[billiam]

Sorry, but this is a reductionist argument. There are any number of things that could disappear without mall visitors knowing about it (NOAA, Earth's magnetic field, etc) but that doesn't mean they are not important for researchers, students, and others all over the world.

[tablespoon]

You're missing the point. The question isn't "is it important for someone," it's "is it too big to fail" (i.e. does the government think it's sooo important that it must swoop in and save it).

If the Internet Archive shuts down and its archive lost, the economy will keep humming, masses of people won't lose their jobs let alone be inconvenienced, etc. Sure, some paper about Geocities culture cira 1997 won't get written, some researcher won't be able to access some old dead link, and I won't be able to access the download the PDF manual for some old product from a company that went out-of-business. Life will go on with almost no disruption, and no one will lose an election because they failed to act to save it.

[Kim_Bruning]

> and no one will lose an election because they failed to act to save it.

At the very least in a just world, I think the ability to reference historical data from the web probably would influence some elections.

In the unjust world we actually live in, access to historical data can be used as a tool (or weapon!) by journalists, pacs, candidates, etc. to find strengths and weaknesses, and to influence elections.

"back in 2026, the candidate enacted XYZ, as proven by [1][2][3] (all ia links). Ten years later this ended in <great victory|terrible disaster> therefore you <should|shouldn't> vote for them"

... Also, eg. Wikipedia often uses IA links for references to deal with link rot, which happens a lot more than you'd think. I won't say WP would shut down completely, but it's effectiveness would definitely be degraded.

Same probably for a lot of professions and jobs that require research. (including eg. secretaries, special librarians, political assistants, etc...)

Just because you personally can't imagine the impact on society, doesn't mean it doesn't have an impact on society.

[Dalewyn]

I agree with tablespoon that the demise of IA would not even be a footnote for the commons. So what if an archive of the internet goes away? Most people aren't going to care, and that's the brutal and apathetic reality.

[Kim_Bruning]

I agree that many people might not directly care if IA goes away. But obviously the destruction of such a large amount of knowledge would not be without consequences (including to courts themselves)

[chongli]

If earth’s magnetic field disappeared then the solar wind would begin to strip away the atmosphere. It’d be the beginning of the extinction of all life on the surface of the planet. It would also interfere with communications and knock out power grids everywhere. People would be bombarded with radiation and begin to get cancer at ever increasing rates. We’d also be able to see the aurorae at lower latitudes.

People would notice!

[labster]

Just on the defense of NOAA, I think most people would notice if they couldn’t get a weather forecast or couldn’t fly a plane in stormy weather. NOAA is a major collector of weather data, and provides half of the world’s GCM initial conditions … the European models would get worse with a huge data hole.

This is just more libertarian bullshit that entire government departments could disappear without anyone noticing. But if NOAA disappeared it would wreck the economy. What a terrible example.