Walled Culture has already written about the two–pronged attack by the copyright industry against the Internet Archive, which was founded by Brewster Kahle, whose Kahle/Austin Foundation supports this blog. The Intercept has an interesting article that reveals another reason why some newspaper publishers are not great fans of the site: The New York Times tried …
But how do you determine what’s just ‘fixing poor wording’ and what’s actively hiding major bias or retcons of history?
Radio NZ got caught a year or so ago with a staffer who was editing articles syndicated from Reuters to be more pro-Russian. Should they be able to sweep that under the rug and claim it was only ever the one article they got caught on?
Likewise, bin Laden was originally hailed as an anti-Soviet freedom fighter. The articles relating to that are part of the historical record and kinda important.
Allowing the historical record to be retconned with impunity was probably the defining trait of 1984. It’s really not a path you want to go down.
You don’t and there’s no good way to reconcile my two opinions. I don’t disagree the archive should exist, I’m just saying, manipulating information is a valid reason, but the author’s bullying publishers for mistakes isn’t.
Acknowledging literally every change after any news content is published in any context isn’t bullying anyone.
It’s the absolute bare minimum to not be a piece of shit.