Vanishing Culture: Why Preserve Flash?

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The following guest post from free-range archivist and software curator Jason Scott is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.

Badger by AlbinoBlackSheep (John Picking, 2003).

At the Internet Archive we have a technical marvel: emulators running in the browser, allowing computer programs—after a fashion and with some limits—to play with a single click. Go here, and you’re battling aliens. Go there, and you’re experiencing what a spreadsheet program was like in 1981. It’s fast, fun, and free.

We also encourage patrons to upload the software that affected their early lives, and to then encourage others to play these programs with a single click. And so, they do—many, many people working through an admittedly odd set of instructions to make these programs live again.

But of the dozens of machines and environments our system supports, one very specific one dwarfs the others in terms of user contributions: thousands and thousands of additions compared to the relative handful of others. And what is that environment?

Flash.

Created in the 1990s through acquisition and focusing its playability within then-nascent browsers, Flash (once Macromedia Flash, later Adobe Flash) was a plug-in and creation environment designed to bring interactivity to websites and provide a quick on-ramp to making some basic applications across various machines. Within a few years, it was something else entirely.

Originally, it was something as simple as a website where rolling your mouse over a button made it light up or play a sound. Soon it became little animations playing in a splash screen. Some machines had their resources taxed by this alternate website technology—but soon many major sites couldn’t live without it.

Flash flew across the mid-2000s internet sky in a blaze of glory and unbridled creativity. It was the backbone of menus and programs and even critical applications for working with sites. But by 2009, bugs and compatibility issues, the introduction of HTML5 with many of the same features, and a declaration that Flash would no longer be welcome on Apple’s iOS devices, sent Flash into a spiral that it never recovered from.

But thanks to the Archive’s emulation, Flash lives again, at least as self-contained creations you can play in your browser. 

Explore the Flash software library preserved and emulated at the Internet Archive.

What emerges, as thousand of these Flash animations and games arrive, is what part it played in the lives of people now in their twenties and thirties and beyond. “Almost like being given a moment to breathe, or to walk into a museum space and see distant memories hung up on walls as classic art,” our patrons wrote in. 

For a rather sizable amount of people using computers from the late 1990s to mid 2000s, before Facebook and Youtube pulled away the need for distractions of a simpler sort, Flash was many people’s game consoles. There were countless people, at work and at home, using Flash sites to play to pass the day and night. Games, animation, and toys to flip through and enjoy. And what there had been to enjoy!

A reasonable tinkerer of Flash’s construction and programming environment could create something functional or straightforward in a day or two of playing around. Someone more driven could, across a week of work and lifting ideas and tutorials from elsewhere, emerge from their screens with an arcade-quality game or a parody movie that got an immediate, heartfelt reaction from a grateful audience. Even when the audience wasn’t quite so grateful, it was easy enough to whip up another experimental work and throw it into the public square to see how it landed.

Without some extensive surveying and research (maybe a future Doctorate of Flash History is out there) we may never know exactly what combinations of ease, nostalgia, and variety have left so many people with such a fondness for Flash. But one thing is clear: its preservation is vital.

Recent events have strengthened the need to keep Flash preserved—for example, shutdowns of the Cartoon Network’s website wiped out hundreds of Flash games and animations that only existed on the site, and will never show up on a DVD or streaming service. 

It is everywhere, and nowhere—an easy enough thing to explain, but an impossible thing to transfer over as to the depth and variety of what the garden of creation was. Flash, while under the purview of a single company, became, in contrast to the hundreds of other languages and programs for video and sound, the home for everyone. And now it has a home with the Internet Archive.

About the author

Jason Scott is the Free-Range Archivist and Software Curator of the Internet Archive. His favorite arcade game is Crazy Climber.

