Journalists rally behind Wayback Machine as news publishers block AI scraping

More than 120 journalists, such as Cory Doctorow, Taylor Lorenz, Ron Suskind, and Rachel Maddow, have endorsed a petition initiated by the digital rights organization Fight for the Future in defense of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. This action follows The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co.'s recent restrictions on the Wayback Machine's access to their articles, motivated by concerns that AI firms might utilize the archive for training purposes. Joe Mullin, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), urged publishers to remove these limitations and consider legal action against AI companies instead. He highlighted that Wikipedia links to over 2.6 million news articles stored by the Wayback Machine in 249 languages. Brishti Basu, a reporter for PressProgress, shared her experience using the Wayback Machine to demonstrate that the Vancouver Police Department altered a press release after receiving criticism. In February, Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, wrote an opinion piece for TechDirt, asserting that restricting web archives undermines the public record. The petition commends the Wayback Machine for its role in preserving journalism amid increasing scrutiny from major media organizations.