DEFCON 19 Talk Transcript Captions

1 00:00:00,459 --> 00:00:06,170 So again thank you all so much for coming to this, and for enjoying, I hope, DEFCON.

2 00:00:06,170 --> 00:00:10,099 "Excellent, yeah," says one guy!

3 00:00:10,099 --> 00:00:17,099 OK, so, the name of this talk is "Archive Team: A distributed preservation of service

4 00:00:18,789 --> 00:00:19,619 Attack."

5 00:00:19,619 --> 00:00:21,789 A hilarious title meant to bring you in,

6 00:00:21,789 --> 00:00:23,720 and it worked, apparently.

7 00:00:23,720 --> 00:00:27,960 My name is Jason Scott, I am the mascot of Archive Team,

8 00:00:27,960 --> 00:00:32,899 which is a rogue band of archivists, preservationists and jerks

9 00:00:32,899 --> 00:00:38,070 dedicated to saving online, and in some cases offline, history.

10 00:00:38,070 --> 00:00:41,359 And this project has been going on for a little while,

11 00:00:41,359 --> 00:00:42,250 and I thought, well,

12 00:00:42,250 --> 00:00:46,160 maybe it's time to kind of make people understand what we're up to here.

13 00:00:46,160 --> 00:00:50,969 So, before I get started though, I want to dedicate this talk to Tim Recher,

14 00:00:50,969 --> 00:00:54,670 a very old friend of mine who unfortunately passed on this year.

15 00:00:54,670 --> 00:00:57,890 It had been one of his dreams to bring his family back to DEFCON,

16 00:00:57,890 --> 00:01:02,239 so they are here in the house tonight to enjoy DEFCON.

17 00:01:02,239 --> 00:01:09,239 And I must say, you know, as time goes on, I'm currently forty years old,

18 00:01:09,640 --> 00:01:14,310 you know you have experiences of losing friends you didn't know you were going to keep around

19 00:01:14,310 --> 00:01:15,659 for such a short time,

20 00:01:15,659 --> 00:01:19,850 so it's always worthwhile, even though I'm in a talk, to skip a talk,

21 00:01:19,850 --> 00:01:22,600 if there's a friend who you haven't seen in awhile, spend maybe an extra four or five

22 00:01:22,600 --> 00:01:23,659 minutes with them

23 00:01:23,659 --> 00:01:24,960 to remember some things with them.

24 00:01:24,960 --> 00:01:29,539 It's just a benefit for that aspect of it. Huh.

25 00:01:29,539 --> 00:01:33,450 Since we're all about saving websites let me in fact talk about soy sauce.

26 00:01:33,450 --> 00:01:35,000 So, soy sauce...

27 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:41,500 Soy sauce, as some of you might know, is basically fermented soybeans, wheat,

28 00:01:41,500 --> 00:01:47,409 it's a process in which these things are brewed just like beers,

29 00:01:47,409 --> 00:01:50,649 or other kinds of fermented dishes.

30 00:01:50,649 --> 00:01:54,119 There's an experience to it, there's an idea behind it,

31 00:01:54,119 --> 00:01:57,340 it's a long process to learn, we've been doing it for hundreds of years,

32 00:01:57,340 --> 00:01:59,640 but different groups have different approaches,

33 00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:03,609 and it's extremely important that the essence of them are maintained.

34 00:02:03,609 --> 00:02:07,770 In fact this is part of the marketing of a lot of beers and crafts and everything else

35 00:02:07,770 --> 00:02:08,220 that, you know,

36 00:02:08,220 --> 00:02:11,290 it's important that all the components stay absolutely the same.

37 00:02:11,290 --> 00:02:12,940 This is the Yamasa Soy Company,

38 00:02:12,940 --> 00:02:17,780 a company that's been around for two hundred and eight years, since the Edo period.

39 00:02:17,780 --> 00:02:20,230 They've had eight presidents,

40 00:02:20,230 --> 00:02:25,410 and they've been basically producing soy sauce in their local town for all this time.

41 00:02:25,410 --> 00:02:28,470 And they are beloved enough that, for instance,

42 00:02:28,470 --> 00:02:34,920 here's a tourist who has just gone and taken a beautiful drawing of this soy sauce factory

43 00:02:34,920 --> 00:02:35,860 to kind of show, you know,

44 00:02:35,860 --> 00:02:38,480 they've been around forever and they do this kind of work.

45 00:02:38,480 --> 00:02:41,330 So they were hit by the tsunami.

46 00:02:41,330 --> 00:02:43,370 This is that same factory,

47 00:02:43,370 --> 00:02:50,370 and that's the creator the current ninth president of this soy sauce company.

48 00:02:50,870 --> 00:02:57,120 He was given it by his father after the flood, because his father felt he was too old to

49 00:02:57,120 --> 00:02:58,520 figure out what to do next -

50 00:02:58,520 --> 00:03:02,610 because what are you going to do about a company in which everything is absolutely obliterated?

51 00:03:02,610 --> 00:03:04,060 Obliterated to the point, for instance,

52 00:03:04,060 --> 00:03:08,930 that this is the company safe from which he was able to extract their incorporation papers

53 00:03:08,930 --> 00:03:10,590 from two centuries ago

54 00:03:10,590 --> 00:03:15,230 so he could prove that the company was still around, and still existent.

55 00:03:15,230 --> 00:03:19,200 And again, I'm crediting Robert Gilhooly, this is the man who walked around with it.

56 00:03:19,200 --> 00:03:22,350 Now bear in mind, when they got hit with the tsunami,

57 00:03:22,350 --> 00:03:25,010 one of the first things that they discover, or one of the first things that happened

58 00:03:25,010 --> 00:03:30,030 was that their head of sales ran to one of the dams, to save the dam,

59 00:03:30,030 --> 00:03:33,370 and was killed by the ensuing rush of water.

60 00:03:33,370 --> 00:03:36,600 This man as well, this is the ninth president,

61 00:03:36,600 --> 00:03:39,750 was absolutely convinced his family have died and that he'd lost his children

62 00:03:39,750 --> 00:03:42,950 because their house was just a few blocks from this place.

63 00:03:42,950 --> 00:03:49,740 As it turned out his children had actually been led up a hill by some teachers and elderly

64 00:03:49,740 --> 00:03:52,010 residents who were nearby,

65 00:03:52,010 --> 00:03:54,300 most of which then proceeded to die.

66 00:03:54,300 --> 00:03:59,340 So this was a family, this is a family businesses that's just ensconced in tragedy right now.

67 00:03:59,340 --> 00:04:03,290 And, so this is him kind of standing on the hill that he was able to run up to with all

68 00:04:03,290 --> 00:04:05,070 the employees who didn't die,

69 00:04:05,070 --> 00:04:07,510 overlooking their factory, losing this thing.

70 00:04:07,510 --> 00:04:11,320 So, what, what I want to explain, though, is that this is a -

71 00:04:11,320 --> 00:04:14,070 you know, a person might say "Well, who cares, it's a company,

72 00:04:14,070 --> 00:04:15,750 what does the company matter against human lives?"

73 00:04:15,750 --> 00:04:21,439 Well, this is a company that was so entwined in the identity of this town

74 00:04:21,439 --> 00:04:27,860 that even with a 70% death rate, people were coming to this soy sauce company and giving

75 00:04:27,860 --> 00:04:28,729 them money,

76 00:04:28,729 --> 00:04:35,080 to say "When you make soy sauce again, I'll wait for my soy sauce delivery."

77 00:04:35,080 --> 00:04:39,039 Because I want to be able to, you know, keep this important thing around.

78 00:04:39,039 --> 00:04:44,039 Now in the process of making soy sauce there's this whole process here,

79 00:04:44,039 --> 00:04:47,389 and one of the most important ones is the adding of the moromi,

80 00:04:47,389 --> 00:04:50,229 the fermentation where they add specific yeast,

81 00:04:50,229 --> 00:04:57,229 the specific fermenting agent that will be able to make more of the soy sauce,

82 00:04:58,439 --> 00:05:01,249 and it's got a specific flavor, and it's cooked in a certain way.

83 00:05:01,249 --> 00:05:04,330 So one of the things that the president discovered was that -

84 00:05:04,330 --> 00:05:05,539 and again, he's thirty-seven, right,

85 00:05:05,539 --> 00:05:07,949 and he's been saddled with this idea to rebuild the company.

86 00:05:07,949 --> 00:05:12,310 So he looks for the barrels - there's about thirty barrels that they keep this agent in.

87 00:05:12,310 --> 00:05:15,409 And he comes and he finds most of them completely crushed.

