The UK Government Web Archive (UKGWA) is part of The National Archives of the United Kingdom. The National Archives collects records from all UK government departments and bodies creating records defined as Public Records under the British Public Records Act. This includes on-line records. [1] These are captured, preserved, and kept accessible by the UKGWA, in conjunction with an external service provider. Initially, and until July 2017, this was the Internet Memory Foundation. The current provider is MirrorWeb.
The UKGWA is one of the web archiving initiatives holding the largest amount of material fully open to the public: the majority of UK public records are Crown Copyright and so are available under the Open Government License. Restrictions to Crown Copyright material mean, however, that, when it comes to social media archiving, the UKGWA can capture only the UK Government's side of the conversation with the public.
The UKGWA began operation only in August 2003, [2] and the oldest material in the Archive, which dates back to 1996, has been provided retrospectively by the Internet Archive. The UKGWA was a founding member of the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) and captured many websites through the consortium between 2004 and 2010.
Between 2004 and 2008 the UKGWA mainly held copies of websites created by departments of state and those of UK Public Inquiries. During 2007, Members of Parliament became aware of the increasing problem of link rot on UK government web sites. In particular many links from Hansard were found to have stopped working. The response was the Web Continuity programme, [3] which provides automatic redirection to the UKGWA of links from UK Government web sites, in cases where the linked material has been retired. Web Continuity required UK Government website managers to work with the UKGWA to capture copies of any material about to be removed. As a result, the UKGWA captures almost all of the UK Government web estate. This became significant during periods of government website closures, initially with the Directgov programme; [4] and more recently with the convergence of UK government content onto the Gov.uk website.
UK government departments make use of social media to communicate with the public, so that part of the online Public Record is now held on sites not directly managed by government departments. From 2014 the UKGWA has captured part of this material: official tweets on Twitter and government videos released on YouTube. [5]
Ukonline was a "portal" website of the Government of the United Kingdom linking to public sector information, and was originally called me.gov. The site was launched in 2001 and maintained by the Office of the e-Envoy. It replaced the earlier single online government website, the Government Information Service (GIS) hosted at open.gov.uk, which had been established in November 1994. The need for an updated single government website had been identified in a 1999 Portal Feasibility Study prepared by PA Consulting for the Central IT Unit (CITU) in the Cabinet Office.
The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. The primary mission of NTIS is to collect and organize scientific, technical, engineering, and business information generated by U.S. government-sponsored research and development, for private industry, government, academia, and the public. The systems, equipment, financial structure, and specialized staff skills that NTIS maintains to undertake its primary mission allow it to provide assistance to other agencies requiring such specialized resources.
Directgov was the British government's digital service for people in the United Kingdom, which from 2004 provided a single point of access to public sector information and services. The site's portal was replaced by the new GOV.UK website on 17 October 2012, although migration of all services to GOV.UK branding took several years.
The UK Web Archive is a consortium of the six UK legal deposit libraries which aims to collect all UK websites at least once each year.
The National Archives of Scotland (NAS) is the previous name of the National Records of Scotland (NRS), and are the national archives of Scotland, based in Edinburgh. The NAS claims to have one of the most varied collection of archives in Europe. It is the main archive for sources of the history of Scotland as an independent state, her role in the British Isles and the links between Scotland and many other countries over the centuries.
Internet censorship in India is done by both central and state governments. DNS filtering and educating service users in suggested usages is an active strategy and government policy to regulate and block access to Internet content on a large scale. Also measures for removing content at the request of content creators through court orders have become more common in recent years. Initiating a mass surveillance government project like Golden Shield Project is also an alternative discussed over the years by government bodies.
Web archiving is the process of collecting portions of the World Wide Web to ensure the information is preserved in an archive for future researchers, historians, and the public. Web archivists typically employ web crawlers for automated capture due to the massive size and amount of information on the Web. The largest web archiving organization based on a bulk crawling approach is the Wayback Machine, which strives to maintain an archive of the entire Web.
WebCite is an on-demand archive site, designed to digitally preserve scientific and educationally important material on the web by taking snapshots of Internet contents as they existed at the time when a blogger or a scholar cited or quoted from it. The preservation service enabled verifiability of claims supported by the cited sources even when the original web pages are being revised, removed, or disappear for other reasons, an effect known as link rot.
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia, program files, documents or electronic books/magazines. It involves various legal aspects as it is often used to exchange data that is copyrighted or licensed.
Internet censorship in Singapore is carried out by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). Internet services provided by the three major Internet service providers (ISPs) are subject to regulation by the MDA, which requires blocking of a symbolic number of websites containing "mass impact objectionable" material, including Playboy, YouPorn and Ashley Madison. The civil service, tertiary institutions and Institute of Technical Education has its own jurisdiction to block websites displaying pornography, information about drugs and online piracy.
Internet censorship in the United Kingdom is conducted under a variety of laws, judicial processes, administrative regulations and voluntary arrangements. It is achieved by blocking access to sites as well as the use of laws that criminalise publication or possession of certain types of material. These include English defamation law, the Copyright law of the United Kingdom, regulations against incitement to terrorism and child pornography.
Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works. The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement.
The Digital Britain report was a policy document published in 2009, which outlined the United Kingdom Government's strategic vision for ensuring that the country is at the leading edge of the global digital economy.
Local involvement networks (LINks) were launched by England's National Health Service in April 2008 following the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. They replaced the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) and patient and public involvement forums and existed in every local authority area with a responsibility for NHS health care and social services.
File sharing in the United Kingdom relates to the distribution of digital media in that country. In 2010, there were over 18.3 million households connected to the Internet in the United Kingdom, with 63% of these having a broadband connection. There are also many public Internet access points such as public libraries and Internet cafes.
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) is a UK non-profit organisation established in 1983 to perform collective licensing on behalf of its members the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), Publishers' Licensing Services(PLS), the Design and Artists Collecting Society (DACS) and PICSEL. The Copyright Licensing Agency is based in 5th Floor, Shackleton House, 4 Battle Bridge Lane, London, SE1 2HX.
gov.uk is a United Kingdom public sector information website, created by the Government Digital Service to provide a single point of access to HM Government services. The site launched as a beta on 31 January 2012, following on from the AlphaGov project. The website uses a modified digital version of the Transport typeface called New Transport. It officially replaced Directgov and the online services of Business Link on 17 October 2012. As of January 2023, GOV.UK is the second-most-used government website worldwide, after Russia's Gosuslugi.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in Europe provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in Europe.
The Australian Web Archive (AWA) is an publicly available online database of archived Australian websites, hosted by the National Library of Australia (NLA) on its Trove platform, an online library database aggregator. It comprises the NLA's own PANDORA archive, the Australian Government Web Archive (AGWA) and the National Library of Australia's ".au" domain collections. Access is through a single interface in Trove, which is publicly available. The Australian Web Archive was created in March 2019, and is one of the biggest web archives in the world. Its purpose is to provide a resource for historians and researchers, now and into the future.