Hafid b. Ladin, a member of the Hesbah forum, complained last week that links to Jihadi media material on Internet Archive (www.archive.org) are under attack. For those of you who do’t follow the forums, media materials are not uploaded directly to the forum servers but rather to third-party sites; the links are then posted to the forums. As Aaron and Marisa have observed in the past, the third-party site of preference has been archive.org. But now, according to Hafid, the material is being removed, which he considers to be part of the larger action against the Jihadi presence online:
All of you know of the attacks and strikes that the jihadi media has been subjected to, beginning with the targeting of jihadi forums and ending with the deletion of links for materials which have the scent of “terrorism.” The supporters of jihadi media have exerted great effort to overcome many of these problems, but once they are about to solve one problem another one floats to the surce. Therefore, they have to continully adapt to meet these challenges.
My discussion of this subject is particularly focused on the links for audio-visual jihadi materials, which most of the members upload to the archive [archive.org] thinking that it is the best and fastest site. Despite the excellent features of the site (most of which have to do with downloading, not uploading), those materials are being attacked and constantly deleted. Even I, until now, have not ben able to download a high quality copy of Shaykh Abu Yahya’s `Id al-Fitr sermon!!!
Hafid goes on to recommend that members use other third-party file sharing sites that can do the job just as well: Adrive, Zshare, FDCupload, and gettyfile.
Update: Rusty has returned from his ghayba to explain why Jihadis prefer Internet Archive to other sites.
Document (Arabic): 10-29-08-hesbah-member-complains-that-uploaded-files-are-being-removed
3 Responses
“Despite the excellent features of the site (most of which have to do with downloading, not uploading), those materials are being attacked and constantly deleted.”
Ha! I have been a strong critic of Archive.org’s “see no evil” hosting policy in the past. But I will give credit where it’s due; the folks there have started exercising common sense content policies. Let’s hope they keep it up.
I’m not sure it’s much down to a change in their personal policy, but the passing of a law which cracked down on those hosting jihadi propaganda. In any event, it’s not much of a triumph: if you seriously think that slighty disrupting the propaganda will achieve anything other than embitterment, and considering that despite the shutdown of the most notable forums the releases from the groups are still coming thick and fast, it’s a pyrrhic victory at most.