone is up to speed, here is the short, short version of this legal battle.

For many years, the Internet Archive has been creating digital copies of physical books (by scanning them) -- then allowing people to "borrow" those digital versions from Archive.org (in theory limiting the total digital books being "lent out" to the count of the physical books in the Archive's possession).

They never obtained permissions from the authors or publishers to do any of this.

In 2020, during the Covid lockdowns, the Internet Archive launched the "National Emergency Library" -- where they removed that "1 physical book : 1 digital book lent out" restriction.  Meaning anybody on the Internet could obtain digital scans of physical books... and the Archive could "Lend Out" an unlimited number of digital copies based on a single physical copy.

Again.  No permission was obtained from the writers or publishers.

Thus -- to the surprise of absolutely nobody -- the "Hachette v. Internet Archive" legal battle began.

And... The Internet Archive lost.  The judge ruled in favor of the publishers (including Hachette, Wiley, Penguin Random House, & HarperCollins).

Naturally, Internet Archive appealed that ruling.  But, boy-howdy, was their appeal a strange one which was destined to fail.

 

The Strange Appeal of The Internet Archive

 

On April 19th of 2024, the Internet Archive filed their final brief in their attempt to appeal this ruling against them.

In that ruling, one of the Internet Archive's core arguments was that it cost the Internet Archive a lot of money to make so many digital copies of books without permission... so, therefore, the Internet Archive should be allowed to do it.

That is neither a joke nor an exaggeration.  It sounds weird, because it is weird.

The Internet Archive truly attempted to make the case that spending a lot of money committing a crime... should make that crime legal.  (Could you imagine the mafia making that case?  Wild.)

You can read the full analysis, by The Lunduke Journal, of the appeal (including the appeal itself) for yourself for more details.

The reality is... there was never any chance that the Internet Archive's attempted appeal was going to be successful.  Their defensive arguments were highly illogical (bordering on flights of fancy), and brought nothing new or noteworthy to the case.  This was all painfully obvious.

 

The Lost Appeal

 

On Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, the opinion was handed down from the United States Court of Appeals.

While the full ruling is roughly 64 pages long, this single paragraph -- from the second page -- summarizes things quite well:

 

"This appeal presents the following question: Is it “fair use” for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no. We therefore AFFIRM."

 

To call out the truly important parts:

"Question: Is it 'fair use' ... to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free ... all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? ... we conclude the answer is no."

You can read the entire 64 page ruling for yourself.  Heck.  You can even read it on Archive.org.  But that line, right there, sums it all up.

Naturally, the Internet Archive has issued a statement.  Albeit... a short one.

 

"We are disappointed in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books."

 

What Happens Now?

 

The Internet Archive gets sued by some of the biggest book publishers... and loses.

The Internet Archive appeals... and loses.

What happens next?  Well.  Unfortunately -- for both the Internet Archive, and its users -- the future looks rather bleak.

First and foremost: Has the Internet Archive made, and distributed, digital copies of work you own?  This ruling will certainly not hurt your case should you decide to take legal action against Archive.org.

And -- holy smokes -- the amount of copyrighted material on Archive.org is absolutely massive.

The Archive.org software repository alone contains millions of items.  With a very large number of them being copyrighted material, posted there without permission of the copyright owner.

Simply going by the numbers, here's how much material is available on Archive.org (roughly):

  • 832 Billion archived webpages.
  • 38 Million printed materials (magazines, books, etc.).
  • 2.6 Million pieces of software
  • 11.6 Million videos files.
  • 15 Million audio files.
  • 4.7 Million images.

How many of those items do you think are there without permission (or possibly even knowledge) of the owners or creators?

Every single one now has an increasingly strong case when looking at potential legal action.

And it's about to get even worse for the Internet Archive.

 

UMG Recordings v. Internet Archive

 

That's right, the book publishers weren't the only ones taking legal action against Archive.org. 

Universal Music Group and Sony have an ongoing lawsuit against the Internet Archive -- regarding the distribution of 2,749 audio recordings (with potential damages upwards of $412 Million USD).

Seriously.

 

"Plaintiffs bring this suit to address Defendants’ massive ongoing violation of Plaintiffs’ rights in protected pre-1972 sound recordings. As part of what Defendants have dubbed the “Great 78 Project,” Internet Archive, Blood, and GBLP have willfully reproduced thousands of Plaintiffs’ protected sound recordings without authorization by copying physical records into digital files. Internet Archive then willfully uploaded, distributed, and digitally transmitted those illegally copied sound recordings millions of times from Internet Archive’s website."

 

Sound familiar?  Digital copies.  No permission from the artists or publishers.  Free downloads for everyone.

