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[Husky]

Today I read a very interesting blog post on the Internet Archive.

A Long Bet Pays Off | Internet Archive Blogs

blog.archive.org

11 years ago, on the site longbets.org, a friendly wager was made between two mavens of the web: Jeremy Keith and Matthew Haughey.
The bet, to be revisited a decade and a year later, would be whether the URL of their wager at Long Bets would survive to a point in the semi-distant future.

That is, this day, February 22nd, 2022, (2/22/2022).
As of this writing, the URL absolutely has survived.

The bet was won just yesterday, as Long Bets kept all of their old bet URLs alive. You can view the bet here:

02011-02022 (11 years): The original URL for this prediction (www.longbets.org/601) will no longer be available in eleven years. - Long Bets

longbets.org

Keith's Argument​

"Cool URIs don't change" wrote Tim Berners-Lee in 01999, but link rot is the entropy of the web. The probability of a web document surviving in its original location decreases greatly over time. I suspect that even a relatively short time period (eleven years) is too long for a resource to survive.

I would love to be proven wrong.

Haughey's Argument​

Though much of the web is ephemeral in nature, now that we have surpassed the 20 year mark since the web was created and gone through several booms and busts, technology and strategies have matured to the point where keeping a site going with a stable URI system is within reach of anyone with moderate technological knowledge. My oldest sites are going on 13 years old at the time of this bet and the original URL scheme still functions via 301 redirects to a final format we selected about six years ago.

Detailed Terms​

On February 22nd, 2022 from 00:01 UTC until 23:59 UTC,
entering the characters http://www.longbets.org/601 into the address bar of a web browser or command line tool (like curl)
OR
using a web browser to follow a hyperlink that points to http://www.longbets.org/601
MUST
return an HTML document that still contains the following text: "The original URL for this prediction (www.longbets.org/601) will no longer be available in eleven years."

A 301 redirect from www.longbets.org/601 to a different URL containing that text would also fulfill those conditions.

If those conditions are met, Matt wins.

If those conditions aren't met, Jeremy wins.

 

[IntentionalPun]

What a stupid bet.

 

[Rest]

What?

 

[DanteFox]

So you're telling me that as recently as 2011 there was any question as to whether a url could survive 11 years? I feel like I'm missing something.

 

[UnravelKatharsis]

The op mentions nothing regarding what was wagered, so did the bet really pay off?

 

[Husky]

The op mentions nothing regarding what was wagered, so did the bet really pay off?

A whole grand of buckaroos!

 

[UnravelKatharsis]

A whole grand of buckaroos!

I see...the only pertinent info I wanted to see had to be retrieved externally. Seems like an awfully low payout for an 11 year bet

 

[TransTrender]

Honestly I was expecting one of those 'started with a paper clip and ended with a house' situations.

 

[nush]

There's still a few websites I visited back in the late 90's still active. What a stupid bet and why is this news?

 

[Darryl]

It's shameful of them to have even told anyone the story of such a stupid bet

 

[kittoo]

They should be ashamed of their words and deeds.

 

[Allforce]

Those absolute madmen!

 

[ShirAhava]

This whole thing reads like chain mail spam you'd get in your yahoo or aol email in 2002

neat I guess?

 

[HellforLeather]

 

[West Texas CEO]

Internet Archive bros, we might be dead..

 

[March Climber]

Internet Archive bros, we might be dead..

Why's that?

 

[West Texas CEO]

Why's that?

They're removing a ton of books from there.
If this keeps up, who knows?

 

[ManaByte]

They're removing a ton of books from there.
If this keeps up, who knows?

Just wait until Nintendo sees what's hosted there.

 

[March Climber]

They're removing a ton of books from there.
If this keeps up, who knows?

What was the reason why?

 

[West Texas CEO]

What was the reason why?

The publishers of those catalog's are getting more and more aggressive.
I'm thinking Nintendo's win versus Vimm has caused a domino effect, unfortunately.

 

[March Climber]

The publishers of those catalog's are getting more and more aggressive.
I'm thinking Nintendo's win versus Vimm has caused a domino effect, unfortunately.

Which publisher was it?

 

[diffusionx]

The publishers of those catalog's are getting more and more aggressive.
I'm thinking Nintendo's win versus Vimm has caused a domino effect, unfortunately.

It’s not even really a “win”, let’s be real, Vimm was clearly copyright infringement and there is no case otherwise. I think Nintendo was more or less ok with these sites provided they flew under the radar but as soon as they start making the rounds on TikTok it’s over.

 

[Lunarorbit]

That's a cool tidbit about urls and entropy.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Which publisher was it?

there are multiple

 

[March Climber]

there are multiple

If you have the link available I was wondering if you could post it. I need to know how much has been removed.

 

[West Texas CEO]

If you have the link available I was wondering if you could post it. I need to know how much has been removed.

Shout-out to NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt for the heads-up:

Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win

Internet Archive fans beg publishers to stop emptying the open library.

arstechnica.com

Bad news