[Air-L] on the Wayback Machine (was public/private [part 1 of 2])

Mon Aug 13 12:00:56 PDT 2007

Michael,

Because all your questions center around issue (a), I'll respond to 
that. IMO, the recent upsets about Google Map's streetview pictures 
adequately demonstrate that real-world expression or behaviors are 
indeed being documented without informed consent of the "subjects." My 
personal take on the matter is that the Google vans, which cruise 
streets, snapping pictures and sewing them together to make an ideally 
seamless electronic visual representation of a street, are only 
photographing what is already public. There was a fuss made by a woman 
who complained that her cat was visible in peering out the window of her 
apartment. This constituted an invasion of privacy for her. I've heard 
people say things like, "What's next? Soon the Google vans will be 
peering in through open windows and reading book titles off our 
shelves!" (See here: 
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/30/google_maps_is_spyin.html)

As you say, Michael, bits don't like to degrade. But really, it's just 
that digital culture has established a new mindset for preservation, and 
this influences archival practices much more than just logistical or 
economic reasoning. This means that because things can be stored 
digitally, they're going to be. And that includes pictures of your cat 
in your living room window just as much as it does your blog.

For related reading, I'll cite only:

Blanchette, Jean-François and Johnson, Deborah G. "Data retention and 
the panoptic society: The social benefits of forgetfulness." 2007.

I do not have a publishing journal in the copy I have, which leads me to 
think it was released only online, at least at first. I'm sure many 
others on this list can provide similar reading on this subject.

Also, I feel compelled to point out that Charlie did not take note of 
Michael's point (d). See here for more on that: 
http://www.archive.org/about/exclude.php

Conor

Michael Zimmer wrote:
> This has been an interesting discussion, and mention of IA's Wayback  
> Machine prompts interesting questions which I'm sure others on the  
> list can help answer:
>
> (a) Are there other media forms (current or historical) where  
> publishing content means that it is automatically scanned and  
> archived by external aggregators (search spiders, Internet Archive,  
> etc)? [If I posted a note on "The Wall" at Yale Law School, no one  
> routinely takes a snapshot of the wall to keep a permanent record of  
> it, right?]
>
> (b) If examples for (a) exist, are typical publishers of said content  
> aware that their works are being aggregated and archived in such a  
> way? Would a new user know this? Are they notified? [My concern here  
> is that while many realize that search engines might crawl their  
> content, few realize they keep a cached copy, and even fewer realize  
> that even deleted content is archived by Wayback Machine]
>
> (c) Also, if examples of (a) exist, what means are provided to  
> prevent such automatic archiving? Is it opt-in or opt-out? How  
> technically proficient must one be? [Concern here is that even if you  
> know about Internet Archive, you have to be proficient with  
> robots.txt standards in order to keep them out]
>
> (d) Given (a), how can someone remove past items from such archives?  
> [Wayback Machine will remove all domain-specific content already in  
> its archive if you place a robots.txt file to block it going forward]
>
> I guess what I'm wondering is why there seems to be a presumption  
> that just because I posted something on a website in 1999 I want it  
> to always be accessible. Just because bits don't degrade like paper  
> doesn't mean they -must- persist, does it?
>
> Keep up the good discussion,
> michael
>
>
> -----
> Michael Zimmer, PhD
> Microsoft Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School
> e: michael.zimmer at nyu.edu
> w: http://michaelzimmer.org
>
>
>
> On Aug 13, 2007, at 11:36 AM, Lois Ann Scheidt wrote:
>
>   
>> And don't forget archiving, that a publicly accessible webpage is
>> likely to be archived in the Internet Archive
>> (http://www.archive.org/index.php) or as some of us old Saturday
>> Morning Cartoon watchers like to call it...The Wayback Machine.
>>
>> Lois Ann Scheidt
>>
>> Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana
>> University, Bloomington IN USA
>>
>> Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN  
>> USA and
>> IUPUC, Columbus IN USA
>>
>> Webpage:  http://www.loisscheidt.com
>> Blog:  http://www.professional-lurker.com
>>
>>
>> Quoting Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu>:
>>
>>     
>>> I would advise you to remove your blogs then because it is very
>>> likely that if it is linked to anywhere or hosted on a major blogging
>>> platform that it is in one of the research compediums of blogs.  if
>>> we can find it through google blogsearch or technorati, then it is
>>> likely it is in one or more research collections.
>>>
>>> it is not that you are putting up a window...   it is that you are
>>> sending out broadsheets and posters on the fence, on the side of your
>>> house, probably into public mailboxes, etc. etc..   i don't have to
>>> look into the window to see what you've done, i can take photos from
>>> the street, comment on the architecture, etc.  If i
>>>
>>> a disclaimer won't really solve your issue either, it might be
>>> respected, but only if you do it in a machine readable way.  a
>>> robot.txt file excluding all search engines will go much farther than
>>> a disclaimer.
>>>       
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