Naturally, the Internet Archive attempted to have this suit dismissed... but their attempt was denied in May of 2024.  (Because if there's one constant in life... it's that the Internet Archive always loses in court.)  That case is going forward.

 

 

What happens if the Internet Archive loses this UMG / Sony case?  What happens if they are ordered to pay $412 Million in damages?

To put it simply: Archive.org doesn't have that kind of money.  They bring in roughly $20 Million (give or take) per year.  That type of legal liability would absolutely destroy the Internet Archive.

 

 

And, here's the thing, the Internet Archive is almost assuredly going to lose that lawsuit as well.

Regardless of what you, I, or anyone else thinks of the Internet Archive -- and, make no mistake, I use that service several times a week (and love it) -- the law here is incredibly clear and well tested.

The Internet Archive runs one of the largest (if not the largest) website of pirated and stolen digital material on the planet.  Sure, it may also provide extremely valuable (and often, very legal) services as well.. but that doesn't make those crimes go away.

With each legal defeat, the Internet Archive grows increasingly vulnerable to additional attacks.

Simply being logical about it... it seems highly likely that we'll see additional suits brought against the Internet Archive in the months ahead.  Books, music, TV shows, software... Archive.org contains a massive mountain of copyrighted material in all areas.  These are suits which the Internet Archive would be almost certain to lose.

With this reality looming, how long until Archive.org will be forced to shut down entirely?  That day is likely not far off... and a sad day it will be.

 

The Archive Had to Know This Was Coming

 

The truly sad part?  The leadership of the Internet Archive had to know exactly what they were doing.

Every step of the way, it was obvious that they were going to lock horns with publishers (and lose).

Heck, I told them.  Repeatedly.

But, even if The Lunduke Journal hadn't pointed this out... it was a brutally obvious certainty to anyone even mildly familiar with copyright law and the workings of Archive.org.

Which means: The Internet Archive knowingly put their entire service at risk (including the Wayback Machine, the massive archive or pre-copyright audio recordings, etc.) because they wanted to publish copyrighted material against the wishes of the authors or publishers.

Despite this, they continue to push a public perception campaign where they pretend that publishers and authors are burning their own books.  When the reality is... the books are still available a wide variety of ways.  Archive.org simply got in trouble for copying and distributing them without permission.

 

 

Something I find truly fascinating about all of this, is that The Lunduke Journal will -- as usual -- get yelled at (rather extensively) for this article.  For simply pointing out the current reality of copyright law and how the Internet Archive has, knowingly, violated it.

People love Archive.org.  Heck, I love Archive.org.

And people are allowing their love for that website to convince them that anyone being critical of it... must, necessarily, be bad and evil.  An enemy.

But it is not The Lunduke Journal who is putting The Internet Archive in danger of being shut down.

Neither is it Sony, Hachette, Random House, or HarperCollins who are putting The Internet Archive in danger.

No, sir.

The only one putting The Internet Archive in danger... is The Internet Archive.

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The Tea App Breach - 60GB of Personal Info
Selfies, Drivers Licenses, & Locations. All made publicly available by the developer.

The “Tea App” — an online dating app marketed as a dating tool that “protects women” — has been hacked. And a lot of data has been exposed. An extreme amount.

Not the first major breach this year. And it certainly won’t be the last.

 

First published over on 4Chan (of course), the “hack” of Tea App wasn’t even really much of a “hack”. The developers of Tea App apparently simply left the user data open for the world to download at their leisure.

And Tea App was becoming pretty popular — which means roughly 60 GB of user data was made available before the developers finally thought about locking things down.

 

What kind of data was made publicly available — because, presumably, the developers simply didn’t think about “security” much — by this Tea App Hack?

Selfies. Drivers licenses. All manner of private information which will, no doubt, be exploited by unscrupulous types over the days to come.

 

Even worse — meta data appears to have been preserved on uploaded photos. Meaning that many of the user selfies included location data (in addition to the address on the drivers license). Which said unscrupulous types have already begun using to create maps of Tea App users.

 

The developers of Tea App have put out a statement which says 59,000 images used for “account verification” were made available (read: Government ID). Which would already be catastrophic… however a quick look at details of the data (including the file size alone) would suggest that number could be much, much larger.

Here is the full statement from the developer:

 

Which brings us to an important lesson which we — as humans — never seem to learn:

If user data is stored, it will get hacked.

It’s simply a matter of time.

There are currently close to 15 Billion (with a B) accounts listed on Have I Been Pwned. And those are simply from hacks and breaches which were reported to that one website.

 

The reality is, the vast majority of hacks and data breaches are never made publicly known. Either by the people doing the hacking, or by the company / government which got hacked.

As systems continue to grow ever more complex and interconnected — and more systems become AI-developed (aka “Vibe Coded”) — these hacks and breaches become easier to pull off.

