Internet Archive's Wayback Machine settles lawsuit over storage of web pages

[mandy]

The Wayback Machine is cool, not just because you can go back and see what Ars looked like in May 1999, but because its 1+ petabyte archive contains a treasure trove of data for researchers. Last year, the Internet Archive, which runs the Wayback Machine, was sued by Healthcare Advocates after the attorneys for another company used the Wayback Machine to access information that might be helpful in an ongoing legal action.

Healthcare Advocates and the Internet Archive have finally resolved their differences, reaching an undisclosed out-of-court settlement. In some ways, that's disappointing news for onlookers who were hoping to see how a court would sift through the complex issues facing Internet archives, caching systems, and more. More on that later...

full article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060831-7634.html

[mandy]

The Internet Archive has won another copyright battle:

The Internet Archive project has won an exemption from US copyright law, overcoming an obstacle which threatened the entire work of the not-for-profit group. It can now host copies of obsolete computer games and software without fear of prosecution.

The Library of Congress has published six exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalises duplication of material copyrighted to someone else. The exemption is from punishment for breaking the kinds of copy controls on material which are designed to stop unauthorised duplication.

One of the six exemptions is for computer software or games for the purposes of preservation, but only if the original machine, format or technology involved is obsolete...

full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/01/..._reprieve/