Internet archive - Is it a scraper site?

[endomorph1]

Question - Would an internet archive website (similar to WayBackMachine) be considered a scraper site?

In principle, it collects other peoples websites and displays them under your domain.

Answers on a postcard to .....

[JerryOdom]

Yes it is a scraper site. Wayback has just been scraping since before it was fashionable.

[endomorph1]

So do you think it would be a big adsense no-no?

[mzanzig]

I think that an archive site is very difficult to monetize. The second you start storing documents retrieved from the web and putting ads on it, you will find yourself in legal trouble. After all, you are not presenting "snippets" or "quotes" that may fall under fair-use - no, you store full HTML pages with the goal to earn money from the ads you put on the site.

There are only very few companies that might get away with this (with pockets deep enough to pay dozens of lawyers without even noticing it). We know these guys. But endomorph1? Will simply be squashed by the lawsuits.

Just my $0.02

[Jenstar]

You would be monetizing content you do not have permission to republish. AdSense would not be allowed... and if you did include AdSense, all it would take is one DMCA to raise the flags.

[allthewhile]

From what I understand the internet archive is already a party to a lawsuit, but I'm not sure of the current status or the reasoning. I'm sure some googling could find out, though.

[tebrino]

I find WayBackMachine very useful resource since it helps discover my previous design errors and it doesn't have any ads. Would I create similar service? NO.

[endomorph1]

OK. Thanks for all your answers.

[jomaxx]

It really bears no resemblance to a scraper site. It goes leaps and bounds beyond what a scraper, or even Google's and Yahoo's caches, try to do.

Two other important aspects: (1) Their cached content doesn't get indexed because they disallow it in the robots.txt file, and (2) As mentioned above, they don't show advertising and would probably have a multitude of problem if they tried.

[Sobriquet]

i dont like the concept because WayBackMachine has already archived my siet since last so many years and they display their adverts on it! its been allmost all orignal content and i hate to lose its profits

[tebrino]

I haven't seen any ads on WayBackMachine, are we talking about same site?

[Lorel]

I find the way back machine VERY useful when trying to prove who wrote stolen content first as it is 3rd party proof. However this only works for sites/content that has been oline for over a year.

[ann]

absolutely! I used it to get some scrapers knocked off their isp so I think of it as a valuable resource.

Isn't it owned by AOL?

Ann