Combine that with the ever-expanding quantity of data — and the growing number of services storing it — and we are quickly reaching a point where everyone will have at least some of their data breached at some point. For some people it will happen regularly. Repeatedly.

And those will just be the breaches we find out about.

The only way to minimize the damage of such hacks & breaches is to minimize the amount and type of data stored, long term, by a service.

  • Need pictures of government ID for age verification? Delete that picture immediately after verification.

  • Need payment and shipping information? Delete all of it immediately after payment is processed and shipment is verified.

  • Need location data (GPS, IP, etc.)? Delete it immediately once done with it.

You get the point. Unless a piece of personal data is absolutely 100% necessary, delete it.

It’s hard for a hacker to obtain files… that aren’t there.

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Proton Launches Hallucinatory AI Chatbot
Lumo, the chatbot on mushrooms, may “respect your privacy”… it just doesn’t respect reality.

Proton — the Swiss company behind Proton VPN & Proton Mail — apparently was feeling very left out of the A.I. Craze (tm) and has decided to launch their own AI Chatbot… dubbed “Lumo”.

And it is possibly even more hallucinatory than the other AI Chatbots. And that’s saying something.

 

Lumo — the “AI that respects your privacy” — boasts that the company keeps “no logs” and has “zero access encryption”.

Since they offer a few free queries without creating an account, I decided to take it for a spin. The results were… a bit like talking to a schizophrenic on mushrooms.

Lumo’s Grasp on History

First I asked it a series of simple historical, nerdy questions. Easy stuff that any LLM AI system should nail. Like “What year did the first Macintosh computer ship?” and “Who was the first CEO of Microsoft?”

Easy stuff. Lumo got about half of the answers right… it was convinced that the first Mac shipped in 2003 (off by about 20 years). On the other hand… it did know the correct number of floppies that Windows 95 shipped on (13). So. Mixed bag.

In other words: Lumo got so much wrong that it was not usable for any sort of research.

I then decided to ask Lumo some questions about… myself. “Lunduke”.

“Lunduke” is Hard for AI Chatbots

Last year I noticed that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was saying some pretty crazy things about yours truly. Stuff like “Lunduke has two clubbed feet”, “Lunduke is a trans activist”, and “Lunduke has a husband named Evan”.

I gave OpenAI an ultimatum: Either they needed to fix ChatGPT such that it would no longer spew out made-up, defamatory stuff about me… or they needed to stop ChatGPT from talking about “Lunduke” entirely.

In the end, OpenAI decided that there was no way to make ChatGPT output accurate information (seriously). So they added a “Bryan Lunduke” filter so that any query that results in mentioning my full name causes ChatGPT to error out (amusingly, even that “Lunduke filter” only works about 80% of the time).

 

I decided to ask Proton’s Lumo AI about “Lunduke”. Let’s see how it compares to ChatGPT, right?

The results were… insane.

Lumo on Shrooms

First… Lumo refused to spell my first name correctly (it used an i instead of a y… and no amount of correcting it seemed to work). Worth noting that there is no human on Earth named “Brian Lunduke”. Only “Bryan”.

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The rest of it though… was wild.

 

Lumo is convinced that I am a “transgender man” and “advocate for transgender rights”. Also I am, apparently, a critic of Israel and a crusader for “social justice”.

Basically, Lumo invented Mirror Universe Lunduke.

Oh, and — like ChatGPT — Lumo is convinced I have a husband. This time his name is “Michael DeFreese”. And, apparently, we got married in 2018. Which will be a surprise to my wife.

 

It gets weirder.

I then asked Lumo about my “husband” the next day. Apparently, overnight, I had gotten divorced and re-married. I was now “Mr. Bart Butler”.

 

I spoke to the team at Proton to see what their plan for dealing with factual errors was.

The team at Proton informed me that they could not reproduce the output I received — which I believe, as Lumo seems to generate wildly different “facts” almost every time it’s used.

At the same time, Lumo changed to output a template response about providing “helpful, respectful” assistance — while not actually answering questions — when the word “Lunduke” was included. The Lumo team sent me this screenshot.

 

A few hours later, Lumo changed back to spouting hallucinations regarding “Lunduke”… but spontaneously learned how to spell my name correctly. So. That was a plus!

Even if I was still an “openly transgender” man with an unnamed husband.

 

So… sure. Lumo may be almost completely incapable of outputting factual information.

And it changes its mind on what made up nonsense it spews out almost every few minutes.

But, hey! At least Lumo has that reassuring “Conversation encrypted” message at the bottom of each chat.

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ID Verification Could Fix The Dead Internet
A plague of AI bots is devouring the Net like a swarm of programmatically generated locusts. And mandatory ID verification could be the only solution.