88 00:05:15,409 --> 00:05:16,300 Gone, missing.

89 00:05:16,300 --> 00:05:20,349 He finds one or two that are intact, but to his horror,

90 00:05:20,349 --> 00:05:23,710 he tells people "Okay, we're good, we've got the moromi"

91 00:05:23,710 --> 00:05:27,939 but it turns out that too much sea water has gotten in, and it has killed it. So there's

92 00:05:27,939 --> 00:05:29,349 none.

93 00:05:29,349 --> 00:05:34,539 So what ends up happening is, when everything looks bleak,

94 00:05:34,539 --> 00:05:39,120 they recall an experiment that had happened four months earlier, and what it was,

95 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:43,599 there was a local marine biology laboratory that was doing experimentation and asked for

96 00:05:43,599 --> 00:05:45,319 some of the moromi.

97 00:05:45,319 --> 00:05:47,729 So what they have done was asked for a small segment,

98 00:05:47,729 --> 00:05:52,740 a barrel's worth or whatever, of moromi to test with. They had given it to them.

99 00:05:52,740 --> 00:05:58,979 That lab had also been hit with the tsunami, and had its first floor destroyed.

100 00:05:58,979 --> 00:06:04,870 But among the first floor was a one kilogram bag of the moromi still in the plastic wrapping

101 00:06:04,870 --> 00:06:06,889 that they had never gotten around to.

102 00:06:06,889 --> 00:06:13,889 And from that small bit, this company is rebuilding itself into this very beloved brand once again.

103 00:06:15,439 --> 00:06:19,090 This is the two new sales girls who were hired by this company,

104 00:06:19,090 --> 00:06:24,259 that's their new digs while they're working it out, and this is a piece of their old factory,

105 00:06:24,259 --> 00:06:28,830 and the girls saying, you know, "Thank you, thank you for your patience. We will have

106 00:06:28,830 --> 00:06:32,479 your soy sauce soon."

107 00:06:32,479 --> 00:06:34,479 So why am I saying all this?

108 00:06:34,479 --> 00:06:37,830 Well, what I'm trying to say is that,

109 00:06:37,830 --> 00:06:44,830 first of all, backups are important!

110 00:06:47,029 --> 00:06:50,080 Multiple backups apparently even better!

111 00:06:50,080 --> 00:06:54,580 But even beyond that, this object, this yeast,

112 00:06:54,580 --> 00:07:01,389 was an emotional meaningful human item that had relevance to a culture

113 00:07:01,389 --> 00:07:06,979 and a world that was, you know,

114 00:07:06,979 --> 00:07:11,840 basically something that people considered part of their identity, really.

115 00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:13,529 Really, if you think about it.

116 00:07:13,529 --> 00:07:17,400 And, even though it's just an object, it's got meaning that way.

117 00:07:17,400 --> 00:07:23,129 So, what I'm saying here is, that objects that maintain memory, objects that are part

118 00:07:23,129 --> 00:07:24,050 of us,

119 00:07:24,050 --> 00:07:28,270 have relevance to us even after their initial use may be initially gone.

120 00:07:28,270 --> 00:07:33,180 In other words you look at these items and you say "I remember I was with this person"

121 00:07:33,180 --> 00:07:35,809 or "This proves that we were part of this"

122 00:07:35,809 --> 00:07:40,800 or, you know, "This is the proof that I invented this first"

123 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:43,370 or, more accurately, "This is a friend who I have lost."

124 00:07:43,370 --> 00:07:47,189 "This is somebody who I can't speak to anymore, but I have their work."

125 00:07:47,189 --> 00:07:49,499 And I think that that's something that can sometimes be lost

126 00:07:49,499 --> 00:07:51,969 when I start to tell you about some websites,

127 00:07:51,969 --> 00:07:55,189 because one of the things people say is "Well, who gives a crap?"

128 00:07:55,189 --> 00:08:01,800 These are really old websites, and I say these websites are collections of memories that

129 00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:04,889 have been gathered up through people online.

130 00:08:04,889 --> 00:08:11,539 That is the driving heart and force of what I'm talking about here.

131 00:08:11,539 --> 00:08:15,360 And there's a wide variety of old media I might mention,

132 00:08:15,360 --> 00:08:21,639 and old websites and things that are currently sustaining our memories magnetically, in forms

133 00:08:21,639 --> 00:08:23,249 that are kind of strange,

134 00:08:23,249 --> 00:08:26,419 and each year it becomes harder and harder to extract them.

135 00:08:26,419 --> 00:08:31,830 But beyond that, they contain things that their exterior may not really reveal.

136 00:08:31,830 --> 00:08:35,950 So for instance, you might have writings that you might not remember doing,

137 00:08:35,950 --> 00:08:42,780 letters your family might have done, basically stored on very very old media.

138 00:08:42,780 --> 00:08:47,970 Additionally, you get weird shit!

139 00:08:47,970 --> 00:08:53,400 For instance, this is eBay: the home game.

140 00:08:53,400 --> 00:09:00,400 This speaks to a lot of things because it indicates that people thought that eBay...

141 00:09:00,500 --> 00:09:04,240 Well, first of all you have this belief that someone thinks eBay is something you'd want

142 00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:06,960 to do at home with your family,

143 00:09:06,960 --> 00:09:12,830 uh... with "No money down!"

144 00:09:12,830 --> 00:09:17,290 But it also indicates that eBay had some sort of cultural meaning to us in 2000 when this

145 00:09:17,290 --> 00:09:18,190 came out,

146 00:09:18,190 --> 00:09:21,910 that it was strong enough of a feeling to feel that this is an experience that you should

147 00:09:21,910 --> 00:09:23,220 share elsewhere.

148 00:09:23,220 --> 00:09:30,220 That idea of getting completely fucked on shipping costs.

149 00:09:30,330 --> 00:09:31,540 Very critical, right?

150 00:09:31,540 --> 00:09:32,590 All right.

151 00:09:32,590 --> 00:09:35,560 And again I'm keeping a lot of things myself that are part of that,

152 00:09:35,560 --> 00:09:37,410 this for instance there are some very old issues of 2600,

153 00:09:37,410 --> 00:09:42,000 I have three complete runs of 2600 magazine. Actually, I've got a lot of stuff.

154 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:44,400 If you don't know me, that's fine, that's awesome,

155 00:09:44,400 --> 00:09:46,340 I don't have anything, I live a free life, how about that,

156 00:09:46,340 --> 00:09:49,870 but if you actually know me then you know about the shipping container,

157 00:09:49,870 --> 00:09:53,320 and you know about the various pieces of old media that I'm sent,

158 00:09:53,320 --> 00:09:56,810 I'm sent lots of floppy disks, old tapes, tape drives, you know,

159 00:09:56,810 --> 00:10:01,780 basically all sorts of collections of items that are things that I transfer out.

160 00:10:01,780 --> 00:10:03,880 So I've been able to get my hands on some very old things,

161 00:10:03,880 --> 00:10:08,250 and I and I constantly make myself available for this because I believe that all of these

162 00:10:08,250 --> 00:10:09,820 old memories have meaning,

163 00:10:09,820 --> 00:10:11,880 and it's pretty easy with something like 2600.

164 00:10:11,880 --> 00:10:15,150 Very prominent, lots of copies, very easy.

165 00:10:15,150 --> 00:10:19,970 I'm to tell you that there's a hacker calendar now from 2600, in case you want to support

166 00:10:19,970 --> 00:10:20,400 them,

167 00:10:20,400 --> 00:10:25,060 but the 2600 magazine is just one of just many.

168 00:10:25,060 --> 00:10:29,100 But we also have these electronic artifacts. Right?

169 00:10:29,100 --> 00:10:32,230 So, for some of you this has -

170 00:10:32,230 --> 00:10:39,230 can I just get a clap if this has any emotional meaning to you whatsoever?

171 00:10:42,690 --> 00:10:44,450 And I DO do error correction for the person going...

172 00:10:44,450 --> 00:10:46,250 that's cool.

173 00:10:46,250 --> 00:10:49,420 I'll just quickly go over what we're looking at here.

174 00:10:49,420 --> 00:10:51,240 These are two different items.

175 00:10:51,240 --> 00:10:53,830 The first one is a "Netscape Now" button.

