#backups

[christinaroseandrews]

rahaeli (@rahaeli.bsky.social)

Okay, I will preface this with the GIGANTIC disclaimer that I promise I know how this looks, and I *swear* this is not personally motivated:

Hey everyone, it looks like there's some hinky stuff going on with LiveJournal in a way where it might be shutting down relatively soon -- and if not, who knows what will happen to it?

Obviously most of us aren't active users there right now, but a lot of us were active users there at some point, so... if you want to save your blog, this thread includes a few ways on how to do it, as well as a lot more detail on exactly what's going on.

(We also suggest screengrabbing or saving the page of any fics that you care about that are based there, as well as anything else you might have bookmarked.)

Just in general, as a reminder, despite what the old adage is: the internet is not forever. So back up anything you care about!

Note: edited to add screengrabs below the cut in case anyone doesn't want to click on the link.

[mckitterick]

Copyright law: making personal copies of copyrighted work

image sourced from a Cory Doctorow article on DMCA: X (recommended reading)

creating a digital backup (legally, it's called making an "archival copy") of software is explicitly allowed. but copying or alerting books, music, vehicle operating systems, movies, shows, and so on - even those you’ve legally purchased - gets complicated due to overlapping laws

under the doctrine of "fair use," we are permitted to make backup / archival copies under certain conditions:

copyright law allows you to make copies for personal use in case the original is lost, damaged, or destroyed; or to change formats to use on new devices; or to otherwise alter or repair the original for your own personal use

all this falls within fair use

however, making a copy of copyrighted work simply for your own ease of use could be construed as copyright infringement

furthermore, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) restricts this by prohibiting "circumvention of encryption" on devices like DVDs and Blu-rays

the DMCA criminalizes making and disseminating technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (aka "digital rights management" locks or DRM), and in fact criminalizes the act of circumventing access controls, whether or not doing so infringes on the copyright of the work itself

so, unless the original work you buy is unlocked, corporations that hold the copyright of that work can prosecute you for making legal archives of the material you own

and if the thing you bought is lost or damaged, or if the file format is no longer usable? you're just out of luck

DMCA needs to go

[memingoapp]

Putting off backups like it’s no big deal… until it becomes one

[astercontrol]

write this down now, just in case:

If my Tumblr account ever disappears, you can email me at astercontrol(at)proton(dot)me

or check my neocities website (astercontrol dot com)

and we'll go from there to figure out how we'll stay in touch

but we will NOT lose each other. Okay??

Feel free to reblog with how you can be reached in the event of Tumblr failing you and/or everyone. I'm not losing touch with any more friends if I can help it.

[krissiefox]

While I strongly recommend keeping local backups of your files on your computer, external hard drives, flash drives, CD/DVD-RWs, etc, it's also a good idea to back up your files online! Here's a list of file storing sites where you can back stuff up for free. Spreading your files across different storage sites may make things more complicated but can also keep from ever having to pay for expanded storage space on any of them. Also, storing your files online creates an easy to share them with friends or publicly on the internet!

Site list is below!

https://app.mediafire.com/ File storage site I've been using since the 2000s! They give you up to 50 GB of free file storage space.

https://www.google.com/drive/ Google Drive allows you to use 15 GB of online storage for free. You can also save links to other people's google drive folders in your main directory, making them easier to find again later.

https://www.dropbox.com/home Drop box gives you 2 GB of free storage. Much smaller than some of the others, but every bit counts when you want to save money!

https://www.4s.io/ 4shared gives you 15 GB of free storage space!

https://mega.io/ MEGA will give you 20 GB of storage space free!

https://archive.org/ Internet Archive is a very good place for storing things such as writings, art, audio, software, videos., etc. All posts are public so this site is ideal for making backups of finished works that you want to show off/keep safe. They run off of donations so if you use their site for storage please consider throwing some cash their way!

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The Following Sites are places where you can archive your video game mods and maps!

https://www.moddb.com/ Mod.db is a nice community where you can archive and share your maps and mods, storage space is unlimited!

https://gamebanana.com/ Gamebanana is rather messy in my opinion, but is still another great place for archiving and sharing game mods/maps you have created!

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/ Steam Workshop mods can't just be freely downloaded from a web browser, so I consider it inferior to gamebanana and mod.db. Still, it can be another good place to archive mods and maps you made for games that have workshop support! It does tend to ease the installation process for mods, but people who got the game from another store may not be able to get your mods!

https://www.planetminecraft.com/ Lastly, here is my favorite Minecraft File website - running strong since the early days of Minecraft. If you've ever made a skin, map, mod, etc for Minecraft, you can probably archive and share it here!

[nixcraft]

The cloud is just someone else's computer, and they probably don't back it up as often as you'd like. Better keep those important files on a disk locally at two different locations, just in case. 😉

[papermint-airplane]

Here are my socials for when Tumblr bites the big one since it's apparently about to:

Pillowfort - PapermintAirplane (NSFW is posted there as well so beware)

Bluesky - papermint-airplane

Discord - Papermint-Airplane (I'm very selective about who I add there but feel free to message me any time)

Simblr.CC - Papermint-Airplane

I'm pretty easy to find 🤭

I'm also on Reddit although I don't use it much anymore but I'm LimitedTimeOtter there.