Tom Lehrer (1928–2025): A Life in Satire, A Legacy in the Commons

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A purple background text featuring text stating "Tom Lehrer: That Was The Life That Was"

Satirical musical artist Tom Lehrer passed away on July 26, 2025. Lehrer is best remembered for his sharp wit, engaging musical compositions, and timeless social commentary. In 2020, Lehrer proactively disclaimed his rights under copyright to his lyrics and musical compositions, allowing others to re-use his works without his permission. Lehrer’s dedication of his works to the commons emboldens its power, and reflects his talent to be in-conversation with cultural moments long after he is gone. 

Lehrer’s wit and support for cultural remixing shines through in a 2013 comment where he granted 2Chainz permission to sample “The Old Dope Peddler”. “I grant you m*f*s permission to do this,” Lehrer quipped. To celebrate his life, spirit, and contribution to the public domain, we invite you to explore his works for pleasure, inspiration, or just sheer curiosity. Below are a few fan favorites.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

A funny and dark song spoofing global nuclear annihilation fears during the height of the Cold War. Its cheery and delightful-sounding musical composition juxtaposes against lyrics reflecting a dark vision of “universal bereavement” following armageddon.

The Vatican Rag 

Known for its savvy skewering of the controversy around the resistance to modernizing traditions and rituals, plus who else could write a lyric like “Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate”?

The Elements

A fun, whimsical, and breakneck-paced take on the periodic table, itself building off of the public domain tune of the “Major-General’s Song” from 1879’s The Pirates of Penzance.

This post is published with a CC0 Waiver, dedicating it to the public domain.

IFLA Signs Statement Supporting Digital Rights of Memory Institutions

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The global campaign to secure digital rights for libraries and memory institutions just gained a powerful new ally.

As explained in a post by Beatrice Murch of Internet Archive Europe, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)—the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services—has signed the Statement on Four Digital Rights of Memory Institutions, joining more than 130 signatories from around the world who are calling for the legal rights that libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage organizations need to fulfill their missions in the digital age.

It’s such a good initiative. I think as far as we were concerned, when we looked [at] the Four Digital Rights […], we sat down and thought this stuff is obvious, isn’t it? This is just reaffirming the things that libraries have always done. 

These are basic functions that need to be in place, not just to deliver library rights, but ultimately library rights are the rights of the community that depends on libraries to actually get things done, to fulfill their own rights, to fulfill their own potential.

Stephen Wyber, IFLA

In joining the statement, IFLA strengthens the growing international movement to secure the legal foundations for long-term digital preservation and access to knowledge. Their endorsement signals that libraries and archives worldwide are aligned in calling for legal reform on four essential rights:

  1. Right to Collect
  2. Right to Preserve
  3. Right to Lend
  4. Right to Cooperate

To hear more from Stephen about why IFLA signed the statement, along with how the effort came about, listen to the latest episode of the Future Knowledge podcast:

Internet Archive Designated as a Federal Depository Library

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Announced today, the Internet Archive has been designated as a federal depository library by Senator Alex Padilla. The designation was made via letter to Scott Matheson, Superintendent of Documents at the U.S. Government Publishing Office.

Senator Padilla explained the designation in a statement to KQED:

“The Archive’s digital-first approach makes it the perfect fit for a modern federal depository library, expanding access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape,” Padilla said in a statement to KQED. “The Internet Archive has broken down countless barriers to accessing information, and it is my honor to provide this designation to help further their mission of providing ‘Universal Access to All Knowledge.’”

Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle remarked on the designation:

“ I think there is a great deal of excitement to have an organization such as the Internet Archive, which has physical collections of materials, but is really known mostly for being accessible as part of the internet,” Kahle said. “And helping integrate these materials into things like Wikipedia, so that the whole internet ecosystem gets stronger as digital learners get closer access into the government materials.”

Read the letter: https://archive.org/details/padilla-designation-letter-to-gpo-7.24.2025

Learn more about the designation: “SF-Based Internet Archive Is Now a Federal Depository Library. What Does That Mean?” (KQED)

Internet Archive and Partners Receive Press Forward Funding to Support Preserving Local News

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We are excited to announce that Internet Archive, working with partners Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) and The Poynter Institute, has received a $1 million grant from Press Forward, a national initiative to reimagine local news. The funding is part of Press Forward’s Open Call on Infrastructure, which is providing $22.7 million to 22 projects that address the urgent challenges local newsrooms face today. 