176 00:10:53,830 --> 00:10:58,390 This is a period of time when browsers were just starting out,

177 00:10:58,390 --> 00:11:01,210 and you had a number of browsers, there were about twenty or thirty,

178 00:11:01,210 --> 00:11:03,490 but there were a few that were trying to build themselves up

179 00:11:03,490 --> 00:11:07,810 and one of the original investors in SGI went out and scooped up all the creators of the

180 00:11:07,810 --> 00:11:09,040 Mosaic browser,

181 00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:11,100 started a new company and named it Netscape.

182 00:11:11,100 --> 00:11:15,670 And, as part of that, wanted to let you know that if you want to see a really good site,

183 00:11:15,670 --> 00:11:19,590 and you want to watch it properly, you should get Netscape right now.

184 00:11:19,590 --> 00:11:23,580 So there was a button that they produced, that was animated, that said "Go to get Netscape

185 00:11:23,580 --> 00:11:23,860 right now

186 00:11:23,860 --> 00:11:27,150 so you can see my website the way it was meant to be seen".

187 00:11:27,150 --> 00:11:31,790 And so, that's the Netscape Now button.

188 00:11:31,790 --> 00:11:35,600 Underneath that is the "Under Construction" GIF.

189 00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:40,040 I'm not going to get into the "Gif" / "Jif" argument right now!

190 00:11:40,040 --> 00:11:47,030 So, the "Under Construction" GIF is basically a, uh, indicator that you're not finished

191 00:11:47,030 --> 00:11:47,920 with your website.

192 00:11:47,920 --> 00:11:52,330 Now obviously we in the future with our incredible abilities,

193 00:11:52,330 --> 00:11:56,550 websites are actually never finished so it's redundant!

194 00:11:56,550 --> 00:11:58,620 We've factored that thing out on both sides of the equation.

195 00:11:58,620 --> 00:12:02,110 We're like, you know what "always building", because if you're not always building

196 00:12:02,110 --> 00:12:05,430 it's now currently a period of shame, right.

197 00:12:05,430 --> 00:12:11,240 Lack of dynamism is a shameful trade of your website, indication of your failure,

198 00:12:11,240 --> 00:12:14,600 and lack of interest, so you would not want to say "Oh, I'm under construction",

199 00:12:14,600 --> 00:12:15,910 of course you're under construction.

200 00:12:15,910 --> 00:12:19,490 Alright? So, yeah, there's a very emotional reaction to that,

201 00:12:19,490 --> 00:12:24,530 but I find there's even a bigger one to this. Which is...

202 00:12:24,530 --> 00:12:28,600 This is a collection that I have of all of the Netscape Now buttons!

203 00:12:28,600 --> 00:12:33,190 As you can see there's a whole variety of stories being told here, because some of them

204 00:12:33,190 --> 00:12:34,010 indicate what...

205 00:12:34,010 --> 00:12:39,000 Uh, some of them are obviously made by hand, some of them go for different versions,

206 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:44,500 some of them re-jigger themselves, these are all actually MD5 different.

207 00:12:44,500 --> 00:12:47,680 What I am discovering, for instance, here's a little story you might not know,

208 00:12:47,680 --> 00:12:50,580 is for instance some of them you look at and you say "Well, why is this different from

209 00:12:50,580 --> 00:12:51,290 the one next to it?"

210 00:12:51,290 --> 00:12:56,150 It is because they've removed the extra frames to save some space.

211 00:12:56,150 --> 00:13:02,350 They took out a K or two, and that way they got a little more space for their website.

212 00:13:02,350 --> 00:13:08,090 So the thing looks a little crappier, but "Thank god I've got more space!"

213 00:13:08,090 --> 00:13:10,160 We don't think about things that way.

214 00:13:10,160 --> 00:13:15,590 Also somebody there seems to be really against Netscape Now, so... screw you!

215 00:13:15,590 --> 00:13:20,390 Similarly on the "under construction" thing, also a lot of emotional reaction.

216 00:13:20,390 --> 00:13:25,310 I got ten thousand of these things. And as you can see,

217 00:13:25,310 --> 00:13:28,850 there's all variety of things put under construction,

218 00:13:28,850 --> 00:13:31,360 and I think what I'm trying to say is...

219 00:13:31,360 --> 00:13:35,490 And again, if you go to textfiles.com/underconstruction

220 00:13:35,490 --> 00:13:40,300 it says "This page is under construction", and then puts all of them underneath.

221 00:13:40,300 --> 00:13:42,360 Which will crash some browsers!

222 00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:47,180 And then it says "if there's a problem, mail me". That goes to one with mail me GIFs that

223 00:13:47,180 --> 00:13:51,170 DOES crash all browsers.

224 00:13:51,170 --> 00:13:55,510 So you can be a historian, and also be an asshole!

225 00:13:55,510 --> 00:13:57,140 It works out, actually.

226 00:13:57,140 --> 00:13:59,550 So anyway, so what you have here is again like I said,

227 00:13:59,550 --> 00:14:03,100 a wide variety of interesting cultural artifacts,

228 00:14:03,100 --> 00:14:07,920 and I've found the people who go to this just automatically get a massive amount of reaction

229 00:14:07,920 --> 00:14:09,100 from it.

230 00:14:09,100 --> 00:14:14,890 Well what we're experiencing right now is a bunch of websites that were started earlier,

231 00:14:14,890 --> 00:14:21,420 and "earlier" now could be anything from mid-1990s up through to even maybe a year ago or further,

232 00:14:21,420 --> 00:14:26,720 where they reach a point where somebody decides they're not going to stay up any more.

233 00:14:26,720 --> 00:14:31,670 And it's usually done with, like a post-it note on the outside of a restaurant that's

234 00:14:31,670 --> 00:14:34,360 been shut down for health code violations.

235 00:14:34,360 --> 00:14:40,670 It is just simply something saying "By the way, we're gone."

236 00:14:40,670 --> 00:14:47,670 Now, normally I would not care, right? I mean, if you've created, you know, hatsforcats.com,

237 00:14:49,460 --> 00:14:51,890 and suddenly no-one wants to buy your cat hats,

238 00:14:51,890 --> 00:14:53,840 and you say "Sorry, thank you for, you know,

239 00:14:53,840 --> 00:14:56,250 thank you for four months of wonderful business."

240 00:14:56,250 --> 00:14:58,900 And away you go, that's fine.

241 00:14:58,900 --> 00:15:03,200 But what we have right now from the mid-1990s on to now is this whole period

242 00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:08,230 where we're taking user generated content and a large amount of marketing is being made

243 00:15:08,230 --> 00:15:13,680 to make it as easy and quick and frictionless to put as much of yourself online as quickly

244 00:15:13,680 --> 00:15:17,260 as possible into something...

245 00:15:17,260 --> 00:15:21,380 with a huge lack of any interest in telling you what that something is.

246 00:15:21,380 --> 00:15:22,850 It's just there.

247 00:15:22,850 --> 00:15:27,340 You get an IT department, and you don't even know how to reach it.

248 00:15:27,340 --> 00:15:30,810 What ends up happening is you get this, right: AOL Hometown,

249 00:15:30,810 --> 00:15:36,210 which was a whole bunch of really interesting websites from the early 1990s,

250 00:15:36,210 --> 00:15:41,900 and in 2008 they said "You know what, we're out of here."

251 00:15:41,900 --> 00:15:44,260 And that was it. Hometown was gone.

252 00:15:44,260 --> 00:15:45,410 Same thing up there with Kickstart.

253 00:15:45,410 --> 00:15:49,620 You don't know what Kickstart is, I didn't know what Kickstart is, but I like the button.

254 00:15:49,620 --> 00:15:55,790 The indication there is like "See this light bulb? Going out."

255 00:15:55,790 --> 00:15:58,110 And then you get these kind of surreal shutdowns, right,

256 00:15:58,110 --> 00:16:01,150 like Free Pro Hosting, which offers you more!

257 00:16:01,150 --> 00:16:04,330 And the next thing it says is "We're going to be discontinuing our free hosting service

258 00:16:04,330 --> 00:16:06,130 at the end of the year."

259 00:16:06,130 --> 00:16:08,900 And look at that smiling girl! "Guess what, we're closed!"

260 00:16:08,900 --> 00:16:10,570 "We're out of business!"

261 00:16:10,570 --> 00:16:16,120 So, hey, welcome to Free Pro Hosting where nothing is now free.

262 00:16:16,120 --> 00:16:17,930 That is a tough, tough sell.

263 00:16:17,930 --> 00:16:20,110 "What are you called?"

264 00:16:20,110 --> 00:16:21,200 "Free cars."

265 00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:23,380 "What do you sell?"

266 00:16:23,380 --> 00:16:23,930 "Cars."

267 00:16:23,930 --> 00:16:24,470 "Free?"

