Internet Archive Switzerland

615 points89 commentsa day ago
miki123211

IA needs to do what Usenet has done. Have a bunch of mission-aligned but unrelated orgs (under different ownership and distributed around the world) that peer with each other, distribute all the content obtained by any of the orgs to each other, but that have no technical channel nor capability to distribute DMCA complaints and takedown requests.

This is (AFAIK) basically how Usenet piracy works. You send your warez to one provider, and that provider instantly replicates them to all the providers they peer with, recursively, until they eventually reach the entire network. When any of those providers get a DMCA complaint, they remove the offending files (as they're required to do by law), but they don't inform other providers that they've received a DMCA notice, so those providers keep serving those files. This makes it much harder to remove data from the network than it is to add it.

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input_sh

Relevant blog post: https://blog.archive.org/2026/05/06/internet-archive-switzer...

> Internet Archive Switzerland joins a growing group of mission-aligned organizations, alongside Internet Archive, Internet Archive Canada, and Internet Archive Europe. Together, these independent libraries strengthen a shared vision: building a distributed, resilient digital library for the world.

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insom

That website is really struggling. Very tempting to go to a mirror on archive.org to view it :)

This seems very distinct from Internet Archive in the US, I wonder how separate it is.

Internet Archive Canada (I worked there in 2024) operated like it was a subsidiary, even though I think it was technically an independent organization with some shared directors. Same Slack, same archive.org email domain, etc.

IA.ch has Brewster and Caslon on the board.

I suspect that for the political threats of the current decade the different Internet Archive organisations need to start operating more independently, especially when it comes to funding?

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teew

The About Us section states:

> We are a team of change-makers who believe that every helping hand can raise a child and create a better future for them.

Which I found weird. And searching for this phrase yields many site-hits verbatim, which is even weirder. Anyone know what is up with that? Is it some kind of filler text?

Edit: I guess it's from a template, the Contact section is also mumbo-jumbo (address: 123 Fifth Avenue, NY and so on).

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imtomt

Huh. I can’t find the actual... archive. It mentions an AI archive less than 10 sentences in, and has a couple of links, but seems void of any actually archived content.

dopidopHN2

I have a related question on the domain archive.org

I've noticed that this domain now host content subject to copyright.

As a example : entire season of startrek "voyager" are randomly hosted there in direct download.

Why? Is that not a liability?

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red_admiral

Sankt Gallen's more physical archive is worth a visit too: https://www.stiftsbezirk.ch/de/stiftsbibliothek/

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Animats

Oh, good. We need more backups.

The one in Egypt doesn't get updated.

colinmegill

If you are running that thing, and reading this post: just do the right thing and get your own name.

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consumer451

Stop complaining about availability. Instead, create a solution.

If tpb dot org can still exist ...

At least these people tried. We need a p2p archive solution ASAP. Before our history is entirely re-written.

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DeadEye2111

Very proud of my alma mater town to be a place for this. It’s much needed infrastructure for Europe.

kennykartman

I'm so happy about this. Really. I cannot overstate how much important the internet archive is for all of us.

idovmamane

St Gallen has been archiving knowledge for over a thousand years. Now they are archiving AI models before they get retrained out of existence. The location is not a coincidence…

jrochkind1

> collecting the generative AI wave that is currently upon us all.

I don't understand what this means?

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anant-singhal

The uncomfortable part is that “preserving knowledge” sounds universally good until copyright law present themselves.

springtimesun

Ah, good, they are also mirroring the page load speed of the internet archive

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arian_

Finally a Swiss account I can afford to open.

addedGone

Let's hope they don't use Google captcha and KYC everyone.

damnitbuilds

"Its efforts will initially focus on [...] and collecting the generative AI wave that is currently upon us all."

Why would they want to collect the AI wave ?!

But about time the Internet Archive had a US-independent backup.

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Vasbarlog

Hugged to death? I can’t access the page.

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ok123456

Where's the search bar at the top to search the archive?

latenightcoding

>> Gen AI ARchive

isn't this a nightmare for privacy

ukanhaupa

cool!

zkmon

Anything that is being built today, based on the assumptions about the future that extend into multiple years, is bound to fade away. Because the "future no longer what it used be". What's the envisaged future context and purpose where this would save the world?