Internet Archive Says Official EU Government Agencies “Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content”

From an Internet Archive Blog Post by Chris Butler:

The European Parliament is set to vote on legislation that would require websites that host user-generated content to take down material reported as terrorist content within one hour. We have some examples of current notices sent to the Internet Archive that we think illustrate very well why this requirement would be harmful to the free sharing of information and freedom of speech that the European Union pledges to safeguard.

In the past week, the Internet Archive has received a series of email notices from Europol’s European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) falsely identifying hundreds of URLs on archive.org as “terrorist propaganda”. At least one of these mistaken URLs was also identified as terrorist content in a separate take down notice from the French government’s L’Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC).

The post goes on to explain how the IA’s takedown process works and provides examples of some of the urls that were identified as terrorist content.

Direct to Full Text of Internet Archive Blog

Filed under: News