What's frustrating is that the ones who claimed to have done this are self-proclaimed "hacktivists". You're stupid if you think the Internet Archive is the enemy in this day and age.
I really hope the rest of the archive comes back soon. I was in the middle of a book and it was a book I hadn't read since I was a kid.
Yeah, I could pay for it or wait for it to come via interlibrary loan (it's not exactly a well-known book), but I really didn't need a physical copy. And it isn't even all that long.
Damn it'd be a shame if someone DM'ed me the name of the book and I had to go looking to see if there's an epub/pdf version available for download in certain places. A real shame indeed.
I don't care saying what book it is right here, because I've looked for both and came up wanting. It's not available normally as an ebook for purchase, so I have my doubts.
Basically, the IA had it because they scan in masses of texts without even caring what they are. As long as they get a copy and it isn't in the archive yet, they'll scan it in.
You can (well, could) put in any live URL there and IA would take a snapshot of the current page on your request. They also actively crawl the web and take new snapshots on their own. All of that counts as 'writing' to the database.
My most frequent use case of the IA in general is the Cover Art Archive, and I frequently upload cover art for albums to the CAA via MusicBrainz. That's how I discovered the IA was down, when an upload failed.