The grant will support development of the “Today’s News for Tomorrow” national program by Internet Archive, IRE, and The Poynter Institute to provide infrastructure, preservation services, training, and community building that enable local newsrooms and journalists to ensure the archiving and perpetual access of their their publications, digital assets, and other materials. As the first draft of history, local news published today is a critical resource documenting the lives and stories of the American people as well as an essential record for use by students, historians, and researchers. The “Today’s News for Tomorrow” program will address the financial and operational challenges that many local news organizations face in managing and preserving their digital materials both for their immediate internal needs and the future information needs of their communities. 

The Press Forward funding will allow the program partners to provide infrastructure and training to over 300 newsrooms and journalists across the country, with a focus on vital local online news that is particularly at risk. Internet Archive’s web archive has long been an essential resource for journalists in their reporting. Pairing Internet Archive’s preservation infrastructure and services with IRE’s and The Poynter Institute’s experience in training and community support for journalists will further Press Forward’s goal to strengthen communities by revitalizing local news. The “Today’s News for Tomorrow” program also builds on Internet Archive’s successful “Community Webs” national program which has received nearly $3M in funding to provide preservation services and cohort-based training to over 275 libraries, museums, and municipalities from 46 states and 7 Canadian provinces in support of their work documenting the history of their communities. 

We thank Press Forward and The Miami Foundation for their support of “Today’s News for Tomorrow.” We are excited to work closely with IRE and The Poynter Institute supporting newsrooms and journalists and are honored to be part of the group of organizations receiving funding as part of Press Forward’s Open Call on Infrastructure. The full list of recipients is available online at pressforward.news/infrastructure25.

Librarians Convene to Develop Strategies for Documenting Their Community’s Digital Heritage

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A group of librarians and cultural heritage workers from across the country recently convened at two events hosted by Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Made possible in part with support from the Mellon Foundation, the meetings allowed librarians from across the country to discuss shared challenges and opportunities around documenting, preserving, and sharing the unique culture and digital heritage of their communities.

Community Webs members in Philadelphia for the 2025 Community Webs National Symposium

Launched in 2017, Internet Archive’s Community Webs program provides public libraries and similar organizations with the tools and support they need to document local communities. Members of the program receive access to Internet Archive’s Archive-It web archiving service and Vault digital preservation service, have coordinated on funded digitization projects to bring local history collections online, and receive training, technical support, and opportunities for collaboration and professional development. There are now over 260 members of the program from across 46 states, 7 Canadian provinces, and a growing number from outside of North America.

Attendees at a workshop led by Queens Memory Project founder Natalie Milbrodt

The first of these events was held on May 9 at Internet Archive Headquarters in San Francisco and brought together a small group of public librarians interested in launching new community-focused local preservation initiatives. As local information hubs and community connectors, public libraries play a critical role in the preservation and access of local history. Over the course of the day, attendees engaged in exercises and discussions that helped them develop plans to support this work in their communities. 

Community Webs members view highlights from the Parkway Central Library Special Collections

The 2025 Community Webs National Symposium was held on June 25 and 26 in Philadelphia ahead of the American Library Association annual conference. This two-day event brought together 40 Community Webs members representing a range of cultural heritage institutions. Attendees participated in workshops on community archiving and digital preservation led by Queens Memory Project founder Natalie Milbrodt and Digital POWRR instructor Danielle Taylor, listened to presentations from Community Webs members on local projects they are leading in their communities, and toured the Parkway Central Library Special Collections. 

