&gt; in the old model, you&#x27;d say something in print, copy it a million or so times, then distribute it on paper around the world.<p>&gt; If an evildoer wanted to change a claim from say, 20 years ago, they&#x27;d have to create a forgery that looks like it&#x27;s 20 years old, then secretly swap out all the archival copies in libraries and get large-scale mass obedience from librarians or manually make the swap at each library individually.<p>It has happened: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unz.com&#x2F;plee&#x2F;india-v-china-border-games&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unz.com&#x2F;plee&#x2F;india-v-china-border-games&#x2F;</a> (the relevant bit begins at &quot;India’s claim to AP is complicated in an interesting way.&quot;)<p>You&#x27;re correct, of course, that it&#x27;s become easier in the modern model. But people who feel strongly about the more adversarial issues of the modern day already archive enemy publications themselves, lest they mysteriously change in the future. The climate change issue is full of this sort of thing.<p>Even the fact that forged &quot;original copies&quot; are easy to create can be overcome; you just need to contemporaneously deposit a copy somewhere that creates records of when you make deposits and withdrawals. Again, the amount of adversarial forethought required has changed enough to make a significant difference.<p>I wish archive.org wouldn&#x27;t delete old material based on new robots.txt policies, though. :&#x2F;