[aspenmayer]

I was responding to ‘bagpuss because they made a claim that the site linked was respondent to OP, and was free. You and I can quibble about what they meant, but a plain reading of their comment implies that the functionality that OP asked for was free, because ‘bagpuss never mentioned the CMS, and in fact the CMS seems like a red herring in this discussion entirely.

I do feel that the site misrepresents the value proposition of the Internet Archive backup/restore service, because the site’s value proposition is convenience for users who don’t know that there are actually free, actually open source ways to backup and restore content from Internet Archive, and that site isn’t it. They’re banking on users not knowing any better in that case, which isn’t unethical per se, buyer beware etc, but it’s shady.

That above combined with the pricing model makes it scammy because you have to spend a minimum of $10 in crypto or other non-reversible payment for something that should not cost the user anything, as the Internet Archive is bearing the lion’s share of the costs. And if it doesn’t do what you needed, you’ve already paid in worthless credits.

https://archivarix.com/en/tutorial/#list-3

> Second example: the big site contains 25,520 files. From this quantity you can deduct 1 because they will be free of charge. So we have 25,519 paid files. First thousand will cost $10, and the rest 24,519 costs only $1 per thousand, therefore $24.519 . Full price for the big site recovery is $34.52!!!

$34.52 is not a reasonable price for this by any means.

That said, I make no claims about the site being respondent to OP’s request, as I’m not OP. I simply rejected the claims brought by ‘bagpuss.

[KomoD]

> but a plain reading of their comment implies that the functionality that OP asked for was free, because ‘bagpuss never mentioned the CMS, and in fact the CMS seems like a red herring in this discussion entirely.

What I'm saying is YOU said THE SITE was misrepresenting itself when THE SITE isn't. It would've been BAGPUSS that was misrepresenting THE SITE if anyone.

> for something that should not cost the user anything, as the Internet Archive is bearing the lion’s share of the costs.

It's still costing Archivarix money to run the service, yes you are paying for convenience, I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

Ideally the Internet Archive should provide an easy way to download sites but they don't.

> $34.52 is not a reasonable price for this by any means.

Why is it not reasonable? They spent time developing this service and it costs money to run, if you want to save money then yeah you can recover it yourself with some open-source software like wayback-machine-downloader, but some people just want to recover sites without having to bother with any of that.

[aspenmayer]

> What I'm saying is YOU said THE SITE was misrepresenting itself when THE SITE isn't. It would be BAGPUSS that was misrepresenting THE SITE.

Both of these things can be true, that ‘bagpuss was misrepresenting the site, and the site is intentionally vague as to what is free and what isn’t so as to muddy the waters and paint themselves as saviors and good people for being open source while overcharging for a product to the degree that the site misrepresents itself, and I believe that they both are true.

> Ideally the Internet Archive should provide an easy way to download sites but they don't.

I agree, but that’s not really relevant to our discussion or to ‘bagpuss’s claims.

And if IA did provide an easy way to do that, the site linked would be an even worse deal.

The site is misrepresenting itself as being worth paying for at any price.

Furthermore, you can download an entire site using your web browser ‘Save page as’ -> ‘web page, complete’ dialog in conjunction with the undocumented trick:

> This is undocumented, but if you retrieve a page with id_ after the datecode, you will get the unmodified original document without all the Wayback scripts, header stuff, and link rewriting.

Seems pretty easy to me, but only if you know how. Which is the only reason anyone would use that site - they simply don’t know how bad a deal the site is, or they have more dollars than sense.

[KomoD]

> and the site is intentionally vague as to what is free

It's not? It says the CMS is free and open-source and they have prices listed for the paid services they provide.

> and paint themselves as saviors and good people for being open source while overcharging for a product to the degree that the site misrepresents itself, and I believe that they both are true.

Simply saying that something is open-source is you painting yourself as a "savior"?

> And if IA did provide an easy way to do that, the site linked would be an even worse deal.

Obviously, if they did provide it then there would be no reason at all to pay.

> Furthermore, you can download an entire site using your web browser ‘Save page as’ -> ‘web page, complete’ dialog in conjunction with the undocumented trick:

No, not an entire site, just the current HTML document and the accompanying files for it (e.g. scripts, images, etc.) If you want to sit for hours manually doing that for thousands of pages then feel free.

[aspenmayer]

Do you work for the site or something?

> It's not? It says the CMS is free and open-source and they have prices listed for the paid services they provide.

You brought up the CMS. I didn’t. I don’t have any point to defend regarding it. ‘bagpuss was wrong about what they said about the site, and I replied to that.

> Simply saying that something is open-source is you painting yourself as a "savior"?

It’s called marketing.

Are you unfamiliar with what scammy means? The site feels scammy to me. So I said so. I don’t think you can demonstrate that I don’t believe it’s scammy, and you haven’t convinced me either.

> Obviously, if they did provide it then there would be no reason at all to pay.

I don’t have any reason to pay either. ‘bagpuss can defend the scammy site, but I won’t so I agree there’s no reason to pay, for different reasons.

> No, not an entire site, just the current HTML document and the accompanying files for it (e.g. scripts, images, etc.) If you want to sit for hours manually doing that for thousands of pages then feel free.

I have no reason to believe a scammy site will do any better than that either. You haven’t demonstrated that the site even works, and their marketing doesn’t inspire confidence.

As I didn’t introduce the site, I’m not beholden to supporting it or not. Take ‘bagpuss to task if anyone.

I don’t think you know what you’re even arguing about or for because none of your arguments or claims even go anywhere, they all revolve around this scammy site that you didn’t even bring up. Nothing about your argument makes sense.

That you haven’t made any effort to correct ‘bagpuss by replying to them directly is curious.

[KomoD]

> Do you work for the site or something?

Nope.

> You brought up the CMS. I didn’t.

Yes, again, it was to explain to you that they only say that the CMS is free, not the services because you said:

> This site is misrepresenting itself as open source and free, while simultaneously having an affiliate program and pricing page, which, as I've said, isn't free

They only said their CMS was open-source and free, not any of their other services.

> I don’t think you know what you’re even arguing about or for because none of your arguments or claims even go anywhere

I was correcting you because you said things that just aren't true:

> This site is misrepresenting itself as open source and free, while simultaneously having an affiliate program and pricing page, which, as I've said, isn't free. It's unverifiable whether or not it's open source, as you don't even download/run the software yourself: it's a web app, which is beside the point, as web apps could also be open source, but as there's no way to self-host this, let alone download it and/or run it, for free or otherwise. I think it's safe to avoid this scammy site.

Which is just not accurate at all, as I've already explained several times. You can dislike the site all you want but you don't need to slander them.

[aspenmayer]

>> to clarify, i have nothing to do with this site, i used it once, years back and there was a free tier or at least a free/crippled version at that time

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42291616

Per ‘bagpuss, the backup was free when they used it, and they were referring to the backup, not the CMS.

So, I would argue you were mistaken.