You can now access a decentralized version of Archive.org
If you point your favorite browser at https://dweb.me/ right now you will access a decentralized version of the archiving site Archive.org.
Dweb, which may stand for decentralized or distributed, stands for a system that is not centralized. Popular examples of such systems are Napster or Bittorrent.
The core difference between decentralized and distributed is that nodes are interlinked in a variety of ways in distributed systems whereas they may not be in decentralized systems.
Centralized systems put a lot of control into the hands of a few. If a site or service gets taken down for whatever reason, it is gone and cannot be accessed anymore. This won't happen with decentralized systems which make it a lot harder or even impossible to remove a resource.
Mozilla talked about Dweb recently on the organization's Hacks blog that is aimed at developers and promised to publish follow-up articles on Mozilla's stance on a decentralized or distributed version of the Internet.
The Internet Archive has not announced the launch of the decentralized version of its website anywhere as far as I can tell. The official Internet Archive Blog offers a series of stories and reports about the decentralized web, and it is there that you may receive some information about the current implementation of the decentralized Archive.org resource.
A FAQ answers popular questions about the decentralized web.
It explains its components
A new Decentralized Web requires a decentralized way to store and retrieve the files that make up websites, decentralized log-ins so users can interact, and a peer-to-peer payment system.
why it matters
The original vision of the World Wide Web was to empower users, but many users now complain that too much power and user data is concentrated in the hands of too few corporate and government players, making it easier to conduct warrantless surveillance, feed the public disinformation and impose censorship. It also makes it possible for state-sponsored or criminal hackers to scoop up personal data and passwords of millions of users at a time, and to use that information to create false identities, steal money and more. And over time, huge amounts of creative content—essays, musings, personal messages, photos, videos and other data— have disappeared when commercial entities shut down, or even when they just change their protocols.
and what decentralized storage means
Decentralized storage means that rather than the current system under the World Wide Web, where a file exists in one physical location on a server, a file can instead be stored in multiple computers around the world, possibly with just bits of the file in each one, that all come together and get sent to a user who requests that file.
The Dweb version of Archive.org appears to use a variety of protocols including GUN, Webtorrent, IPFS, and YJS.
It is a bit on the slow side of things right now but works fine for the most part. You may notice, however, that images are not loaded right now. While it is unclear why that is, one possible explanation is that it takes time to make resources truly decentralized.
Now You: What is your take on the Dweb?
IPFS is said to be partly inspired from bittorrent, which compared to http is a privacy disaster, as everybody can know what you’re downloading/uploading.
I didn’t dive in the docs. Does IPFS solve this problem ? Or does it make it even worse, by not even letting the network forget what you downloaded/uploaded in the past ?
Not much of a delay. Currently the decentralized version only provides the detail page, thus the “theatre-ia-wrap” via dweb.me. Par example for a book:
https://dweb.me/arc/archive.org/details/weirdislands00boscrich
Still the content of the book-reader itself is embeded and delivered via iframe and the usual “archive.org/stream”. In case you want to search the book or link to a specific page,
https://archive.org/stream/weirdislands00boscrich#page/18
it’s done like before via the centralized stream.
The usefullness for archive.org now seams to me, searching for content is possible via dweb.me. But the content itself and “searching inside the content” is like before via the centralized archive.org stream.
I guess, it’s work in progress and there is still room for improvment.
Dweb sounds promising and I don’t see any reason recepting it with negatives.
Indeed well spoken and the fact that not seared before items like saying books are having a bit more search delay is something that hopefully by time also will be covered, (in the hopefully ferry near future even) I hope when there will be more powerful in between decentralized storage spaces.
“I don’t see any reason recepting it with negatives.”
When every commercial website will by force saturate your upload bandwidth to cut their server costs while exposing your browsing data to everybody on the planet maybe you’ll start thinking about reasons.
“When every commercial website will by force saturate MY[sic!] upload bandwidth”?
A warm welcome. My lousy 1.83 Mbit/s would ruin them all within less than a half an hour … Huuh Raaah … finis captilalisme!
Still any questions?
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5bgFYiZ1/its-time-for-the-permanent-web.html
In the US I was able to see images and hear music by going to https://dweb.me/arc/archive.org/details/scw2014-09-19? . It did take a while to load that URL however. Loading speed improved by manually scrolling down to prompt more downloading.
Thanks, chesscanoe for this not to shabby tip! When you have more like this please mention it.
I sometimes hear that they have listened to the Alman brothers band! :-)
https://archive.org/details/SmallCraftWarning&tab=collection
I also like bands like Hiromi, Angus & Julia Stone , Arctic Monkeys, Cowboy Junkies, soulwax, Allen Toussaint, Boo Boo Davis, Galexico, Charlie Musselwhite, Colbie Caillat, Courtny Barnett, Dr. John, Eels, Elbow, Elvis Perkens… To name a few.
You did not mention that distributed internet is not always about empowering the users against corporations but may often be the opposite, especially when it means it will be *us* and no longer *them* paying for the bandwidth to deliver their services in P2P, and they won’t always ask us the permission or even tell us they’re doing it. Like Windows to distribute its huge updates or web sites like dailymotion experimenting with webrtc for that purpose. In uBlock Origin filters that behavior is lucidly called “Resource abuse” together with coin mining. Yes, it may very well be the dark future of our internet.
Q: “Which one’s darker, the old future or the new one?”
Anonymus:” – Yes.
I am afraid that we will have a dark past even in the future.”