Many countries and national libraries run their own web archives. We trust that the contents of these public web archives have not been tampered with or maliciously manipulated.Īlthough the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is the oldest and largest public web archive, it is not the only public web archive. In addition, public web archives are created and stored by independent archival organizations, such as the Internet Archive. Upon playback, the user can interact with the archived page, including clicking links to explore what the web page was connected to. Web archives, on the other hand, record the entire contents of a web page, including its source HTML and embedded images, stylesheets, or JavaScript source. There can be no interaction with the page-no scrolling, no hovering, no clicking of links or even revealing what web pages the links on the page referred to. Web archives have been used as evidence in court cases and in the court of public opinion-often to hold politicians and governments accountable for things they have said in the past.īut what is web archiving, and is it any better than simply taking a screenshot of a web page? First, screenshots may suffice as a quick reminder of what a web page looked like, but images such as screenshots can be easily edited and manipulated (and people know this), so they are not suitable as evidence. The Wayback Machine itself has been the subject of articles in the New Yorker and The Atlantic (in 20). 1 Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, DecemJohn Oliver, Last Week Tonight, HBO, March 18, 2018. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which can replay past versions of web pages, has been mentioned in news articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post and has been highlighted by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and HBO’s John Oliver. Web archiving has received increased attention in the popular media over the past few years.

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