It seems the dispute started when the blogger in question attempted to doxx archive.today’s operator, which is bad, and then said operator resorted to rather questionable methods in retaliation, which made things worse.

Meanwhile, Internet Archive seems to be responding to this situation by rolling out some extremely aggressive new anti-bot measures, presumably to block AI scrapers. Unfortunately they’ve gone way over the line themselves: in the past 48 hours I’ve been blocked by them for escalating intervals for viewing just a handful of pages. Today I was able to view two (count them, two) articles before being blocked for 15 minutes, after which it let me view one (1) more and then blocked me indefinitely. No captcha or other way to get back in quickly, either — when this new block is triggered it just ignores all traffic from your IP address for some interval of time, which can be up to (at least) two full hours.

Needless to say their new restrictions make any serious research using them impossible. Human (not bot) users are now only able to make a handful of queries a day. That is not sustainable and they will have to better tune their new bot-blocker if they don’t want this to turn into a massive self-own …

…says A. Dumbass.

Coward is a good description (so glad TD has that).

I think someone didn’t read the piece.

You doomers are the bane of my existence. Get real.

I would offer a solution that respects the publishers’ paywall, preserves the historical record, and maybe even generates a small but desirable revenue stream for the Archive: Establish an agreement whereby the Archive is permitted to archive their content BUT LIMIT ACCESS according to the publishers’ wishes. Anyone wanting access should be required to pay a fee, with a base amount going to the publisher, and perhaps an additional fee going to support the Archive.

What do you think? I can’t imagine it’s too technically difficult to implement, though I understand the management burden could be substantial (thus the fee for the Archive to pay for it).

Moral panics and stupid reactions can be based on real threats.

Why can’t a news site compete with AI slop? Because humans are fucking stupid.

Mike clearly doesn’t think AI companies are bad guys, even if he might mildly disagree with some of their behaviors. This is plain as day in his relevant posts.

i, though, do. So my question is, why don’t you?

The Cambridge dictionary says “completely correct”, Brittanica says nearly the same, and Collins says “no different from what you are stating.”

Let me stop you there. Citing a dictionary only tells you how the dictionary denotation writers have observed how a word has been used. It is not prescriptive of how you must use a word nor is it a perfect guide to how someone used a word in a particular instance.

One doesn’t normally call someone exactly right when agreeing with only a single point of several expressed.

Note that you said “someone” was right, when Mike had said “that,” clearly not referring to the person but to the point her perceived was being made. And you can definitely say “that” is right when referring only to a portion of a longer sentence or thought.

the word “and” suggests it to be separate from the “considered to be” point,

No…? Some writers try to be concise so they don’t always reuse a phrase in the same sentence. “And” here suggests “considered to be” is distributed in front of each group. That’s how I would have written it.

and it’s not clear whether the quotation marks were meant as scare quotes, actual quotes of some unidentifed third party, or just a marker of colloquial usage.

It doesn’t really matter which and those aren’t mutually exclusive scenarios. It’s clear the quotes means the speaker is dissociating themselves from the judgment with the quotes by disavowing them as his own words.

It seems most likely both the quoted person and Mike were using language imprecisely.

Welcome to human communication.

On the other hand, another anonymous comment already replied to explain why they believe Mike considers OpenAI a villain

I didn’t read that as them speaking for Mike. They didn’t say, “Mike believes…” I’d attribute that position entirely to the anonymous commenter. Mike might agree, but I wouldn’t assume so until he says so or you dig into past articles where he has spoken of it. Also, I’d expect Mike to be more nuanced on the topic than is being represented. I’ve been reading his writing for 15+ years.

You seem unwilling to accept Mike’s own words while accepting an anonymous person’s even more imprecise words. Two people out of a sample of hundreds or thousands of possible readers isn’t a consensus.

Exactly doesn’t mean “entirely” as opposed to “partially.”

Of course it does. The Cambridge dictionary says “completely correct”, Brittanica says nearly the same, and Collins says “no different from what you are stating.” One doesn’t normally call someone exactly right when agreeing with only a single point of several expressed.

And you’re ignoring that “bad guys” is in singular quotes in the quote. It’s not an assertion that OpenAI is the bad guys (nor is it that they’re not). It’s an acknowledgement by the speaker that some people perceive it to be that way.

That was not clear; the word “and” suggests it to be separate from the “considered to be” point, and it’s not clear whether the quotation marks were meant as scare quotes, actual quotes of some unidentifed third party, or just a marker of colloquial usage. If the text had said “that are used”, it would have obviously been a continuation of “considered to be”.

With two people agreeing, and Mike’s succeeding sentence, I suppose you two are right about the point; I also expect Mike would have said explicitly if now considering OpenAI some kind of villain. But it’s not “clear” what the pronoun “that” referred to. It seems most likely both the quoted person and Mike were using language imprecisely.

On the other hand, another anonymous comment already replied to explain why they believe Mike considers OpenAI a villain, so I may not the only person who interpreted it that way—although the anonymous commenter doesn’t give any justification for why they believe those to be Mike’s reasons, so it could be a non-reply masquerading as a reply.

Distribution is infinite. Copy replicable. Archives can be duplicated in seconds. The value isn’t the static article, it’s the trust, authority, relationship, and ecosystem around it.

For the most part, legacy news orgs have done a pretty phenomenal job of burning through that currency themselves.

Sensationalism. Blurred lines between reporting and commentary. Chasing clicks over clarity. When trust erodes, the words just don’t carry the same weight.

Historically, news orgs benefited from scarcity. Limited printing presses. Limited broadcast channels. Limited shelf space. In that world, control of content equaled power.

What’s scarce today is attention, trust, and clarity. Not information. Discernment. Not access. Credibility.

You can block crawlers. Restrict archives. Try to lock down text. But none of that brings back what was lost.

Words are abundant. Trust isn’t.

I don’t accept that as “misquoting”; it seems reasonable to interpret the word “that” as referring to the entire block-quoted segment directly preceding it, especially given that it says “exactly” rather than something like “partially”.

Bullshit. Exactly doesn’t mean “entirely” as opposed to “partially.” And you’re ignoring that “bad guys” is in singular quotes in the quote. It’s not an assertion that OpenAI is the bad guys (nor is it that they’re not). It’s an acknowledgement by the speaker that some people perceive it to be that way.

And the succeeding sentence after “that’s exactly right” clearly indicates what Mike intended. He would have said something about OpenAI being a bad guy if that was what “that’s exactly right” was referring to.

While you might be right about the intended meaning, we can’t really determine that from the text, and I don’t agree with the “indicated by”. That indicates Mike is agreeing, again, with the “collateral damage” part, and says nothing about agreeing or disagreeing with the “bad guy” part. But it could just be sloppy writing.

It seems pretty clear cut to me. If Mike wanted to express his opinion of OpenAI, he would. You’re being obtuse.