Trump’s Election Prompts The Internet Archive To Copy Its Database In Canada

ILLUSTRATION - An illustartion dated 01 July 2013 shows computer cables inside a server room in Berlin, Germany. Photo by: Matthias Balk/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
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The Internet Archive, a digital library non-profit group that stores online copies of webpages, e-books, political advertisements and other media for public record, is fundraising to store a copy of all of its contents in Canada after Donald Trump’s election to the presidency.

“We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because, to quote our friends at LOCKSS, ‘lots of copies keep stuff safe,’” a fundraising pitch from the group posted Tuesday reads.

It later calls Trump’s electoral victory “a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change.”

For political journalists, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which displays copies of archived webpages at various points in time, has been a valuable tool for keeping track of changes in politicians’ web presences. For example, news organizations used the Wayback Machine to record when all press releases disappeared from the Trump presidential campaign website, donaldjtrump.com, just past 11:20 p.m. ET on election night. The campaign later restored the releases.

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