In October 2013 the Internet Archive put a shelf of old software on the web that you could run without installing anything. Click on a program and an emulated computer started up inside the browser window and loaded it. Edge explained how: the Archive had “spent two years porting the MESS emulator (a cousin of MAME that can emulate hundreds of desktop computer varieties) to JavaScript”. The collection put Elite next to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, with Jordan Mechner’s Karateka, the ZX Spectrum adventure The Hobbit and three versions of Pac-Man. Within a year the Archive was running more than 900 arcade machines the same way, and so many people came to play that the site buckled.
The Archive had been collecting since 1996. It is a non-profit library, based in San Francisco, whose stated mission is “Universal Access to All Knowledge”. Its Wayback Machine keeps copies of old web pages. For anyone interested in old computers and games, it is also a library of software, magazines and manuals.
Fast facts
- Began: 1996, archiving the web. The Wayback Machine opened to the public five years later.
- Founder: Brewster Kahle, whose title at the Archive is “digital librarian”.
- Based in: San Francisco.
- Software in the browser: since October 2013, first through JSMESS, a JavaScript port of the MESS emulator. The system is now called the Emularity.
- Collections for this period: the Software Library, the Console Living Room, the Internet Arcade, MS-DOS games, scanned magazines, manuals and the TOSEC catalogue.
A library for the web
The Wayback Machine grew out of web crawls the Archive began in 1996. Five years later, “with over 100 terabytes and a dozen web crawls completed”, it was opened to the public. The web pages of early game companies, fan sites and emulator projects can still be read there after the originals have gone.
Permission to break copy protection
Keeping old software raised a legal problem. The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) forbids getting around copy protection, and much 1980s software was designed so that only the original disk would work. In November 2006 the Librarian of Congress renewed an exemption, requested mainly by the Archive, for “computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access”, when a library or archive circumvents the protection to preserve them. The Archive said that winning the exemption and keeping it had taken more than $50,000 of free legal work; two law students of Peter Jaszi at American University, Jieun Kim and Doug Agopsowicz, did much of it.
Emulation in the browser
The browser collections came in quick succession, under the Archive’s software curator, Jason Scott:
| Date | Collection | What it offered |
|---|---|---|
| October 2013 | Historical Software Collection | a curated set of notable programs, run through JSMESS |
| December 2013 | Console Living Room | cartridge games for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, ColecoVision, Magnavox Odyssey² and Bally Astrocade, at first without sound |
| June 2014 | Software Library | whole disk and cartridge sets, first for the Apple II, Atari 800 and ZX Spectrum |
| November 2014 | Internet Arcade | more than 900 arcade machines, covering “most every major machine released between 1976 and 1988” |
| December 2014 | MS-DOS Games | DOS games in a browser version of DOSBox, with help from the eXoDOS project |
| February 2016 | Windows 3.1 | hundreds of Windows 3.1 programs |
| April 2017 | Early Macintosh | software for the first black-and-white Macs, 1984 to 1989 |
| November 2020 | Flash | Flash animations and games, run through the Ruffle emulator |
The Console Living Room was announced on 26 December 2013 as “a second Christmas morning”. The Internet Arcade was unveiled at the Archive’s annual event in late October 2014, where the two machines set up to play it were “constantly packed”. Once it went online, news spread quickly: “hundreds of thousands of people came, many of them all at once, to play”, and the site was “temporarily crushed”. In February 2018 most of the emulators moved from JavaScript to WebAssembly, which made them faster. In October 2019 about 2,500 more DOS games arrived from eXoDOS, which Scott credited with the hard work of getting more than 7,000 titles to run reliably.
Magazines, manuals and catalogues
Alongside the software sit collections of scanned paper. They include a CRASH magazine archive and a Zzap!64 collection, both set up in 2011, and a “Game and Gamer Magazines” collection that held more than 6,400 items in September 2026. The Archive also holds a collection for TOSEC (The Old School Emulation Center), a project that catalogues software images for hundreds of computers and consoles, and in August 2024 it took in the database of the fan-translation site Romhacking.net when that site stopped taking submissions.
The lawsuits
Two copyright cases have shaped the Archive in the 2020s. Neither concerned games, but both limited what the library could do and took its time and money.
