According to engadget, major news publishers including The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Financial Times, along with the social forum Reddit, have begun blocking the Internet Archive’s web crawler from accessing their sites. The core issue is that these publishers fear AI companies are using the Archive’s Wayback Machine and its API as a structured, readily available database to indirectly scrape their copyrighted articles for training large language models. Robert Hahn, head of business affairs for The Guardian, explicitly stated the Archive would be “an obvious place” for AI businesses to “plug their own machines into and suck out the IP.” A New York Times representative confirmed the block, citing the Archive’s provision of “unfettered access” to their content without authorization. This move is part of a broader legal and financial battle publishers are waging against AI firms over the use of their content.
The archive becomes an AI backdoor
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about blocking a crawler. It’s a strategic move in a much larger war. Publishers have been trying to sue AI companies directly, with mixed results. And they’ve been negotiating licensing deals, though those often seem to benefit corporate coffers more than individual writers. But the Internet Archive presents a unique problem. It’s a nonprofit library, a public good that preserves the web’s history. Its mission is fundamentally different from a commercial AI lab. Yet, its very utility—offering a massive, organized, and accessible trove of text—makes it a perfect target for circumvention. So publishers are essentially cutting off a potential supply line. They’re saying if they can’t control or get paid for the direct scrape, they’ll try to dam the indirect reservoirs too.
A messy collision of missions
This creates a real tension, doesn’t it? On one side, you have the imperative to preserve digital history and provide open access for research and journalism. The Internet Archive has been invaluable for that. On the other, you have publishers desperately trying to protect a business model that’s already on shaky ground. They see their archived articles not just as historical records, but as proprietary data assets. And in the AI gold rush, data is the new oil. So we’re watching a messy collision between the ethos of the open web and the realities of the AI economy. The fear is that this could lead to a more fragmented, walled-off internet, where even historical content gets locked down preemptively.
Where this is probably headed
Look, this blocking is likely just the opening salvo. I think we’ll see more publishers follow suit, creating a kind of digital cordon sanitaire around their archives. The Internet Archive might have to develop more sophisticated access controls or robots.txt compliance, which goes against its grain. And the AI companies? They’ll probably just find another workaround—maybe focusing on different sources or pushing harder on the “fair use” legal argument. Basically, it’s another front in the same exhausting battle. The real question is whether this pressure leads to a sustainable system where creators are compensated, or if it just entrenches a cat-and-mouse game that stifles both innovation and preservation. The whole saga, detailed in the original Nieman Lab piece, is a must-read to understand how deep these fault lines run.
