Ok, not moving away to Canada, but rather making a complete mirror of the Internet Archive there. Because Trump.
The Internet Archive (a.k.a. Wayback Machine) began recording web pages in 1996. If a web site changes, the old version can often be found at https://archive.org. This is an invaluable tool for journalists and others who need to show (for instance) how a politician’s stance on an issue has changed...or whether they are trying to hide something they used to have out in the open. For instance, Mike Pence recently removed a section on his site where he said he wanted to stop funding AIDS research, and give the money to groups doing “gay conversion therapy”. And Trump’s taxpayer-funded transition website til recently had puffery amounting to advertising about Trump’s properties, and explicit promotion of the Trump kids’ businesses.
Now, there are plenty of other uses for the WayBack Machine. If you accidentally trash your website, or it gets hacked and defaced, and you weren’t doing backup (ahem!), you may be able to recover lost content. Or, if you’re nostalgic for that website you used to love, that’s now gone, you can revisit it. More importantly, if a website is somehow forced to shut down or change its content by future edicts of Der Furor, the banned material will still be available in the WayBack Machine.
The Internet Archive is currently based in San Francisco. Given that Trump is hostile to a free press, and has already made comments about how the Internet is too open, and he’ll have to “do something” about that, the Internet Archive is taking steps to protect itself, by setting up a complete copy of the archive in Canada. It’ll be called the Internet Archive of Canada. It’s going to cost zillions of bucks (well, ok, millions). They started a fundraiser yesterday. You can help preserve the truth that sneaky pols try to hide — go to https://archive.org and click the donate link. Here’s an excerpt from the post there:
The history of libraries is one of loss. Libraries like ours are susceptible to different fault lines: earthquakes, legal regimes, institutional failure.
So this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in another country. We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because lots of copies keeps stuff safe. This will cost millions. With your support, we have the opportunity to build the digital library of the future.
What would a story about a library be without references?
How to use the WayBack Machine to link to past web content.
Article at The Verge, “The Internet Archive is building a Canadian copy to protect itself from Trump”.
Rachel Maddow’s segment on this, “Prospect of Trump presidency raises free speech concerns”, covers more on use by journalists, and risks to 1st Amendment freedoms.