Techrights

Preserving Information

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 30, 2024

WE finally turn 18 next Thursday, right? For a Web site, especially an active Web site (new pages every day), 15 is already a considerable age because a very small proportion of sites will make it that far. Groklaw is still offline today and if Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive go offline, all its backups will be gone too. As an active site it made it to about 10, but 20 years later it is becoming extinct (old material gone for good). Cui bono? All those evil people and companies whom PJ exposed with the help of many volunteers...

Drew DeVault is trying to erase himself from the Web because he risks arrest right now (same month he attacked RMS in an act of sheer projection), but that's another matter altogether. As it turns out, some people stand to benefit from the destruction of accurate, factual information. Some people aren't like that and most people value libraries.

Preserving information is important. It's also the hallmark of a healthy society that can deal with facts and confront an uncomfortable (not innocent) past. Those who seek destruction of information tend to be evil people, whose evildoing they strive to delete. They basically hide from themselves. █