268 00:16:24,470 --> 00:16:25,020 "No."

269 00:16:25,020 --> 00:16:27,280 "No, Bob Free, pleased to meet you."

270 00:16:27,280 --> 00:16:31,230 Yeah.

271 00:16:31,230 --> 00:16:36,730 So we started Archive Team. OK?

272 00:16:36,730 --> 00:16:40,300 ArchiveTeam.org. We are gonna rescue your shit.

273 00:16:40,300 --> 00:16:41,740 We are the A-Team.

274 00:16:41,740 --> 00:16:47,180 We are the team that will come in, and we will rescue things that need to be rescued.

275 00:16:47,180 --> 00:16:50,510 Help the helpless, go after the site, sight the sightless.

276 00:16:50,510 --> 00:16:54,550 We're going to go after places that look like they're being shut down.

277 00:16:54,550 --> 00:16:59,400 And we download them, and then we figure out what to do next.

278 00:16:59,400 --> 00:17:03,490 We know, you know, so much in history, if you go ahead and look at a lot of things,

279 00:17:03,490 --> 00:17:09,279 how we have it with housing and things, that you know, basically, uh...when,

280 00:17:09,279 --> 00:17:13,899 when you evict somebody from a home, it is a huge-ass painful process that sucks. Right?

281 00:17:13,899 --> 00:17:17,199 Yes, right there, you're looking outside, you can see in the window,

282 00:17:17,199 --> 00:17:20,039 you're the landlord, you can see them fucking up your apartment.

283 00:17:20,039 --> 00:17:21,899 You're like "I'm gonna get rid of them.

284 00:17:21,899 --> 00:17:25,019 It's going to take six weeks. But I'm going to get rid of them."

285 00:17:25,019 --> 00:17:27,769 And you have to apply in front of a judge,

286 00:17:27,769 --> 00:17:31,220 you have to show things, and you have to do all these things.

287 00:17:31,220 --> 00:17:33,450 Well with web hosting, we don't have to do any of that.

288 00:17:33,450 --> 00:17:34,840 And some people think that's beautiful,

289 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:41,269 and, yes, the wild west was fucking awesome until you died of dysentery.

290 00:17:41,269 --> 00:17:44,200 And I'm saying that it's 2011, and this is DEFCON.

291 00:17:44,200 --> 00:17:48,590 This is one of these places which goes, like, "By the way, this idea is stupid, we don't

292 00:17:48,590 --> 00:17:49,429 do this anymore",

293 00:17:49,429 --> 00:17:54,980 well the idea of completely, uh...

294 00:17:54,980 --> 00:18:01,980 uncontrolled, non-transparent hosting of user content really needs to come to an end.

295 00:18:02,570 --> 00:18:08,409 But until then, we're duping stuff because the conversation otherwise ends.

296 00:18:08,409 --> 00:18:11,539 Like if you go to AOL Hometown now, and go, like, "I need my old stuff"

297 00:18:11,539 --> 00:18:13,700 they go "That's a shame.

298 00:18:13,700 --> 00:18:16,059 That you still need it. Are you sure you need it?

299 00:18:16,059 --> 00:18:20,149 Would you like to buy a new account with more space?"

300 00:18:20,149 --> 00:18:21,070 Because right now it's OK.

301 00:18:21,070 --> 00:18:26,519 So Archive Team set out on its mission, and we've started to download things.

302 00:18:26,519 --> 00:18:29,009 We've been having a great old time.

303 00:18:29,009 --> 00:18:31,710 And then GeoCities went down.

304 00:18:31,710 --> 00:18:36,190 So, we were like, people came to us and they were like, "Hey, Archive Team.

305 00:18:36,190 --> 00:18:38,950 GeoCities? You gonna download it?"

306 00:18:38,950 --> 00:18:40,749 How many people here know GeoCities?

307 00:18:40,749 --> 00:18:41,350 Ah, right!

308 00:18:41,350 --> 00:18:48,350 See, they don't want to make noise and call attention to themselves.

309 00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:52,049 The thing about GeoCities, and I think GeoCities falls into this right now, right,

310 00:18:52,049 --> 00:18:56,879 GeoCities is the moromi. GeoCities is this place that started in 1994 as Beverly Hills

311 00:18:56,879 --> 00:18:57,620 Internet.

312 00:18:57,620 --> 00:19:01,080 Got turned into this very strange hosting company, gets bought by AOL -

313 00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:04,749 not AOL -- by Yahoo for an enormous amount of cash.

314 00:19:04,749 --> 00:19:10,100 I mean an astounding amount of cash, billions of dollars, to become hosting.

315 00:19:10,100 --> 00:19:16,789 Now at the time of its purchase by Yahoo, it is the second or third, depending on the

316 00:19:16,789 --> 00:19:17,179 month,

317 00:19:17,179 --> 00:19:24,179 most-browsed site on the internet. This is the most popular of popular sites. It is huge.

318 00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:29,259 And one day, one day, they announced they were shutting it down -

319 00:19:29,259 --> 00:19:32,129 oh, but I don't mean they really ANNOUNCED they were shutting it down.

320 00:19:32,129 --> 00:19:37,450 I meant that buried in one of the help files, which somebody brought to our attention,

321 00:19:37,450 --> 00:19:40,620 it said "I'm having trouble getting this done", and the answer was

322 00:19:40,620 --> 00:19:46,779 "Yes, because of the shutdown that functionality is currently not here."

323 00:19:46,779 --> 00:19:52,799 That was it! We're like "Wow, that is burying the fucking lead!"

324 00:19:52,799 --> 00:19:58,940 And what they did was, they were shutting down "sometime in the summer"

325 00:19:58,940 --> 00:20:01,730 And then all of this site was going to go down.

326 00:20:01,730 --> 00:20:05,840 Bear in mind that when GeoCities finally went down it was the 218th most browsed site on

327 00:20:05,840 --> 00:20:07,049 the net.

328 00:20:07,049 --> 00:20:08,570 It'd only gone down a little bit.

329 00:20:08,570 --> 00:20:10,929 Yahoo made no attempt to get rid of it, you know,

330 00:20:10,929 --> 00:20:13,139 they didn't try to sell it off or anything like that,

331 00:20:13,139 --> 00:20:16,850 they just simply said "OK, let's turn this off. Hooray for us."

332 00:20:16,850 --> 00:20:22,570 Now granted, you'll go look at one of the sites that was on there...

333 00:20:22,570 --> 00:20:26,840 And you'll be like "Well, of course. Of course." I mean look at this, then, this is the Rogue

334 00:20:26,840 --> 00:20:27,389 Cowboy.

335 00:20:27,389 --> 00:20:30,409 "Hey y'all, military couple, been here for a while."

336 00:20:30,409 --> 00:20:35,009 I'm reading this for you because you cannot possibly see it over the bucking bronco background.

337 00:20:35,009 --> 00:20:42,009 Also, I want to point out that there's a little gold item there and it says "HTML Writers

338 00:20:42,649 --> 00:20:44,869 Guild."

339 00:20:44,869 --> 00:20:51,309 Another thing that's kind of gone by the wayside is HTML guilds. Now it's just stock options.

340 00:20:51,309 --> 00:20:55,049 And the thing is, you know, you look at a site like that and you're like

341 00:20:55,049 --> 00:20:56,509 "Well this is... these guys are awful!"

342 00:20:56,509 --> 00:21:01,169 and I want to point out something I've really come to understand, which is how do we do

343 00:21:01,169 --> 00:21:03,289 this - how do we get rid of all of something?

344 00:21:03,289 --> 00:21:07,840 In fact, how do we destroy cultures, how do we destroy lives, how do we do this?

345 00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:12,059 And the answer is: disenfranchise, demean, delete.

346 00:21:12,059 --> 00:21:15,499 Disenfranchise: remove their ability to have any control over something.

347 00:21:15,499 --> 00:21:19,700 Like I said, with FaceBook, good luck calling them up to get something fixed.

348 00:21:19,700 --> 00:21:23,240 Good luck calling them up because something's not working like you expect.

349 00:21:23,240 --> 00:21:25,980 Go ahead and tell me that doesn't cost any money, and I get what I pay for, fine,

350 00:21:25,980 --> 00:21:28,059 but I'm telling you that's what the case is.

351 00:21:28,059 --> 00:21:31,090 Second, demean: tell people that this thing is useless.

352 00:21:31,090 --> 00:21:35,539 Look at this thing, it's ugly, by our design standards this thing fails our test.

353 00:21:35,539 --> 00:21:39,809 We the board of Vogue, we've decided that this thing is not to our liking.

