Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record
Summary
Several major news publishers, including The New York Times and The Guardian, are blocking the Internet Archive from crawling their websites. This action is driven by concerns that AI companies are scraping news content for training models, leading to lawsuits over copyright infringement.
IFF Assessment
Publishers blocking archival sites due to AI scraping concerns hinders the preservation of the web's historical record, which can be a valuable resource for cybersecurity analysis and incident response.
Defender Context
While not directly a vulnerability, the deliberate removal of historical web content can obscure evidence crucial for understanding past cyber threats, attack vectors, and threat actor behavior. Defenders should be aware that readily available historical data on websites might become scarcer, impacting incident investigations and threat intelligence gathering.