At the end of last month, More than two decades of music and entertainment journalism disappeared when Paramount Global suddenly shut down the MTV News website. Just a week later, the Internet Archive responded by creating a searchable one compilation of the old MTV News website via the Wayback Machine.
The collection includes over 460,575 web page snapshots that the Internet Archive has collected over the years. As Variety (which first reported the collection), notes, the archive appears to go back to 1997, though it doesn't contain everything published on MTV News over the years. Many images on the archived pages also did not survive, but the original text of these pieces remains intact.
The new MTV News collection was created after the site was taken down, and the Internet Archive contacted Michael Alex, who founded and led the MTV News digital team between 1994 and 2007. Alex called the collection “incomplete” but “very impressive”, adding: “It's like treasure when you find something you're looking for.” (Representatives for the Internet Archive did not immediately return requests for further comment.)
While the nonprofit Internet Archive collects and makes available all kinds of material (digital and physical), it's best known for the Wayback Machine, which has been crawling and documenting the Internet since the mid-90s. Over the years, it has created specific collections, such as the new one for MTV News, that allow users and researchers to more easily explore a particular site's backlog. (Other collections have been created for former digital media giants like Gawker and Vice.)
Last year, Paramount Global shuttered its longtime MTV News division as part of a massive round of layoffs. Since then, the site has been dormant but still accessible until the decision to take it down last week. Along with MTV News, Paramount Global also appeared to collect thousands of articles from the CMT website and a slew of videos from the Comedy Central website.
Paramount Global did not immediately return calls Rolling rockthe request for comment on the decision to disable the MTV News website or the Internet Archive's efforts to preserve all such content; A previously released statement read: “As part of broader website changes across Paramount, we've introduced more streamlined versions of our websites, driving fans to Paramount+ to watch their favorite shows.”
While the Internet Archive is known for preservation projects like this (and reviving the DatPiff mixtape archive), they've also landed the nonprofit in legal trouble. The Archive is currently facing two copyright infringement challenges, one from book publishers and the other from music rights holders.
Last year, the publishers won their lawsuit against the Archive for the “National Emergency Library,” an effort launched to make its treasure trove of scanned books more readily available amid library and school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. . This lawsuit was followed by one led by two major labels, Universal Music Group and Sony Music, who sued the Archive over the Great 78 Project, an effort to digitize and make available obsolete 78-rpm records. The Archive has denied infringement in both cases. The book publisher's case is currently being heard on appeal.
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