354 00:21:39,809 --> 00:21:41,220 And then, delete.

355 00:21:41,220 --> 00:21:44,720 Then say "Who gives a shit about these people? These are nothing. Whatever."

356 00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:48,419 But we have to realize that for these people, this presentation,

357 00:21:48,419 --> 00:21:55,419 this website may be the widest audience that this genetic line has ever reached.

358 00:21:56,139 --> 00:22:00,490 And you can't turn away from that kind of power, even if that was never your hope.

359 00:22:00,490 --> 00:22:06,539 Printing a color photocopy was $1.50 a page at this time.

360 00:22:06,539 --> 00:22:11,419 To be able to do full color, occasionally with musical background, websites,

361 00:22:11,419 --> 00:22:13,730 that would have all the things you wanted to say?

362 00:22:13,730 --> 00:22:17,909 And it's interesting what people pull, for instance.

363 00:22:17,909 --> 00:22:19,669 Welcome to space!

364 00:22:19,669 --> 00:22:24,129 Now it's interesting that the projector really gets rid of the beauty of the star field.

365 00:22:24,129 --> 00:22:29,350 I feel like it's not really there. But bear in mind there's a beautiful star field there.

366 00:22:29,350 --> 00:22:34,019 It's not animated, but it's something that's there and this person obviously likes space.

367 00:22:34,019 --> 00:22:36,200 And there were areas in GeoCities for you to store,

368 00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:41,999 based on Hollywood space, gay queer, western, and so on.

369 00:22:41,999 --> 00:22:46,720 And you were able to declare what your kind of interests were and go down there.

370 00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:50,740 So, this particular person was in Area 51, the space thing.

371 00:22:50,740 --> 00:22:54,159 And there's a part in there called personal experiences which I just love,

372 00:22:54,159 --> 00:22:56,860 because you read it and their personal experiences are like

373 00:22:56,860 --> 00:23:03,649 "Was watching television. Felt outside of myself for twelve minutes.

374 00:23:03,649 --> 00:23:04,600 Continued watching television."

375 00:23:04,600 --> 00:23:09,429 Yeah. OK, great, hilarious,

376 00:23:09,429 --> 00:23:12,570 but also this person wanted to kind of express this,

377 00:23:12,570 --> 00:23:15,690 and obviously this leads to interesting conspiracy theorists and the paranormal network, and

378 00:23:15,690 --> 00:23:17,409 all of that.

379 00:23:17,409 --> 00:23:19,690 Let's go with this one.

380 00:23:19,690 --> 00:23:26,690 Welcome. Patrick Joel Mielke, born on April 16th, 1981, entered heaven April 17th, 1983.

381 00:23:28,950 --> 00:23:33,600 Page lovingly dedicated to Patrick Joel, child of God, uh...

382 00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:35,409 loaned to us for a very short time.

383 00:23:35,409 --> 00:23:38,929 It's a celebration of his life and the love and joy he so enriched his lives with."

384 00:23:38,929 --> 00:23:43,320 Now this is a woman, and this is I think what's sometimes not noticed here,

385 00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:50,059 the child died in 1983. This website was created in 1996.

386 00:23:50,059 --> 00:23:53,899 This is a woman who has enough pain at that time that when she sees GeoCities,

387 00:23:53,899 --> 00:23:56,440 where other people say "I'm gonna talk about watching TV"

388 00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:01,590 and "I'm gonna talk about my bucking bronco background and join the HTML Writers Guild",

389 00:24:01,590 --> 00:24:05,269 here's somebody who's saying "No, the world needs to know about my baby.

390 00:24:05,269 --> 00:24:07,690 I want to let everyone know how much I loved him."

391 00:24:07,690 --> 00:24:12,879 And she has pages after pages in the ten megabyte space, about how much her baby meant to her.

392 00:24:12,879 --> 00:24:17,309 So here's a case -- and by the way of course there was a web ring,

393 00:24:17,309 --> 00:24:22,409 you know what a web ring was, of, uh, what was it...

394 00:24:22,409 --> 00:24:23,779 It's an Angels web ring,

395 00:24:23,779 --> 00:24:25,970 so it's a bunch of parents who lost children who are under two,

396 00:24:25,970 --> 00:24:31,629 to talk about, you know, they touched an angel for short period of time.

397 00:24:31,629 --> 00:24:38,629 This is real stuff. This is as real to save as anything else, I think. So, dig on it.

398 00:24:49,299 --> 00:24:52,899 Gets better the longer you look at it.

399 00:24:52,899 --> 00:24:59,899 So, Jason, a question that now some of you who've never heard of before now will ask,

400 00:25:01,029 --> 00:25:03,210 "What the fuck is up with that, Jason?"

401 00:25:03,210 --> 00:25:05,869 It's a general question I get about everything.

402 00:25:05,869 --> 00:25:10,519 Alright, here's the deal. He's an Under Construction GIF.

403 00:25:10,519 --> 00:25:14,100 And he got wrapped up in the trawl, basically I went through a bunch of GeoCities stuff

404 00:25:14,100 --> 00:25:17,249 and found a bunch of Under Construction GIFs, and he was one of them.

405 00:25:17,249 --> 00:25:24,249 And I was like "What the hell is that? What's the fucking story about Bulgy McFish-Hat guy?"

406 00:25:30,149 --> 00:25:36,820 so I go look it up, and it's this guy in the Hollywood Hills section, and he is gay,

407 00:25:36,820 --> 00:25:43,820 and he has a page that he talks about his dream guy. Uh, it's from 1998.

408 00:25:44,529 --> 00:25:49,299 And he talks about what he wants in a man, what he will do with the man, where they'll

409 00:25:49,299 --> 00:25:49,580 go,

410 00:25:49,580 --> 00:25:54,679 the places he'll do, the dreams he'll live, it's from basically, like I said, 1998,

411 00:25:54,679 --> 00:25:57,399 and at the bottom it says "This is always under construction."

412 00:25:57,399 --> 00:26:01,259 And there is this guy at the bottom.

413 00:26:01,259 --> 00:26:08,259 In 2005, it's updated. And it says "No need to keep looking. I've found him."

414 00:26:11,950 --> 00:26:18,950 And it's just a story that turned out, even with the bulge, to be pretty heartwarming.

415 00:26:21,749 --> 00:26:27,239 All of this buried in the little tiny graphics interchange format.

416 00:26:27,239 --> 00:26:29,090 Which I believe just got out of copyright.

417 00:26:29,090 --> 00:26:32,649 Oh, I'm sorry, patent.

418 00:26:32,649 --> 00:26:38,230 OK. So when they closed it, right, Yahoo just decide to do this twerpy frigging goddamn

419 00:26:38,230 --> 00:26:39,309 thing.

420 00:26:39,309 --> 00:26:43,879 This to me is the embodiment of the problem. "Why did GeoCities close?"

421 00:26:43,879 --> 00:26:47,539 which by the way should really be said in like kind of a scream with a rending of documents,

422 00:26:47,539 --> 00:26:50,989 because that's usually when you "Why did GeoCities close???!!!?!?"

423 00:26:50,989 --> 00:26:55,119 "We have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and build relationships online in

424 00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:57,619 other ways."

425 00:26:57,619 --> 00:27:00,989 That's like shooting somebody and saying "I have plans for your car."

426 00:27:00,989 --> 00:27:05,970 All right.

427 00:27:05,970 --> 00:27:11,860 It's this sort of corporate douchebaggery that ensures that I will never work within

428 00:27:11,860 --> 00:27:14,269 a corporate environment again.

429 00:27:14,269 --> 00:27:21,220 I don't know, that's my visceral reaction, what do you think?

430 00:27:21,220 --> 00:27:28,220 So that's what Archive Team said, so we said "You know what, Let's download it."

431 00:27:28,989 --> 00:27:32,720 So... Downloading was very interesting.

432 00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,100 Downloading GeoCities was somewhat complicated.

433 00:27:35,100 --> 00:27:40,279 It took us about a hundred people to download over the course of about six months.

434 00:27:40,279 --> 00:27:44,259 We had no idea when the shutdown date was, right, so we just went at it.

435 00:27:44,259 --> 00:27:47,940 Now it turns out that GeoCities had a very interesting thing.

436 00:27:47,940 --> 00:27:50,940 You got a gigabyte of bandwidth a month.

437 00:27:50,940 --> 00:27:57,940 But! Only about twelve megabytes of it could come out every hour.

438 00:27:58,820 --> 00:28:01,989 Bait and switch.

