Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive: ❝Recent reporting by Nieman Lab describes how some major news organizations—including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reddit—are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. As stated in the article, these organizations are blocking access largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using the Wayback Machine as a backdoor for large-scale scraping. These concerns are understandable, but unfounded. The Wayback Machine is not intended to be a backdoor for large-scale commercial scraping and, like others on the web today, we expend significant time and effort working to prevent such abuse. Whatever legitimate concerns people may have about generative AI, libraries are not the problem, and blocking access to web archives is not the solution; doing so risks serious harm to the public record. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity and a federal depository library, has been building its archive of the world wide web since 1996. Today, the Wayback Machine provides access to thirty years’ worth of web history and culture. It has become an essential resource for journalists, researchers, courts, and the public. For three decades the Wayback Machine has peacefully coexisted with the development of the web, including the websites mentioned in the article. Our mission is simple: to preserve knowledge and make it accessible for research, accountability, and historical understanding.❞ https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/17/preserving-the-web-is-not-the-problem-losing-it-is/