Book publishers. In March 2020, as COVID-19 closed libraries, the Archive opened a “National Emergency Library”, which let more than one person borrow the same scanned book at once. On 1 June 2020 four publishers, Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House, sued in the federal court in New York over the Archive’s scanning and lending of their books. On 24 March 2023 Judge John Koeltl ruled for the publishers, and in August 2023 the court ordered the Archive to stop lending the plaintiffs’ books where an e-book edition is for sale. The Archive appealed. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the ruling on 4 September 2024, and in December 2024 the Archive announced that it would “not pursue Supreme Court review”.
Record labels. On 11 August 2023 record companies including Universal Music Group and Sony sued the Archive, Brewster Kahle and others over the Great 78 Project, which digitises old 78 rpm records, “the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records” in the project’s words. The case was moved from New York to the federal court in northern California in December 2023. In September 2025 both sides told the court they had settled. The Archive’s only comment was that “the parties have reached a confidential resolution of all claims”.
In October 2024 cyberattacks took the Archive offline. Its main services came back in stages over the following week. In November the Archive wrote that the two lawsuits had been “a drain on our staff and financial resources”, and that repeated attacks now distracted it from preservation and access.
Sources
- Edge issue 262, January 2014, Knowledge section, “This Month”: the Archive’s work since 1996, the two-year port of MESS to JavaScript, and the first titles in the Historical Software Collection.
- Internet Archive Help Center, “Wayback Machine general information” (web, secondary): the web crawls from 1996 and the public launch “five years later”. https://help.archive.org/help/wayback-machine-general-information/
- Internet Archive Blogs (web, secondary), https://blog.archive.org: “Internet Archive Helps Secure Exemption To The Digital Millennium Copyright Act”, 29 November 2006; “Microcomputer Software Lives Again, This Time in Your Browser”, 25 October 2013; “A Second Christmas Morning: The Console Living Room”, 26 December 2013; “Inviting the Internet Over to Play”, 5 November 2014; “Internet Archive Does Windows”, 11 February 2016; “Early Macintosh Emulation Comes to the Archive”, 16 April 2017; “Emulation in the Browser adds WebAssembly”, 13 February 2018; “2,500 More MS-DOS Games Playable at the Archive”, 13 October 2019; “Flash Back! Further Thoughts on Flash at the Internet Archive”, 22 November 2020; “Learning from Cyberattacks”, 14 November 2024.
- Internet Archive collection pages (web, secondary): Software Library (public June 2014), Software Library: MS-DOS Games (public December 2014, “EM-DOSBOX”, Jason Scott as software curator), Internet Arcade, Crash Magazine Archive and ZZap!64 Magazine (2011), Game and Gamer Magazines, TOSEC. https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary
- Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive, US District Court for the Southern District of New York, case 1:20-cv-04160, filed 1 June 2020; Opinion and Order, document 188, 24 March 2023; and US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, case 23-1260, decided 4 September 2024 (public record, via CourtListener). https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17211300/hachette-book-group-inc-v-internet-archive/
- Internet Archive Blogs, “What the Hachette v. Internet Archive Decision Means for Our Library”, 17 August 2023, and “End of Hachette v. Internet Archive”, 4 December 2024 (web, secondary).
- Wikipedia, “Hachette v. Internet Archive” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the National Emergency Library and the dates of the rulings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive
- UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Internet Archive, US District Court for the Southern District of New York, case 1:23-cv-07133, filed 11 August 2023; Opinion and Order transferring the case, 8 December 2023; continued in the Northern District of California as case 3:23-cv-06522, closed 15 September 2025 (public record, via CourtListener). https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68101636/umg-recordings-inc-v-internet-archive/
- Internet Archive Blogs, “Internet Archive Responds to Recording Industry Lawsuit Targeting Obsolete Media”, 14 August 2023 (also the source of the mission statement and Kahle’s title), and “An Update on the Great 78s Lawsuit”, 15 September 2025 (web, secondary).
- Wikipedia, “Internet Archive” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Brewster Kahle as founder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
- Catherine Lewis, GamesRadar+, 2 August 2024 (web, secondary): Romhacking.net’s database “submitted to Internet Archive for preservation”. https://www.gamesradar.com/games/20-year-old-romhack-site-that-was-a-treasure-trove-of-pokemon-fan-games-and-jrpg-translations-winds-down-after-achieving-almost-everything-it-set-out-to-do/