I’m going to make an observation that is likely to get me tarred and feathered. But, before you reach for your handy-dandy pitchfork, hear me out.

Age and identity verification requirements for accessing websites is a necessity… it should be expanded to most (if not all) of the Internet.

The reason is simple: Identity verification is the only possible solution to the army of AI driven bots currently infesting the Internet. Want to stop the Dead Internet Theory? This is the only way.

The Problems With Identity Verification

I want to make something very clear: Online age and ID verification has a number of problems. Very, very real problems that every single person is right to be concerned about.

  • What verification data will be collected and stored (and how)?

  • What additional security concerns are created because of ID verification?

  • Will the burden of that verification be too much for some sites to handle?

  • How will those verification systems be abused by corporations and governments?

And those are just off the top of my head.

Some of the issues are straight forward engineering issues. Some are downright daunting.

Regardless, those 4 bullet points alone are enough to make most people recoil in horror at the mere thought of ID verification becoming mandatory.

But mandatory it has become — at least for a small portion of (adult focused) websites in a number of locales. In several states in the USA, adult websites (and, soon, some social media sites) are now requiring age verification.

And, in the United Kingdom, the Online Safety Act is taking effect. Resulting in a massive spike in VPN usage as people work around age verification on adult-only websites.

 

There’s a pretty clear takeaway here. Some people really like being anonymous. Especially when doing “naughty” things.

In short: There are real concerns with online ID verification, and many people don’t like it.

Which brings us to The Dead Internet Theory… and how ID verification may be the only solution.

The Plague of The Dead Internet

The Dead Internet Theory is simple:

“The Internet is now predominantly bot traffic, with humans being the minority.”

As of last year, this theory has been confirmed just about every way you can confirm it. The most recent Bad Bot Reportshows that actual humans make up only 49% of global Internet traffic.

 

Social Media platforms, like X, are filled with AI-driven bot farms. So much so that it is making it increasingly difficult to determine true public sentiment on any given issue — as the bots flood topics and threads in order to push specific narratives.

Want to have a conversation with other humans? Good luck.

And Meta is intentionally filling Facebook timelines with bots. As a business strategy.

Make no mistake, these bots are destroying the value of the Internet. Making it less usable and less worthwhile by the day.

The plague of the Dead Internet is devouring the Net like a swarm of programmatically generated, GPU accelerated locusts.

And those locusts are multiplying much faster than we are.

Stopping this plague — killing off those bots — is, at present, a seemingly insurmountable task. No “bot detection” algorithm will ever be good enough — just ask developers of Massively Multiplayer Online games about how difficult it is to stop bots (even in a well confined and controlled setting).

As long as most websites require no more than a simple email address to create a new account… the bots will continue. The bots will thrive.

The Solution is a Bitter Pill

The solution to the Dead Internet is obvious… but unappetizing.

In order to stop the bots — and reclaim the Internet for humans — we must require verification of humanity in order to use the Internet.

How do we do that?

Obviously simple “captchas” don’t do the trick.

  • “Type these funny looking letters!”

  • “Click every box that has a motorcycle!”

Bots can figure those out without breaking a sweat (I, on the other hand, have a hard time with them).

And, like we already discussed, bot detection algorithms simply do not work — at least not for more than a few hours before the bots get improved to work around the algorithm.

The only real solution is identity verification.

Exactly the type of ID & age verification that is happening right now in some US states and the UK. Except that, in order for this to truly work, websites must take it to the extreme.

To ensure that a website isn’t flooded with bots (like what we see on YouTube, X, etc.) that website must require ID verification… for absolutely everyone who uses it. Not simply for a handful of states. For everyone. No exceptions.

Want your views to count? Want to post, comment, or like? You need to get your ID verified first.

I know. Most of us hate that idea. And for good reason. It feels like a horrific step down a dark road into a dystopian future.

But it’s the only viable solution to the Dead Internet.

Which means we are left with two choices for any given website:

  1. Be able to use it anonymously… but most of the content is driven by AI and bots (including other commenters, publishers, etc.)… to the point where any interaction you have is increasingly unlikely to be a real human. And any count of “views”, “likes”, “followers”, “comments”, etc. is utterly meaningless. The bots will dominate all.

  2. ID verification required. With very few bots. Views, likes, etc. will all be real (or at least more real). The people you talk to will be human.

I recognize that most of us will look at both of those options with some level of disgust. But this is the reality we live in. Those are our options if we want this “Internet” thing to continue.

My personal opinion is that sites like X, YouTube, etc. should implement mandatory ID verification.

I don’t like it… but the alternative is that, very soon, those sites will be all but useless as the locusts take over.

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