Observed Signal · Oct 28, 2026 · Policy Update · Source: Cord Cutters News · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Negative
AI Fears Threaten Web History: Internet Archive Blocked
In an essay for The Atlantic, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle warns that publishers blocking the Wayback Machine over AI-scraping concerns could create gaps in the historical record without stopping AI companies from collecting data. A Pew Research study found that 25% of webpages tracked from 2013-2023 disappeared by October 2023. While the Internet Archive preserves many deleted pages, only 16% of vanished URLs are accessible. Media examples include Paramount removing MTV News content and Warner Bros. Discovery shutting down Cartoon Network's website. Both companies are now under Skydance after Paramount completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Kahle argues blocking the archive won't stop AI scraping but will thin the historical record. Publishers like The New York Times and The Guardian have restricted Internet Archive access. The article highlights the importance of preservation for researchers and ordinary users.
The article highlights a trend of publishers blocking the Internet Archive due to AI-scraping fears, which could lead to loss of historical web content, relevant to marketers and media companies relying on web archives for research and brand safety.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle warns publishers blocking the Wayback Machine over AI-scraping concerns could leave gaps in the historical record.
- A Pew Research Center study found that 25% of webpages tracked from 2013 through 2023 were no longer accessible by October 2023.
- Only 16% of vanished URLs from the Pew study were accessible through the Wayback Machine.
- Paramount removed thousands of MTV News articles in June 2024; Warner Bros. Discovery shut down Cartoon Network's website in August 2024.
- Paramount completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, bringing them under Skydance.
- The New York Times and The Guardian have restricted Internet Archive access due to AI-scraping concerns.
Connected Companies & Entities
8 Entities mapped“Paramount removed thousands of MTV News articles and interviews dating back to 1996, along with content from other network websites.”
“Warner Bros. Discovery shut down Cartoon Network's website, redirecting visitors to HBO Max.”
“Paramount completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this month, bringing their studios, networks, and streaming services t...”
“Some major news organizations, including The New York Times and The Guardian, have restricted the Internet Archive's access to their content...”
“Some major news organizations, including The New York Times and The Guardian, have restricted the Internet Archive's access to their content...”
“Some major news organizations, including The New York Times and The Guardian, have restricted the Internet Archive's access to their content...”
“Microsoft shut down its Movies & TV store for new purchases in 2025.”
“Sony announced in June the removal of previously purchased movies from some PlayStation libraries following licensing changes.”
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Ad Blockers: Publishers Face Crisis in AI Era
Shirley Marschall traces the rise of ad blocking from mailbox stickers to modern digital formats, arguing that both users and publishers have paid a price for intrusive ads. The piece notes the 2015 surge as the 'year of the ad blocker' and explains how later generations—privacy browsers, VPNs, networks, apps, and extensions—blocked not only ads but critical publisher functions like analytics, paywalls, and consent flows. It describes a GenAI-era wave where ad slots are ignored by default, with tools such as Comet and LLM crawlers bypassing ads. As a result, publishers lose traffic, monetization, and content visibility, while dark traffic (over a billion users, about 18% of internet traffic) remains unmeasured. The FBI’s guidance to use ad blockers to avoid scams in search ads underscores the tension between user protection and monetization. The article concludes that publishers face ongoing challenges as AI-era blocking and scraping reshape the ecosystem.
Study: Nearly Half of Top German Sites Block AI Crawlers
A Hotwire study titled "The AI Coverage Gap" found that 48% of the 100 highest-reach German online media are not or only partially accessible to AI crawlers. The research evaluated access by ten AI crawlers (from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity) to the domains of those top-100 publishers in June 2026. Major publishers (e.g., Bild, Der Spiegel, stern, Focus Online) largely block crawlers, while national newspapers like Frankfurter Allgemeine, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit generally allow access. The study highlights strategic dilemmas for publishers and communications teams about visibility in LLM-generated answers, commercial implications for traffic and subscriptions, and technical mitigation options (robots.txt, CDN/server rules, paywalls). Hotwire recommends companies consider AI accessibility when selecting target media and measure AI visibility as part of communications KPIs.
Accessibility Paradox: Web Accessibility Enables AI Scraping
The article argues that web accessibility improvements—semantic HTML, descriptive alt text, and clear structure—have unintentionally made it easier for AI systems to harvest and use public content as training data. It cites LAION-5B pairing Common Crawl images with alt text as a major source for image-generation models, and describes how publishers’ technical defenses (CAPTCHAs, rate limiting, bot detection) can disproportionately harm users with disabilities. The piece highlights ongoing legal battles (The New York Times v. OpenAI & Microsoft; Getty Images v. Stability AI) that are redefining boundaries around public access and commercial reuse, and calls for legal and technical approaches that protect creators without undermining accessibility.
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