The Internet Archive, the organization that tries to back up the entire internet, is going to set up a mirror in Canada. The organization wants to prepare for “a web that can be curbed” under the rule of Donald Trump.
The Internet Archive states that ‘the history of libraries is one of loss, for example due to natural disasters, politics or the failure of the institution itself’. The organization fears that the election of Republican Donald Trump as president of the United States will also become such a threat to the archive. According to the organization, control, privacy violations and censorship will only increase under the new regime.
According to Motherboard, President-elect Donald Trump has already made harsh statements about the internet during his election campaign. The tech industry ‘should board it up’ to curb the spread of extremism. He immediately anticipated defenders of freedom of expression and labeled them ‘fools’.
The organization is asking for donations to carry out the operation. The whole thing would cost ‘millions’. The archive is supplemented weekly with three hundred million web pages with a total size of thirteen to fifteen terabytes. In total, The Internet Archive now holds more than thirty petabytes of data. The organization has partnered with Wikipedia to conserve resources, make numerous classic games playable in the browser, provide a virus museum, and have created a Firefox add-on that replaces 404s with archive pages. The organization’s best-known application is probably The Wayback Machine.