# An archive of the internet?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [November 13, 2001, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119 "2001-11-13T15:19:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/1 "2001-11-13T15:19:53Z")
This is absolutely amazing. I don’t know how they did it, but it’s simply spectacular.
[http://web.archive.org](http://web.archive.org)
I punched in [http://www.straightdope.com](http://www.straightdope.com) and was met with about 40 dates, which show what The Straight Dope looked like dating back to 1997. Pretty cool.
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### Author:  [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/2 "2001-11-13T15:42:37Z")
Gee, do you think I could download that onto this floppy? 😃
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/3 "2001-11-13T16:21:53Z")
Seriously! How much space do you think all of that takes up? It’s not like it’s only a screenshot of each site ever created, the links are actually clickable (to an extent).
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### Author:  [@Gartog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gartog)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/4 "2001-11-13T16:29:40Z")
Not sure how this works, however I put in my companies homepage and was rewared with a couple of gifs and nothing else. I wonder If this is because it only saved the index page, which was a frame set.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/5 "2001-11-13T16:47:44Z")
I punched in one of my sites and for many of the dates they have the same page.
Less than impressive, but a cute concept.
Although I suspect archiving others copyrighted materials is a dangerous game for them to be playing.
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### Author:  [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/6 "2001-11-13T17:39:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Munch \*
> \*\*This is absolutely amazing. I don’t know how they did it, but it’s simply spectacular.
> \*\*
They probably do like the Swedish national library, The Royal Library, in Stockholm has been doing for years. They have a special program, a spider, that travels the web following all links, downloading everything it finds for the benefit of future researchers.
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### Author:  [@Earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthling)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/7 "2001-11-13T18:22:59Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Jonathan Chance \*
> \*\*Although I suspect archiving others copyrighted materials is a dangerous game for them to be playing. \*\*
They’re aware of this issue, though perhaps don’t have any good answers. See this [Salon](http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/11/02/wayback/index.html) article.
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### Author:  [@MadPoet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadPoet)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/8 "2001-11-13T18:29:22Z")
There is a pretty good discussion of the Way Back Machine in the Personal Law Forum at: [http://www.delphi.com/perlaw](http://www.delphi.com/perlaw)
Pretty much the conclusion is that it may be neat, but it is illegal as hell and they’ll be sued into oblivion.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/9 "2001-11-13T18:41:24Z")
Well, nice to know my publisher’s instincts are still strong.
Playing with someone else’s copyright is a no-no. A big one.
I wouldn’t want to try to defend it. Not in a million years.
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2001, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-archive-of-the-internet/93119/10 "2001-11-13T19:57:35Z")
[Whoops.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=98642) This was posted friggin’ _yesterday_. I need to start reading more threads.