Fader, Peter wrote:
> It would be a damn shame if the Way Back Machine were stifled. It’s a valuable research resource besides being a lot of fun.

I agree. The Way Back Machine is amazing--and an incredible resource for a society that has relied on paper records to document history for so long. I had a conversation with my girlfriend Tara yesterday about how bad the DMCA was. I had called it one of the stupidest laws on the books, and she pointed to anti-miscegeny or anti-homosexual or similar type of laws as being worse. And certainly those are terrible laws. But they're easy to point to as examples because the victims are clear. With laws like the DMCA, the cost is in freedom of speech, in loss of our cultural heritage and history, in loss of freedom in general--so it's good to see examples of the pain experienced before it's too late, examples like political criticism silenced through copyright law, like the Internet Archive being worried about shutting down, like engineering students and tinkerers everywhere being forced to think about legal consequences before inventing the next great thing that will drive the world economy on the back of American inventiveness. So I'm glad that the Internet is the great place that it is, that there are still dark corners in which people who are targeted by the Copyright Inquisition can do their work, and most of all I'm proud when the Gallileos of our time do not mutter silently under their breath but instead shout proudly "It is true!" and I'm goddamn proud to live in a country that still rewards them for it. Will your daughter live in such a country when she is my age, Dr. Fader? That I do not know. I can only hope.

--Ari