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A comment on “Google just started mass banning/limiting Archive Team downloads”.

Re:“Google just started mass banning/limiting Archive Team d... by notacoward on Monday April 01, 2019 @08:10AM (#19542492)
What's really stupid about this is that it would have been less effort and expense for everyone involved if Google had arranged to work with Archive Team directly instead of forcing them to scrape content via HTTP over the public internet. That includes Google themselves. What's happening now is probably that they're ramping down the number of servers handling Google+ content, which they could have done even sooner if they'd cooperated on a proper archiving strategy.

I guess sometimes Google does this kind of crap just to prove (mostly to themselves) that they can. Truly, the bully of the internet.

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Re:“Google just started mass banning/limiting Archive Team d... by identity-haver on Monday April 01, 2019 @10:19AM (#19543458)
There was a claim [1] that the G+ terms of service might legally prohibit them from doing this after the service is shut down. I haven't verified it.

However, it's clear that for an archiving effort this big, people at Google are explicitly allowing it. The user agents and fetch patterns of the Archive Team crawler were clearly distinct enough to get caught by an automated tool, and someone knew someone at Google in order to get it unblocked.

Unfortunately, any archival effort that requires the "Warrior" crawler (and not just a guy with a 4TB disk) is at the mercy of the website's remaining staff and management. Just ask Soundcloud. Archive Team started to archive their stuff when it looked like they were going to go under, but Soundcloud shut them down.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19410050

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:“Google just started mass banning/limiting Archive Team d... by notacoward on Monday April 01, 2019 @10:46AM (#19543766)
That's a really good point. OTOH, I think it would be nearly impossible for anyone to make a claim that their privacy has been violated by archiving public posts. In that case, rights have been granted to everyone (i.e. the rights Archive Team is currently exercising without issue) so limitations on rights granted to Google itself are irrelevant. OTOOH, IANAL. ;)
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