439 00:28:01,989 --> 00:28:08,350 So we would try to do it, it would go "Sorry. Error. 999 error. Content limit has been reached."

440 00:28:08,350 --> 00:28:10,929 It didn't take long, by putting our heads together,

441 00:28:10,929 --> 00:28:14,830 by having all these assembled people on our IRC channel to have someone go,

442 00:28:14,830 --> 00:28:17,659 "Do you think they're locking out Google?"

443 00:28:17,659 --> 00:28:20,980 So we go look, and, nope, they're not locking out Google.

444 00:28:20,980 --> 00:28:26,830 So we changed all of our user-agents to "Not The GoogleBot".

445 00:28:26,830 --> 00:28:30,220 Free!

446 00:28:30,220 --> 00:28:35,220 At that point, we aimed a couple people at them, we had a hundred virtual machines that

447 00:28:35,220 --> 00:28:36,639 downloaded basically all of the -

448 00:28:36,639 --> 00:28:40,739 GeoCities has an old neighborhood and the old neighborhood system

449 00:28:40,739 --> 00:28:46,749 which basically would be GeoCities slash WestHollywood slash...

450 00:28:46,749 --> 00:28:51,460 you know, Hills slash 2252. These are all pre-1999.

451 00:28:51,460 --> 00:28:58,460 When Yahoo got their nutsack on it, they just reapplied it across to the Yahoo section.

452 00:28:58,489 --> 00:29:05,489 So basically what they did was our you could be "GeoCities.com/~toolbag" and be whatever.

453 00:29:06,970 --> 00:29:10,789 So it was going to be harder to find them. But, man, we sent people after them,

454 00:29:10,789 --> 00:29:13,690 and we did, and we downloaded as much as we could,

455 00:29:13,690 --> 00:29:19,779 which turned out to be a little bit over a terabyte, of GeoCities.

456 00:29:19,779 --> 00:29:26,779 So, then what do you do? Well, first, bear in mind that this is GeoCities in 1999.

457 00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:31,690 This was a 9 terabyte array of theirs.

458 00:29:31,690 --> 00:29:35,039 Just to give you an idea of just how pathetic it is now, when people are like

459 00:29:35,039 --> 00:29:36,980 "Oh God, what are you going to do, where are you going to keep all that?"

460 00:29:36,980 --> 00:29:40,249 I can make a stack of nine terabytes right now that are barely functional.

461 00:29:40,249 --> 00:29:45,200 We have to keep in mind that this is a whole cage at Exodus dedicated to GeoCities.

462 00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:48,940 So we ended up with it, and we're sitting on it

463 00:29:48,940 --> 00:29:51,809 and then GeoCities went down and it was the usual like "Who cares?"

464 00:29:51,809 --> 00:29:57,129 and I put up those animated GIFs by basically going through this terabyte of data,

465 00:29:57,129 --> 00:30:02,070 and coming up with a collection of interesting GIFs.

466 00:30:02,070 --> 00:30:05,629 But then a year went by, and I thought, you know, we've got to get attention.

467 00:30:05,629 --> 00:30:10,940 We've got to remind people that GeoCities went down for no fucking reason.

468 00:30:10,940 --> 00:30:17,940 So we did what anyone would do, we torrented it.

469 00:30:21,029 --> 00:30:25,489 So we put ourselves up on The Pirate Bay, we have a 641GB - because it compressed well

470 00:30:25,489 --> 00:30:26,399 - torrent,

471 00:30:26,399 --> 00:30:32,840 with 7,854 files that were basically 7zs, and we put that sucker up. And we torrented

472 00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:33,139 it.

473 00:30:33,139 --> 00:30:35,669 We were until recently, I think it's changed,

474 00:30:35,669 --> 00:30:40,359 but we were until recently the second largest torrent that ever appeared.

475 00:30:40,359 --> 00:30:44,999 The number one was high-definition versions of all of the World Cup games.

476 00:30:44,999 --> 00:30:51,320 So, nice counterpoint, huh? World Cup games, GeoCities.

477 00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:55,379 Because we knew, right, that by warezing GeoCities,

478 00:30:55,379 --> 00:30:58,690 this would bring this massive amount of embarrassment back, and it did.

479 00:30:58,690 --> 00:31:02,799 We got all these great interviews and I'd put up this thing saying "Yahoo found a way--"

480 00:31:02,799 --> 00:31:04,019 I was quoted by Time for this -

481 00:31:04,019 --> 00:31:09,460 "Yahoo found the way to destroy the most amount of history in the shortest amount of time."

482 00:31:09,460 --> 00:31:11,960 Alright, excellent.

483 00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:16,559 Then Yahoo Video announced it was going down.

484 00:31:16,559 --> 00:31:17,460 We got that!

485 00:31:17,460 --> 00:31:24,379 Well we were helped, of course because, Yahoo Video sucks. But it was 10 terabytes.

486 00:31:24,379 --> 00:31:27,499 We just downloaded all of the video. Everything, all of it.

487 00:31:27,499 --> 00:31:29,970 Luckily they used numeric IDs, very easy to go through.

488 00:31:29,970 --> 00:31:34,179 We ended up downloading it, we're in the process of getting it all back up again somewhere.

489 00:31:34,179 --> 00:31:37,080 And yes a lot of it is spam, some of it is really terrible.

490 00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:40,259 It seems to be really popular with people in countries that are not America,

491 00:31:40,259 --> 00:31:44,080 who were using it as a way that have stuff that needed bandwidth that they didn't have

492 00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:44,690 to pay for,

493 00:31:44,690 --> 00:31:48,659 where the bandwidth was expensive. But we've got this thing,

494 00:31:48,659 --> 00:31:50,659 and we were able to, you know, basically do this

495 00:31:50,659 --> 00:31:54,979 through the gift of volunteers who all work together very hard.

496 00:31:54,979 --> 00:31:58,840 These are all the things that Yahoo! has shut down in the last four years.

497 00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:02,460 Just so you understand. Yahoo briefcase, where you were able to store 10 megs,

498 00:32:02,460 --> 00:32:06,559 whenever you wanted, and get it from anywhere via FTP.

499 00:32:06,559 --> 00:32:12,239 They shut down. Why? No spare USB drive?

500 00:32:12,239 --> 00:32:13,460 Content Mash, some of these you won't know.

501 00:32:13,460 --> 00:32:18,450 Yahoo Pets was funded by Purina for a five year contract

502 00:32:18,450 --> 00:32:24,190 and on the day that the contract ran out they shut it down and redirected it to Yahoo Women.

503 00:32:24,190 --> 00:32:26,700 I don't know why, but they did.

504 00:32:26,700 --> 00:32:28,929 But it was a case of there was this secret contract,

505 00:32:28,929 --> 00:32:30,649 and when I say they shut down, I mean with no warning.

506 00:32:30,649 --> 00:32:32,259 One day it was there, one day it was gone.

507 00:32:32,259 --> 00:32:36,570 It had pet pictures, it had forums in it, everything, gone. Totally gone.

508 00:32:36,570 --> 00:32:40,769 So in other words I'm saying Yahoo blows, OK? It is a fucking clown car.

509 00:32:40,769 --> 00:32:47,769 I wouldn't trust them with like a backup of my nutsack, because these guys...

510 00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:52,950 This is a case where a company went speculatively into user generated content

511 00:32:52,950 --> 00:32:56,109 and when they decided it wasn't worth it any more, they got out of it.

512 00:32:56,109 --> 00:32:59,609 Like getting into a library and deciding "Oh, library business isn't working for us" and

513 00:32:59,609 --> 00:33:01,119 burning it to the ground. OK?

514 00:33:01,119 --> 00:33:06,600 And I've got people, I've got people who come to me and say "Yahoo was great to work at"

515 00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:06,850 -

516 00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:12,190 yeah, everywhere is great to work at if you're working for an arsonist company, it's awesome!

517 00:33:12,190 --> 00:33:16,729 "We were trying to change the world", well, you sorta did. Awesome.

518 00:33:16,729 --> 00:33:22,340 Now you're using Bing as your search engine and you suck.

519 00:33:22,340 --> 00:33:25,019 Friendster went down this year.

