Internet Archive hacked, data breach impacts 31 million users

[THX-1139]

In case anyone missed this:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... ion-users/
Very Bad.

[Night Wing]

This hack job does not affect me since I had never created an account for said site.

[Moonchild]

Attacking a repository of Internet history based on the false assumption that it's "owned by the USA", implying the government.
No, it's just pathetic. "Oh we hate the government, let's attack a library, that will show them!"

[RealityRipple]

[Pentium4User]

I really hope backups exist. So much good stuff that will be missing instead.

[Basilisk-Dev]

Isn't the Internet Archive just a glorified piracy website pretending to be just and moral for the sake of "archiving" other people's content? I see so much copyrighted content on there that I know for a fact that they do not have permission to redistribute that I have no clue how they remain operational without being sued to oblivion.

[Moonchild]

I see so much copyrighted content on there that I know for a fact that they do not have permission to redistribute that I have no clue how they remain operational without being sued to oblivion.

They have been (and still are) in plenty of hot water over that.

However...

Isn't the Internet Archive just a glorified piracy website pretending to be just and moral for the sake of "archiving" other people's content?

...that's an over-simplification and a bit of a skewed view. Public, freely-available, published data can be archived without immediately being a breach of the publisher's or content owner's rights, unless there is a specific set of terms forbidding it. So at the very least it's a grey area, if not outright allowed. It's not like they are claiming the content or ownership, and they aren't converting it. As far as I know they also respond to removal requests very regularly.
I'm not an expert in these matters though, so I don't know of all the nuances, but if it was outright piracy they would not have been able to do what they have been doing for a very long time now.

[Basilisk-Dev]

As far as I know they also respond to removal requests very regularly.

They are pretty quick to respond. I submitted copyrighted content removal requests for modified versions of Basilisk that used the official branding and they removed it within a few days.

[frostknight]

They are pretty quick to respond. I submitted copyrighted content removal requests for modified versions of Basilisk that used the official branding and they removed it within a few days.

Off-topic:
Truth to be told, copyright lasts way too long in the world. 70 + life of author is so damn insane

Even 30+ is as far as I am concerned with restrictive licenses especially. Electronics should be modifiable to remove anti-features legally without consequence even if you have to reverse engineer by using their code.

For the sake of preservation though, it should be way less. I almost wonder if they don't want preservation because then it hurts their bottom line, perceived losses from people using copy pasting old stuff and not buying new stuff, etc...

The closest I can think of that is wrong about copyright infringement would be it can potentially devalue the ones they sell.

However copyright tends to be taken to ridiculous extents preventing modification or disabling anti-features with their code. Madness...

However a German study was done on "piracy" as they call it. And found that it actually helps them long term. My thought as to why, are because some people won't buy it no matter what and for others they want to support them so they will keep making games. Its a guess though.

wikipedia saved this German study on archive.org which is currently down as said.

In any case, preservation of the past is why. Otherwise stuff can die to bit-rot. Hollywood allowed that to happen to many of their past works and if it were legal to copy it without their permission, they would still exist today.

So that's why internet archive exists.

[SouthernComputerGeek]

Off-topic:
I believe the maximum amount of time a copyright can last should be shortened to what it originally was in the United States: 15 years.

[andyprough]

In case anyone missed this:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... ion-users/
Very Bad.

Ooooh nooooo. Someone stole my Internet Archive password. What will I ever do. I mean, besides creating a new password.

I'm really worried someone could use it to see all my Internet Archive stuff that they could already see anyway.

What kind of a moron does a hack like this? If they were smart they'd hack something worth some money. Go hack Elon Musk's debit card PIN number.

[frostknight]

Off-topic:
I believe the maximum amount of time a copyright can last should be shortened to what it originally was in the United States: 15 years.

Truthfully I agree with you, 30 was just a compromise type amount.