A main goal of the Community Webs program is to create opportunities for multi-institutional collaboration across organizations devoted to preserving local history. In-person events like these provide a forum where members can build relationships, exchange ideas, and develop skills. By supporting the work of these cultural heritage practitioners to preserve local knowledge, Internet Archive is able to move closer to achieving its mission of “Universal Access to All Knowledge.” 

Interested in learning more about Community Webs? Explore Community Webs collections, read the latest program news, or apply to join!

Wayback Machine to Hit ‘Once-in-a-Generation Milestone’ this October: One Trillion Web Pages Archived

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Illustration of a towering monolith with "1T" engraved on it, symbolizing the Internet Archive's milestone of archiving 1 trillion web pages. The monolith stands against a cosmic backdrop with a glowing light behind it, evoking a sense of scale and wonder. The Internet Archive logo appears in the lower left corner.

This October, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is projected to hit a once-in-a-generation milestone: 1 trillion web pages archived. That’s one trillion memories, moments, and movements—preserved for the public, forever.

We’ll be commemorating this historic achievement on October 22, 2025, with a global event: a party at our San Francisco headquarters and a livestream for friends and supporters around the world. More than a celebration, it’s a tribute to what we’ve built together: a free and open digital library of the web.

Join us in marking this incredible milestone. Together, we’ve built the largest archive of web history ever assembled. Let’s celebrate this achievement—in San Francisco and around the world—on October 22.

Here’s how you can take part:

1. RSVP
Sign up now to be the first to know when registration opens for our in-person event and livestream.
RSVP now

2. Support the Internet Archive
Help us continue preserving the web for generations to come.
Donate today!

3. Share Your Story
What does the web mean to you? How has the Wayback Machine helped you remember, research, or recover something important?
Submit your story

Let’s work together toward October 22—a day to look back, share stories, and celebrate the web we’ve built and preserved together.

A Win for Fair Use Is a Win for Libraries

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A recent legal decision has reaffirmed the power of fair use in the digital age, and it’s a big win for libraries and the future of public access to knowledge.

On June 24, 2025, Judge William Alsup of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Anthropic, finding that the company’s use of purchased copyrighted books to train its AI model qualified as fair use. While the case centered on emerging AI technologies, the implications of the ruling reach much further—especially for institutions like libraries that depend on fair use to preserve and provide access to information.

What the Decision Says

In the case, publishers claimed that Anthropic infringed copyright by including copyrighted books in its AI training dataset. Some of those books were acquired in physical form and then digitized by Anthropic to make them usable for machine learning.

The court sided with Anthropic on this point, holding that the company’s “format-change from print library copies to digital library copies was transformative under fair use factor one” and therefore constituted fair use. It also ruled that using those digitized copies to train an AI model was a transformative use, again qualifying as fair use under U.S. law.

This part of the ruling strongly echoes previous landmark decisions, especially Authors Guild v. Google, which upheld the legality of digitizing books for search and analysis. The court explicitly cited the Google Books case as supporting precedent.

While we believe the ruling is headed in the right direction—recognizing both format shifting and transformative use—the court factored in destruction of the original physical books as part of the digitization process, a limitation we believe could be harmful if broadly applied to libraries and archives.

What It Means for Libraries

Libraries rely on fair use every day. Whether it’s digitizing books, archiving websites, or preserving at-risk digital content, fair use enables libraries to fulfill our public service missions in the digital age: making knowledge available, searchable, and accessible for current and future generations.

This decision reinforces the idea that copying for non-commercial, transformative purposes—like making a book searchable, training an AI, or preserving web pages—can be lawful under fair use. That legal protection is essential to modern librarianship.

In fact, the court’s analysis strengthens the legal groundwork that libraries have relied on for years. As with the Google Books decision, it affirms that digitization for research, discovery, and technological advancement can align with copyright law, not violate it.

Looking Ahead

This ruling is an important step forward for libraries. It reaffirms that fair use continues to adapt alongside new technologies, and that the law can recognize public interest in access, preservation, and innovation.

