[shortformblog]

Relying on an underfunded nonprofit to protect information incompletely is never going to be as good as having access to the original information source. I could point to many reasons for this, but let me start with just one: The internet has been around as a mainstream entity for just 30 years. The newspaper has 155 years of archives. Those archives have not been put on a number of vintage newspaper archive sites, making this information impossible to access.

Have you ever dealt with newspaper archives? Morgues of old content? They are often complex to manage and digitize. The Internet Archive, being asked to manage the literal history of the internet, has a massive backlog. It would be significantly better if someone who actually was up close and had an organizational interest in managing it could do it instead, because that makes the lift far easier to deal with.

The Internet Archive is an important tool, but it is not the silver bullet you think it is. It is not a set-it-and-forget-it tool. It is the recovery option of last resort, and it puts a lot of pressure on the organization to treat them as a simple replacement for content that should just be online. Any researcher worth their salt will tell you that.

[dr_kiszonka]

Is the Malta-based company vehemently against giving archivists access to the newspaper's archives? I can't imagine they would have any good use for it.

[spit2wind]

> Is the Malta-based company vehemently against giving archivists access to the newspaper's archives? I can't imagine they would have any good use for it.

Holding it for ransom is one "good" use for it.

[shortformblog]

Given their track record, I honestly imagine they just don’t care. See what they did with Gambling Times to get an idea of how they treat a publication with a deep archive.