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Blocking Internet Archive Won't Stop AI, but Will Erase Web's Historical Record

Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record

eff.org

March 21, 2026

3 min read

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Summary

The Internet Archive is the largest digital library, preserving over one trillion archived web pages through its Wayback Machine. Recent actions by publishers to block the Internet Archive threaten the preservation of the web's historical record.

Key Takeaways

The Internet Archive has preserved over one trillion archived web pages, serving as a critical resource for journalists, researchers, and historians since the mid-1990s.
Major publishers, including The New York Times, have begun blocking the Internet Archive from crawling their websites, risking the loss of historical records that are often the only reliable documentation of how stories were originally published.
Courts have long recognized that making material searchable is a form of fair use, which applies to the Internet Archive's mission of preserving the web's historical record.
If publishers continue to block the Internet Archive, significant portions of the web's historical documentation may vanish, impacting future research and public access to information.

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