> Asking users to email them with details of their OS, browser, IP address is just crazy.

It's surely to serve as data to help tell humans apart from bots.

> Changes made by IA shouldn't become my responsibility.

They're a free service. It's not their responsibility to service you either.

Imagine if Apple or Microsoft introduced a bug and said, ah yes we know about it we did that on purpose and we know it affects a huge number of people, if each of you could email us these details that'd be great. It's just such an insane request.

IA have broken it and have no real idea how to make it better so they are going to whitelist IPs or browsers or entire operating systems? Wild.

Who do you think the Internet Archive is? They are not Google, they have very low funding, very high expenses and are constantly under legal pressure.

The fact you can even access the Internet Archive for free is a result of tens thousands of human hours striving for one goal. Digital Preservation. If you rely so much on IA, you should consider donating.

I do donate. But that doesn't mean I have to thank them before every meal or think that the service is perfect.

What do you expect them to do though? You have to be a reasonable person.

Data analysis would be a good start, better blocking heuristics, an off-the-shelf solution used by other organisations that don't have this problem, etc.

Which other organisation is as valuable to scrape as IA?

What is 'insane' here is the shear level of entitlement displayed here, including lumping a niche, free, volunteer supported service in with billion dollar, for profit corporations and demanding they pander to your inflated expectations.

Wild.

It doesn't matter who or what the service is, how much they have, or whatever else. They created a problem and now users have to pay for the inconvenience by emailing(!) specific details that could be captured automatically through web logs: OS, browser, IP address. It's ridiculous.

> details that could be captured automatically through web logs

You can't be serious. Are you ok? The entire point is that they're trying to tell bots and humans apart. They're trusting email (and how you write your email) as a good signal that you're human. What are you talking about getting it from the log? The point is to correlate. How do you expect them to know who you are in the log unless you give them that info?

> They created a problem

No, they're dealing with a problem, and compromised that some human users may unfortunately get blocked.

> and now users have to pay for the inconvenience

You don't have to anything. You can just not use them. They don't owe you their service.

Somebody is handing out free apple lollipops, they ran out, compromised on giving grape ones, and now you're complaining you're being forced to eat a grape one and you don't like grape. Don't eat it.

Lollipops?

No, it's more like you're requesting something from them and they're telling you they may need some technical, non-personally-identifiable info from you to fulfill your request.

> They're a free service. It's ultimately not their responsibility to service you either.

They are a nonprofit with a mission and continue to solicitate donations based on that mission.

OTOH I do appreciate their openness. It beats those times when I try visiting a site, only to get a cryptic 403 error or similar and no suggestion the site would like to hear from me.