As we navigate a rapidly changing technological landscape, it’s more important than ever to defend fair use and support the institutions that bring knowledge to the public. Libraries are essential infrastructure for an informed society, and legal precedents like this help ensure they can continue their vital work in the digital age.

Digitizing Democracy: Louis Brizuela Takes Viewers Behind Microfiche Scanning Livestream

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Louis Brizuela

Louis Brizuela says managing the microfiche digitization center for Democracy’s Library gives him a sense of pride. “I feel like I’m making a difference,” said the 28-year-old who lives in the Bay Area. “We’re scanning and preserving all this really cool content.”

Brizuela and his six-person team are currently digitizing U.S. Supreme Court case documents and government records from Canada dating back to the 1930s. The documents are stored on microfiche cards, a flat, film-based format commonly used from the mid-20th century for preserving and accessing paper records, which requires a specialized reader for viewing—making the information contained on the cards difficult to access. “It’s useful for law students or anybody – and it’s free to use without borders,” he said. “Also, it’s valuable for the sake of archiving so information doesn’t get lost.”  Next, Brizuela said he’s looking forward to receiving a donated collection of microfiche with images of Sanskrit Buddhist tablets. 

Anyone can watch the crew in action on a livestream of the microfiche scanning operation (https://www.youtube.com/live/aPg2V5RVh7U). Activity occurs Monday–Friday, 7:30am-3:30pm and 4:00pm-midnight U.S. Pacific Time (GMT+8)—except U.S. holidays. Mellow lo-fi music plays in the background during working hours and continues with various video and still images from the Internet Archive’s collections rotating on the feed when the digitization center is closed. 

During the livestream, one camera is focused on an operator feeding microfiche cards beneath a high-resolution camera; another other provides a close-up view of the material. Each page is processed, made fully text-searchable, and added to the Internet Archive’s public collections. Researchers and readers can easily access and download the documents freely through Democracy’s Library.

Brizuela said the staff has embraced the public window on their work. He joined the Internet Archive in February and hired people who were willing to be on camera and understood the potential benefit of the exposure. “It’s not like ‘Oh, Big Brother is watching’,” he said, noting the employees have fun with the situation. “We’re not robots. We do show our characters. We’re human.”

The team is leaning in, Brizuela said, suggesting they dress up in costumes for Halloween and maybe wearing elf hats at Christmas to add a festive touch to the project. They also answer questions in a live chat with viewers. 

Brizuela comes to this position from a varied career working in the military, medical fields, retail and web development. He’s long had an interest in photography, particularly shooting and developing his own 35mm film. So, Brizuela said, it was not hard to pick up how to operate the custom-built scanner and oversee the digitization process.

Louis Brizuela stands in front of a custom-built microfiche scanning workstation.

Every morning, the team huddles up in the small digitization center to talk about the previous day’s completed pages and map out the upcoming work. Brizuela watches over and QA’s the scanning done by the team. Depending on the type of collection, each scanner can scanhundreds of cards a day.

Brizuela describes the vibe in the microfiche digitization center as pretty relaxing, with staff members chatting and interacting while they work. Often, they have headphones to listen to an audiobook or podcast. “If they are listening to music, sometimes they bust a dance move, or bob their head to get in the groove. People enjoy seeing that,” Brizuela said. 

[Learn about details of the set up from Sophia Tung, who engineered the livestream https://blog.archive.org/2025/05/29/meet-sophia-tung-the-creative-force-behind-internet-archives-microfiche-scanning-livestream/]

Brizuela added: “If you’re curious about what microfiche is, tune in and you’ll see the process of scanning—and learn a little bit about history.”

Access the Internet Archive collections with RapidILL

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Here’s a resource sharing tip for our community of librarians:

RapidILL members have an option to include the Internet Archive as a potential supplier for their borrowing requests. If you are interested in providing your users with access to the Internet Archive’s collections through your RapidILL workflows, please complete this form.

Not a RapidILL member? You can also request materials through OCLC’s resource sharing network.