#The Internet Archive

With schools and public libraries shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive, through their Open Library platform, is offering 1.4 million digitized books for free. Despite their free catalog, the Internet Archive recognizes that the global pandemic also impacts authors and publishers. If the book you want is not available, the Internet Archive is also recommending people to check out Amazon or Better World Books instead. "The library system, because of our national emergency, is coming to aid those that are forced to learn at home," said Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. "This was our dream for the original Internet coming to life: the Library at everyone's fingertips." Source: Internet Archive Blogs Via: arstechnica After learning that AI companies use Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to gather data from websites, Reddit will start to block it from touching the site's posts, comments, and profiles. "Internet Archive provides a service to the open web, but we’ve been made aware of instances where AI companies violate platform policies, including ours, and scrape data from the Wayback Machine," said Tim Rathschmidt, Reddit's spokesperson. Rathschmidt also stated, "Until they’re able to defend their site and comply with platform policies we’re limiting some of their access to Reddit data to protect redditors." The company has reached out to Internet Archive to inform them of this change. Read more in our articles including "The Internet Archive offering 1.4 million copyrighted books for free" and "Reddit to block Internet Archive Wayback Machine".