520 00:33:25,019 --> 00:33:27,759 Friendster we only got 12 million of the 112 million accounts

521 00:33:27,759 --> 00:33:33,899 because it turns out that digital cameras really came into prominence in 2005,

522 00:33:33,899 --> 00:33:38,899 but we basically got most of the larger earlier sites from it,

523 00:33:38,899 --> 00:33:42,399 a lot of people, you know it's funny 'cause if you talk to people about Friendster,

524 00:33:42,399 --> 00:33:45,619 they know Friendster, they're like "Yeah I remember that, it was like a social network,

525 00:33:45,619 --> 00:33:49,279 I think I was on it" and we feel that like collecting this material -

526 00:33:49,279 --> 00:33:50,960 and believe me it was a javascript nightmare,

527 00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,659 we had to write customized scripts to go through the javascript, negotiate it,

528 00:33:54,659 --> 00:34:00,749 we all had to create accounts on Friendster which was still allowed, up to its death.

529 00:34:00,749 --> 00:34:05,759 And all of us were like "Hobbies? Downloading Friendster."

530 00:34:05,759 --> 00:34:08,369 With some really funny giving the finger profile.

531 00:34:08,369 --> 00:34:11,010 "I'm downloading Friendster, that's why I'm here, what are you up to?

532 00:34:11,010 --> 00:34:16,260 Oh, you like cats, that's great."

533 00:34:16,260 --> 00:34:18,230 Not everyone likes what we're doing.

534 00:34:18,230 --> 00:34:21,409 This is Lulu Poetry - poetry.com.

535 00:34:21,409 --> 00:34:27,329 This was exciting. They gave everyone two weeks to get off. Fourteen million poems.

536 00:34:27,329 --> 00:34:28,659 And as you can see their suggestion was

537 00:34:28,659 --> 00:34:34,359 "Well, be sure to copy and paste your poems before we go down." So you can always remember

538 00:34:34,359 --> 00:34:36,240 them.

539 00:34:36,240 --> 00:34:41,240 "We're unable to save any customer information or poetry."

540 00:34:41,240 --> 00:34:44,559 Actually you don't hear that line a whole lot, do you?

541 00:34:44,559 --> 00:34:48,720 "I'm sorry, your poetry is unavailable."

542 00:34:48,720 --> 00:34:53,039 So we were like, okay, well we can do this. So we did.

543 00:34:53,039 --> 00:34:57,380 Within a short time we start getting banned. Locked out.

544 00:34:57,380 --> 00:35:00,619 So we switch IPs. They block out more.

545 00:35:00,619 --> 00:35:03,609 We have someone switch IPs, and we watch as an entire range is blocked out.

546 00:35:03,609 --> 00:35:07,510 We realized that there is a person or persons there, stopping us.

547 00:35:07,510 --> 00:35:14,510 So we switch to S3. We switched to Amazon instances and we start doing it that way.

548 00:35:16,079 --> 00:35:18,660 And they run out of ways to block us out.

549 00:35:18,660 --> 00:35:25,010 They threaten one of my members, who is in Australia, and fifteen,

550 00:35:25,010 --> 00:35:29,609 with legal whatever, and I'm trying to explain to him that a cease and desist is not a lawsuit.

551 00:35:29,609 --> 00:35:33,220 He's fifteen years old, he's in Australia,

552 00:35:33,220 --> 00:35:40,220 he's probably not going to be flown to America for downloading poetry without a license.

553 00:35:44,039 --> 00:35:47,210 Interpol is not going to get in on this shit.

554 00:35:47,210 --> 00:35:49,970 But, you know, whatever, make the kid nervous,

555 00:35:49,970 --> 00:35:51,369 but basically they were like, "No, no, you don't understand,

556 00:35:51,369 --> 00:35:55,559 we're actually going to be bought out, so this will survive, so we know what you're

557 00:35:55,559 --> 00:35:56,349 doing, it's OK"

558 00:35:56,349 --> 00:36:01,220 and I was like, "It's great you said that - fuck you!" and just kept going at it.

559 00:36:01,220 --> 00:36:07,470 So it turned out, as far as we can determine, they were on one shared server in some space,

560 00:36:07,470 --> 00:36:10,770 that's what their problem was, we were essentially, like I said,

561 00:36:10,770 --> 00:36:12,809 doing a distributed preservation of service attack.

562 00:36:12,809 --> 00:36:18,670 We took these guys out. We were taking them out, making a duplicate of them.

563 00:36:18,670 --> 00:36:21,780 So we got lots of millions and millions of poems, which we're holding on to,

564 00:36:21,780 --> 00:36:26,450 because they did go down, by the way at 12.01 of the day they announced they were going

565 00:36:26,450 --> 00:36:26,700 down.

566 00:36:26,589 --> 00:36:28,640 I could tell that there was like one guy,

567 00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:32,170 we were watching cases on a couple of nights where we would actually watch the blocking

568 00:36:32,170 --> 00:36:32,950 slow down,

569 00:36:32,950 --> 00:36:36,180 because we figured out people got tired and went home.

570 00:36:36,180 --> 00:36:42,569 So by three in the morning our Australia guys are like "Oh wow, free and clear!"

571 00:36:42,569 --> 00:36:46,760 And so, let me tell you nothing is greater than when you give somebody a goal

572 00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:51,799 that has blanketed on it some sort of moral righteousness.

573 00:36:51,799 --> 00:36:55,000 It does lead to some awesome shit, and fire.

574 00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:59,740 Anyway, so basically they, you know, they might come back, they might not.

575 00:36:59,740 --> 00:37:05,000 So sometimes you've got to be a little rough. We try not to be.

576 00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,430 So Google Video announced it was going down.

577 00:37:08,430 --> 00:37:14,450 Now we were scared. Because Google Videos is huge.

578 00:37:14,450 --> 00:37:17,329 So we did it anyway. We started downloading,

579 00:37:17,329 --> 00:37:21,480 we were at somewhere like the ninth or tenth terabyte.

580 00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:26,150 Downloading GeoCities, we had a distributed system that would download from these things,

581 00:37:26,150 --> 00:37:29,119 and we were like "Yup, gonna save it, what an embarrassment.

582 00:37:29,119 --> 00:37:32,500 Google Video, what an embarrassment, what YouTube, why don't you just transfer stuff

583 00:37:32,500 --> 00:37:33,549 to YouTube.

584 00:37:33,549 --> 00:37:36,030 What the hell's wrong with you? Why are we doing this?

585 00:37:36,030 --> 00:37:38,289 What's wrong with you, Yahoo?" -

586 00:37:38,289 --> 00:37:40,970 Uh, sorry, Yahoo 2: Google! -

587 00:37:40,970 --> 00:37:44,690 And basically, a week or two in, they give us an update.

588 00:37:44,690 --> 00:37:46,670 And the update says "OK, we're not going down.

589 00:37:46,670 --> 00:37:50,960 We're going to add a 'Migrate to YouTube' button, we're going to do what we need to

590 00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:52,710 do."

591 00:37:52,710 --> 00:37:55,630 So basically, what they-

592 00:37:55,630 --> 00:37:59,220 what I found out later is that internally in Google they went

593 00:37:59,220 --> 00:38:05,000 "Look what Archive Team is saying, this is really embarrassing. We have to stop this."

594 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:10,460 And so they went "Yeah, got it", so they went, basically, "Okay, we give up."

595 00:38:10,460 --> 00:38:13,650 And so we won. One of the few times we won.

596 00:38:13,650 --> 00:38:14,559 It's nice to win.

597 00:38:14,559 --> 00:38:18,039 So what's this? Guy with nine track tapes.

598 00:38:18,039 --> 00:38:25,039 Guy's got Usenet. That is Usenet from 1981 to 1991, all right.

599 00:38:28,380 --> 00:38:32,140 So here's what happened. So basically, this stuff is what became Dejan,

600 00:38:32,140 --> 00:38:37,049 went into the Google purchase of Deja News, which then became Google Groups,

601 00:38:37,049 --> 00:38:39,289 and Google then proceed to ruin it.

602 00:38:39,289 --> 00:38:43,470 Okay, if you know anything about Usenet, they ruined it. Unequivocally.

603 00:38:43,470 --> 00:38:45,210 And we made a very important discovery.

604 00:38:45,210 --> 00:38:49,210 A lot of people are starting to think of Google as some sort of archive or library.

605 00:38:49,210 --> 00:38:51,599 That they're storing all this data, they're running ads,

606 00:38:51,599 --> 00:38:53,010 they're really storing all this data.

607 00:38:53,010 --> 00:39:00,010 But Google is a library or an archive in the same way that a supermarket is a food museum.

608 00:39:00,260 --> 00:39:02,950 These guys are basically gonna do whatever they gotta do.

609 00:39:02,950 --> 00:39:07,260 So we took it, we took back, we found the original archives that Google had taken,

610 00:39:07,260 --> 00:39:10,250 we put them up on Archive.org. The UTZOO tapes.

