The other day, I highlighted the wonderful Unofficial Apple Archive. It was a fantastic resource, full of Apple history. I say ‘was’ because the archive has been almost emptied by DMCA takedown notices, 9to5Mac reported.
Site creator Sam Henri Gold told us that he only wanted to save Apple’s history from being lost after the EveryAppleAds YouTube channel was taken down in April 2017… Gold said at the time that he was aware this could happen. Sam knows his efforts could be rendered useless with one word from Apple. But he hopes the amicable and educational nature of the archive will keep it online, because the Apple community deserves no less. “I think we’ve seen what a world without a public archive would look like, a world littered with tiny archive channels, maybe one or two god-awful screen recordings of keynotes with giant […] watermarks. That’s not a world I want to live in.”
Check It Out: DMCA Takedowns Remove Most of the Content From The Unofficial Apple Archive
Josh Centers on Tidbits tells it more explicitly: “the company( Apple ) filed a total of 3700 DMCA complaints against the archive’s Vimeo account in a 3-hour period on the night of 25 January 2020” Thus squashing access to a lot of history. Apple doesn’t like this kind of news being published because it tarnishes their image. If the reporting is accurate ( and I have no reason to believe it isn’t ), Apple could have handled this in a way they could be proud to advertise but chose to attack a small website.