More than 340 U.S. news publishers have blocked the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine from indexing their content, citing concerns that AI companies may use the archives for model training.

Key Points

• Over 340 national and local news outlets, including The New York Times, have restricted access to the Wayback Machine.
• The majority of these blocked sites are local newspapers owned by five major conglomerates, primarily USA Today.
• Publishers argue that blocking the tool protects their proprietary content and ensures access remains limited to paying subscribers.
• Internet Archive director Mark Graham maintains that the library is not a source for commercial AI scraping and warns that blocking it harms the public record.
• A petition signed by over 200 journalists advocates for the tool's preservation, citing its necessity for historical research and digital investigations.

Why it Matters

The restriction of the Wayback Machine threatens the long-term preservation of digital history, as nearly 40% of web pages from a decade ago are already inaccessible. This conflict highlights the growing tension between media companies protecting their intellectual property and the public's need for an open, verifiable historical record.