You Cannot Search It If It Is Not There: The Wayback in Russia
June 26, 2015
I know that many people believe that a search reveals “all” and “everything” about a topic. Nothing is further from the truth. There are forces at work which wish to ensure that only certain information is available to a person with an Internet connection.
Navigate to “Russia Bans the Internet Archive’s ‘Wayback Machine’.” The Wayback Machine, which once had tie ups with outfits as different as the Library of Congress and Amazon. I found it useful when working as an expert witness to be able refresh my memory on certain Web sites’ presentation of information. I am confident there are other uses of “old information.”
According the write up, Russia is not to keen on the notion of old information. Kenneth Waggner, one of my high school teachers, had Russian language textbooks from the Stalin era. He had marked passages included in one book and excluded from another. If he were correct, the tradition of filtering has a reasonable track record in Russia. Keep in mind that other countries and company and individuals have the same goal: Present only what a smarter, more informed person thinks I should be able to access.
The article states:
By banning access to the Internet Archive, the government is denying Russian Internet users a powerful tool—one that is particularly useful in an environment where websites often disappear behind a state-operated blacklist, as is increasingly true in Russia today.
Governments are like horse races. No one is sure of the winner unless the race is rigged.
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2015
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