A moral perspective on South–North web archiving

This article reflects, from a moral perspective, on South-North archiving. It is argued that web pages, though trivial and ephemeral in nature, reflect contemporary culture and are as important in this context as printed material. As such, web pages should provide raw data for future scholars and should be archived. The archiving of web pages created in the developing countries (the South) raises some vexing questions such as: Is it legal to archive web sites? Does one need permission from the creator of the web site? To what extent should access to archived web sites be controlled? These questions are addressed in the paper. A moral framework based on social justice and human rights is proposed, that can be used to guide web archiving.