fullscreen

eFinder

eFinder

Home › AI and Copyright Laws › Article

Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record

· 590 words · By Joe Mullin
AI and Copyright Laws Historical Record Preservation
headphones Listen to the eFinder podcast briefing
Generate a natural audio summary of this story
Daily briefing

What to know about AI and Copyright Laws

Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its paper.

Claims checked 7
Techniques found 2
Topics 2

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center100%
Right0%

7 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its paper.

Why it matters

That’s effectively what’s begun happening online in the last few months.

Common ground

The Internet Archive—the world’s largest digital library—has preserved newspapers since it went online in the mid-1990s.

Perspective signals

The tension in the story is sharpened by Loaded Language, Appeal to Fear: language that can make the dispute feel more urgent, personal, or adversarial than the underlying facts alone.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/blocking-internet-archive-wont-stop-ai-it-…

psychologyPropaganda Techniques Detected

eFinder identified 2 propaganda techniques in this article. These signals explain how wording, emphasis, or missing context can shape a reader's interpretation.

warning
Loaded Language 90% confidence
Using words with strong emotional connotations to influence an audience.
Found in this article: eFinder flagged this technique because the story's framing or source language may guide readers toward a particular interpretation. Review the claim checks and evidence below to separate what is directly supported from what is implied by wording or emphasis.
Why it matters: Recognizing loaded language helps readers compare the article's framing with the underlying facts and with coverage from other sources.
warning
Appeal to Fear 95% confidence
Building support by instilling anxiety or panic in the audience.
Found in this article: eFinder flagged this technique because the story's framing or source language may guide readers toward a particular interpretation. Review the claim checks and evidence below to separate what is directly supported from what is implied by wording or emphasis.
Why it matters: Recognizing appeal to fear helps readers compare the article's framing with the underlying facts and with coverage from other sources.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 7 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

help Insufficient Evidence 4
check_circle Corroborated 2
verified Verified By Reference 1
help
Claim 1: “The Internet Archive has preserved the web’s historical record for nearly thirty years.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence found in web search or Wikipedia to verify the Internet Archive has preserved the web’s historical record for nearly thirty years.
check_circle
Claim 2: “The Internet Archive has preserved newspapers since it went online in the mid-1990s.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent sources confirm the Internet Archive preserved newspapers since the mid-1990s. Web search results and Wikipedia entries explicitly state this timeline.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Anna's Archive is an open source search engine for shadow libraries that was launched by the pseudonymous Anna shortly after law enforcement efforts to shut down Z-Library in 2022. The site aggregates…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna's_Archive
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Internet Archive is an American non-profit library founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media inc…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 200…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
Claim 3: “The Internet Archive operates the Wayback Machine, which contains more than one trillion archived web pages.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and web search results directly confirm the Wayback Machine has archived over one trillion web pages as of October 2025.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalize to unseen data, and thus…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 200…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Wayback Machine or WABAC Machine is a fictional time machine and plot device from the 1960s American cartoon television series The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. Each episode of t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine_(Peabody's_Imp…
+ 3 more evidence sources
help
Claim 4: “Publishers, including The New York Times, are suing AI companies over whether training models on copyrighted material violates the law.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence found in web search or Wikipedia to confirm publishers are suing AI companies over training models on copyrighted material.
check_circle
Claim 5: “The New York Times began blocking the Internet Archive from crawling its website using technical measures beyond robots.txt rules.”
CORROBORATED
Independent web search results show The New York Times added archive.org_bot to robots.txt, implementing technical measures to block the Internet Archive.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The New York Times Company is an American mass media corporation that publishes The New York Times and its associated publications such as The New York Times International Edition and other media prop…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Company
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The New York Times (NYT) is a newspaper based in Manhattan, New York City. The New York Times covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces and reviews. As one of the…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The New York Times Book Review (NYTBR) is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the m…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Book_Review
+ 3 more evidence sources
help
Claim 6: “Wikipedia links to more than 2.6 million news articles preserved at the Internet Archive.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence found in web search or Wikipedia to confirm Wikipedia links to 2.6 million news articles at the Internet Archive.
help
Claim 7: “The New York Times attributes its blocking of the Internet Archive to concerns about AI companies scraping news content.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence found in web search or Wikipedia to support The New York Times attributing blocking to AI scraping concerns.
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.