Stock Photo Industry Helps to Destroy Internet Archive

[Matthew Chan]

It is really ashame that part of our advice is to ask website owners to remove their websites from the Internet Archive.  I do think those folks really are trying to preserve a piece of history.  But the ongoing rampage by the stock photo companies of looking for any infringement however small even if accidental requires me to advise people to just eliminate their contributions to the Internet.

I have a number of sites that go back nearly 10 years and it was actually fun to see the evolution of those sites but I have had to ask the Internet Archive to remove my websites because I cannot be sure there isn't another stray image that was inserted by some Indian web banner and header designer.

Perhaps one day the Internet Archive folks need to become aware that the work they are doing is being undermined and used underhandedly by the stock photo industry.

Matthew

[Oscar Michelen]

Matt:

Good point, I think we should contact the folks at The Wayback Machine (archive.org) and get their take on this , I will shoot them an email and see if we get a response. The lawyer in me has to add a caveat to your advice: Folks who are involved in litigation and even those who receive notice of the potential claim should not delete the archive for the site in question until they have saved whatever is on their onto their own hard drive or external drive. This is so for two reasons:  (1) a court could view that as "spoliation of evidence" and could rule unfavorably against the party that did that; (2) letter recipients will want to show the minimal nature of the use of the image and the best way to prove that this is a lot of noise over a minimal infringement is by showing a court that these thumbnails comprised a very small part of the site and had minimal impact on one's business and web traffic.  

So download the screen captures on to an external hard drive or two and then once you have confirmed that it is safely stored elsewhere, contact The Wayback Machine and ask them to remove it from the internet archive.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

Also worth noting is taking steps to prevent the wayback machine from re-archiving your site in the future, instructions can be found here. I've gone a step further and also added a noarchive tag in the meta section of my pages, with this google should not archive cache your pages and your images will stay out of google image search..

[Matthew Chan]

Oscar,

Obviously, I cannot speak to anyone else except me (but I suspect I am not alone). I have strived over the years to maintain an excellent reputation especially when it comes to my online presence. Trust me when I say that it hurts me to have the Internet Archive delete my 10 years of history of various websites. In many ways, it speaks to my credibility as I have maintained for a long time an online presence

When I looked back at the historical snapshots of my various websites, it was like going down memory lane watching to see how I evolved my presence and business over the years. I am actually sentimental about these things. Truth be told, my web style has always been traditionally light on graphics and images and heavier on text and basic layout. So, for me, it isn't a matter trying to cover up a trail of photo infringements.

However, I cannot say for absolute certain that these Indian web designers didn't put me into a compromising position more than once. Hence, having been through this grief like the thousands of other letter recipients, I don't care to repeat the incident.

I have chosen to take a more assertive position and to control my online presence. That includes taking down anything that isn't meant for current use.