Maybe It Should Be Illegal To Instantly Delete A Website's Archives

What? No. What utter nonsense.
I should be able to remove a website that I created and paid for without there being some silly law that I have to archive it.
As the owner, it's up to me if I want it up or not. After all, I'm paying for the bloody thing.
- The vast majority of regular internet users never think of things from this perspective because they've never been in a position of running a public facing website. To most people, the Internet is just there to be taken for granted like the public street and park outside someone's house. All the stuff on it just exists there by itself. That's also why we have issues with free speech online, where people expect certain rights that don't exist, because these aren't publicly owned websites and people aren't getting that.
  
  To most people, the Internet is just there to be taken for granted like the public street and park outside someone’s house.
  Both of which require maintenance that most people don't think about...
  
  Maybe the internet should be treated more like public infrastructure. If everyone communicates primarily online, the lack of freedom of speech on online platforms is a problem. And the sudden disappearance of a service people depend on, too (not that I think this website is a good example).
  
  Well put.
- That being said, if a third party, like the Internet Archive, wants to archive it they should have every right.
  
  A "Library of Congress" for published web content maybe. Some sort of standard that allows / requires websites that publish content on oublic-facing sites to also share a permanent copy with an archive, without having the archive have to scrape it.
  Sort of like how book publishers send a copy to the LoC.
  
  This is just like AI scraping
  Edit if you allow a third party to "archive" your content, the ship has sailed. I'm not advocating for or against anything but once your stuff is scraped (by anyone) it's gone.
  
  I'm not sure if i can agree with that. A third party cannot simply override the rights of the owner. If i want my website gone, i want it gone from everywhere. no exception.
  That kinda also goes in the whole "Right to be forgotten" direction. I have absolute sovereignty over my data. This includes websites created by me.
- Ehh, I halfway agree, but there is value in keeping historical stuff around. Heritage laws exist in a good number of countries so that all the cultural architecture doesn't get erased by developers looking to turn a quick buck or rich people who think that 500 year old castle could really use an infinity pool hot tub; there are strict requirements for a building to be heritage-listed but once they are, the owner is required by law to maintain it to historical standards.
  I only halfway disagree because you're right, forcing people to pay for something has never sat right with me generally. As long as the laws don't bite people like you and me, e.g. there are relatively high requirements for something to be considered "culturally relevant" enough to preserve, I'd be okay with some kind of heritage system for preserving the internet.
  
  Heritage laws exist in a good number of countries so that all the cultural architecture doesn’t get erased
  Copyright law itself is supposed to be such a law (at least in the US), by the way.
  US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
  To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
  (emphasis added)
  Deleting copyrighted works is THEFT from the Public Domain!
- We as a society gives your protections through copyright, why can we not let that protection come with some requirements?
- Individuals should be allowed. Corporations shouldn't.
- Yup that's why internet archive is a thing, a site should not be forced to host their content forever but the hivemind in lemmy has a hard on against any and all corporate entities and they'll justify any kind of over reach as long as it's against one
- I mostly agree, but I do think that if the website was partly funded by subscriptions or the users paid via advertising/their data then there's a gap for saying it should remain available.
- Cool cool, so who will be paying for the time to archive it, the medium the archive it to, and the accessibility should someone else want to access it? I mean I can put a copy on a floppy disk and keep it in my desk and say it’s archived.

It's a complicated matter if we consider things such as the GDPR's "Right to be forgotten".
- Corporations shouldn't have those kinds of rights.

Why is everyone so mad about this? I mean, it's a salty article, but yeah, it kinda sucks when publications don't give notice before closing down. I think providing the public, including previous contributors, time to archive content is a good practice.
- It's a good practice, sure. But as per the headline, the author wants to make it a law. That's why people are not having it.
  
  That's not really what the article is about. The author even concedes that such a law would never, and perhaps never should, happen; rather, he feels that corporations will not adopt best practices of preservation unless compelled, and it pisses him off.
  The title is deliberate hyperbolic. He's clearly pissed.
  
  , it’s a salty article
  Actually the author himself is somewhat harmed by this situation. I would be salty too. When I wish to write my CV, I can say: my text have been published at X and Y. Especially nice if it's an important and well known publication. Now a part of his CV is literally erased, he can't access his own texts anymore (not even on Internet Archive). That's... utterly ridiculous. It's a common practice to send the author a copy (or multiple) of the text he has published, he has every right to own a copy of them. Now the copy that was intended to be available to everyone is not available even to him. Something of the sort really has happened to me too when a website I published an article on a site underwent a redesign and now the text just isn't available anymore. Admittedly it's still on IA, but it's an awkward situation.

Good Lord what a dumb idea.
Edit: I like an idiot couldn't help myself and actually read some of this.
Is this an 11 year old?

Maybe the Web should look more like Freenet or like BitTorrent.
But using a technology working the known way and trying to force conveniences by law seems sisyphean and harmful in many aspects.
If someone wants to keep old versions, let them. But forcing companies to host something is I dunno.
- This is a strawman towards the actual issue which is the loss of information.
  The least they could do is just provide a copy of their material to internet archive or some torrent site.
  I think similarly about digital services stopping or hardware no longer getting support. Thats a fine and reasonable economy wise but at least have the moral decency to open source it instead.
  The customer always gets screwed and the company somehow gets to keep the money. This case is slightly different, i don't know if you had to pay for access but my sentiment of future use holds.
  
  If someone had to pay for it, then sure, laws should address the issue. If there's been some access time paid for remaining.
- Look into maidsafe.
  
  According to the site you have to buy tokens to use the network. Despite stating that the maidsafe network is decentralized, nobody controls it, etc., etc., having to buy tokens seems to be a barrier to entry.
  I don’t know, I guess I have a hard time with a network that reserves access via a coin that fluctuates on a market price. Seems like they’re playing a “it’s like bitcoin, but not, but kinda is” type of game.
  
  The site is atrocious. I'll look at it another time and try to get what it's really about. But it seems really ADHD-hostile.

What is it with people who think everything they don't like should be illegal? Have you never read a history book? Authoritarianism is bad mmkay
- But preservation is good.
  
  Not always.
  e: To clarify, I’m not saying all preservation is bad but that not all preservation is good. Take for example a website sharing the stories of named child victims or whatever revolts you… some things are best not preserved. If I host a website of stories that are my own creation, I should be able to take that down right? Just seems strange to me, the concept that nothing should fade into obscurity. I may be looking at it wrong.