Wayback Machine Director: We Are ‘Collateral Damage’ in the Fight Between AI Companies and Publishers

In the latest episode of the Future Knowledge podcast, “Preserving the Web in the Age of AI,” Wayback Machine director Mark Graham, tech policy expert Mike Masnick, and media lawyer Kendra Albert discuss the reports that some news publishers are blocking the Wayback Machine from archiving their websites due to unfounded concerns over AI scraping.

For Graham, it’s an issue of supporting journalism and the historical record. The Wayback Machine has become “collateral damage caught up in the conflict between AI companies and publishers.”

As Graham recounts encounters with reporters and researchers, a clear pattern emerges: even the most well-resourced institutions cannot fully preserve their own digital history. The Wayback Machine has become an indispensable backstop, ensuring that the public record remains accessible even when original sources disappear.

“I was in the offices of The New York Times just a few weeks ago,” said Graham, noting that The New York Times has blocked the Wayback Machine from archiving its website, “and a senior researcher came up to me and said, ‘Oh my God, Mark, thank you so much for the Wayback Machine. We use you all the time. There is material available that we’ve used from the Wayback Machine that we can’t even find in our own archives.’ I get those stories all the time.”

For Masnick, blocking the Wayback Machine “will be seen as a huge mistake by those media organizations, an overreaction to a problem that probably isn’t really a problem.”

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