The Internet Archive suffered an outage on July 7 after a power failure at one of its data centers.
The location of the data center was unspecified.
The Internet Archive enables its users to gain free access to digital materials. It is also home to the Wayback Machine, a service that archives web pages and allows users to see when publishers are making changes or removing their websites.
First reported by The Stack, the Internet Archive posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 7 to let its users know of the outage.
"Sorry, but a brief power outage in one of our data centers, and then environmental factors kicking in... means the Wayback Machine has been down and Archive.org has been wobbling. We are working on it."
By July 8, an update was shared: "As of a couple hours ago, we are up (except for a couple of nodes). All is good."
Despite reassurances, The Register reports that there were still some users, including The Register's writer, experiencing issues with the service.
The Internet Archive had previously been impacted by a DDoS attack in May 2024, which similarly caused problems for users, though was not said to have damaged its archive or collection.
In March 2023, DCD reported that the California-based Internet Archive experienced a multi-hour outage after a power cut at one of its data centers. This coincided with high winds leaving more than 180,000 electricity customers without power in the Bay Area, including Stanford University.
The platform is also in the midst of a years-long lawsuit with major US book publishers and record labels, having been charged with copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed in New York on June 1, 2020. That lawsuit called for millions of dollars in damages. In March 2023, a US federal judge ruled that the Internet Archive did not have the right to lend out digital copies of the books it had published, finding it guilty of copyright infringement.
That lawsuit will also see the Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books from its library should it go through.
The case is currently pending on appeal before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
