[vervas]

The importance of archiving is huge taking in account the numerous times libraries have been burnt, footage being lost and others parts of history being buried into the ocean with shipwrecks.

But more importantly if one thinks of Orwell's 1984, were all printed records were manipulated on a daily basis to reflect a different state of reality while the events were changing, in the days of internet that is not just a tedious sci-fi process but one that can be performed in a fairly efficient and methodical manner to an extent that it cannot be told what was real or not.

[aethertron]

To guard against manipulation is why we should have our own personal archives. Decentralisation. Also, cryptography to validate authorship. (Basically, I still want Xanadu.)

[EGreg]

I personally think that HTTP should be gradually supplanted by things like IPFS, all documents would be content-addressable and both accessing an archiving would be done in a decentralized manner.