611 00:39:10,250 --> 00:39:13,299 And people are doing with them - an Archive Team member did this.

612 00:39:13,299 --> 00:39:16,250 Not really associated with us, but did it and is part of us.

613 00:39:16,250 --> 00:39:22,210 Olduse.net. He is doing a real time posting of Usenet with a thirty-year lag.

614 00:39:22,210 --> 00:39:25,720 So you can go on, connect with the newsreader, and go experience what it was like.

615 00:39:25,720 --> 00:39:27,880 This particular one says "Perhaps you're not aware of it,

616 00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:29,950 but a new Star Trek movie is in the making this summer.

617 00:39:29,950 --> 00:39:32,190 While that is all well and good, there is a problem with it.

618 00:39:32,190 --> 00:39:35,430 It seems that Leonard Nimoy will no longer be available for the role of Spock

619 00:39:35,430 --> 00:39:37,319 and thus they're killing him off.

620 00:39:37,319 --> 00:39:41,700 Loyal Trekkies here have taken great offense to this, as well they should!

621 00:39:41,700 --> 00:39:44,579 There are better ways to remove the necessity of having the character present."

622 00:39:44,579 --> 00:39:47,510 And anyway, so that's good.

623 00:39:47,510 --> 00:39:50,069 And then we never saw Leonard Nimoy again.

624 00:39:50,069 --> 00:39:54,740 So you can connect to this thing and be able to use it right now. That's living history.

625 00:39:54,740 --> 00:39:58,640 Telehack.com, I don't have time to go into it. Telehack.com.

626 00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:04,730 OK, it looks like a command line, it is an entire world. Years of command-line history

627 00:40:04,730 --> 00:40:05,369 at that site.

628 00:40:05,369 --> 00:40:09,960 Spend a little time on it, get an account, it's unbelievable. All resuscitated from old

629 00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:10,579 archives.

630 00:40:10,579 --> 00:40:14,099 And I don't mind being made fun of, all of this whole thing.

631 00:40:14,099 --> 00:40:18,490 This is the stuff for my teammates who make fun of me, we believe in lots of great, crazy

632 00:40:18,490 --> 00:40:20,559 humor.

633 00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:24,799 So where else do we go from here? Well, we've got a group called wikiteam.

634 00:40:24,799 --> 00:40:28,130 They've written a thing from the outside, downloads tons and tons of wikis

635 00:40:28,130 --> 00:40:30,720 and we'll grab it and then we've been putting them up.

636 00:40:30,720 --> 00:40:34,359 So we've got wikiteam, if your wiki is like dying, we're gonna grab it,

637 00:40:34,359 --> 00:40:37,549 and we make the tools available so you can grab any wiki from anywhere else.

638 00:40:37,549 --> 00:40:41,920 URL Team, because URL shortening was a fucking awful idea.

639 00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:44,460 URL shortening is like DNS retarded.

640 00:40:44,460 --> 00:40:50,059 You're gonna let some third party generally decide what everything you do directs to.

641 00:40:50,059 --> 00:40:51,200 You are stupid.

642 00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,400 I understand use of URL shorteners on a per-site basis,

643 00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,690 making a Flickr, that's fl.kr, whatever, that makes sense,

644 00:40:57,690 --> 00:41:01,270 but this is awful because if these things go down now anyone looking at the history,

645 00:41:01,270 --> 00:41:03,500 it's like people are talking cryptographic code.

646 00:41:03,500 --> 00:41:07,079 "Here's this awesome site... thing you can't figure out."

647 00:41:07,079 --> 00:41:10,579 So we have been taking them on, this group over here

648 00:41:10,579 --> 00:41:14,400 has been basically taking all these old URL shorteners and turning them into archives

649 00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:16,250 that we then torrent.

650 00:41:16,250 --> 00:41:23,130 So, I also want to point out, this is Chronomex, Jeroenz0r, Soultcer, Swebb, Underscor, not

651 00:41:23,130 --> 00:41:24,230 me.

652 00:41:24,230 --> 00:41:28,400 This is not just a Jason Scott project. These guys, I just, I'm planning a fire,

653 00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,559 but these guys are going somewhere with it and they don't always need me, that's very

654 00:41:31,559 --> 00:41:32,779 important.

655 00:41:32,779 --> 00:41:34,869 What else? What's left to save?

656 00:41:34,869 --> 00:41:38,289 I don't know if many of you know Len Sassaman.

657 00:41:38,289 --> 00:41:40,119 He was a wonderful cryptographer,

658 00:41:40,119 --> 00:41:44,700 wonderful human being who took his own life just a very short period of time ago.

659 00:41:44,700 --> 00:41:50,329 His wake was just last week, actually, and he was a big presenter at DEFCON.

660 00:41:50,329 --> 00:41:52,640 If you start going through the archives, you will find him there,

661 00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:56,299 he's a brilliant person who left a lot of friends and a lot of memories.

662 00:41:56,299 --> 00:42:02,660 He's a wonderful guy, and his widow said to me "Can you archive him?"

663 00:42:02,660 --> 00:42:06,839 So I started a project called "Away From Keyboard". This is on Archive.org.

664 00:42:06,839 --> 00:42:11,329 And what we're doing is we are collecting artifacts from various people who have passed

665 00:42:11,329 --> 00:42:12,119 on

666 00:42:12,119 --> 00:42:17,960 to turn them into collections of files that at least we can get some piece of these people

667 00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:18,700 who are gone,

668 00:42:18,700 --> 00:42:21,589 and we can remember them and be able to build from them.

669 00:42:21,589 --> 00:42:23,599 So it doesn't always have to be about websites,

670 00:42:23,599 --> 00:42:26,029 it doesn't always have to be discs that I'm trying to save here.

671 00:42:26,029 --> 00:42:28,500 It's everything, and I think that's just critical.

672 00:42:28,500 --> 00:42:31,779 What did we learn here?

673 00:42:31,779 --> 00:42:33,470 We learned I'm really loud.

674 00:42:33,470 --> 00:42:39,000 We learned a lot of profanity, but hopefully you'll look at a web site that's going down,

675 00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:40,829 into something that's dying, and you'll say to yourself

676 00:42:40,829 --> 00:42:45,799 "Okay, that's not just a piece of crap, that's something that's meaningful to people.

677 00:42:45,799 --> 00:42:47,690 That's something that matters to people."

678 00:42:47,690 --> 00:42:51,950 And I hope that that, you know, piece, sticks with you, if nothing else I did.

679 00:42:51,950 --> 00:42:53,279 So my final question for you is,

680 00:42:53,279 --> 00:42:55,339 "OK, is anyone here from Archive Team?"

681 00:42:55,339 --> 00:42:58,599 No, fuck you. You are all in Archive Team.

682 00:42:58,599 --> 00:43:02,400 I officially deputize you. You are allowed to be in Archive Team.

683 00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:05,309 Go where you need to, keep backups, store them somewhere,

684 00:43:05,309 --> 00:43:08,480 throw them over to someplace you don't remember, give me copies later,

685 00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:11,289 or give my successor copies later, about these things,

686 00:43:11,289 --> 00:43:14,650 because it turns out what you walk in is history,

687 00:43:14,650 --> 00:43:17,589 because the hardest part of history is to be there when it happens.

688 00:43:17,589 --> 00:43:19,490 That's the hardest part of any historian's job.

689 00:43:19,490 --> 00:43:23,289 And by being what you are right now doing, is you are in companies, you are with people,

690 00:43:23,289 --> 00:43:26,190 you are visiting things, and you are with history.

691 00:43:26,190 --> 00:43:27,900 So please, save it for the future

692 00:43:27,900 --> 00:43:33,900 because the future will wonder why the fuck we all thought Under Construction GIFs were

693 00:43:33,900 --> 00:43:38,760 so important.

694 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:42,650 Sometimes I put that as my user profile when I'm downloading a site.

695 00:43:42,650 --> 00:43:46,920 It hits the message, doesn't it?

696 00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:51,069 I'm just saying, if you take your site down, I'll see you there.

697 00:43:51,069 --> 00:43:58,069 Jason Scott, Archive Team. Thank you for coming.

698 00:43:59,980 --> 00:44:02,740 And please, one more bit.

699 00:44:02,740 --> 00:44:06,609 Dedicated to Tim Recher who unfortunately died before really giving a big presentation

700 00:44:06,609 --> 00:44:07,329 here,

701 00:44:07,329 --> 00:44:11,880 so I'm just proud to say, my secret co-presenter Tim Recher.

702 00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:13,490 Thank you so much.