Archive: The Wolf Of Wall Street Internet

Let’s be blunt: Yes.

The Internet Archive is a legal entity, but its users are not always. Uploading a Hollywood blockbuster is no different from torrenting it on BitTorrent. The only difference is the user interface—archive.org looks academic and trustworthy, but a copyrighted file is still a copyrighted file.

That said, the Internet Archive has a positive reputation for fighting for digital rights. In 2020, they lost a major lawsuit (Hachette v. Internet Archive) regarding their “National Emergency Library,” which lent out e-books without limits. The court ruled that scanning and lending copyrighted books was not fair use.

If they lost that lawsuit for books, they certainly won’t win one for The Wolf of Wall Street. So, use the site for its intended purpose: public domain content and archived websites.

A critical note for the digitally savvy: The Internet Archive does not host pirated copies of the 2013 film for free. If you search for "The Wolf of Wall Street Internet Archive" hoping to watch Leo DiCaprio crawl into his white Lamborghini, you will be disappointed (and you shouldn't pirate movies anyway). the wolf of wall street internet archive

The Internet Archive hosts the source material.

To find the good stuff, follow this search string within the archive:

Alternatively, search for the specific collection: wallstreetbelfort.

If Jordan Belfort is the wolf of Wall Street, Brewster Kahle is the librarian of the Internet. An idealist and a computer engineer who made a fortune during the first dot-com boom, Kahle didn’t want a yacht; he wanted the Library of Alexandria. But he wanted it to be digital, and he wanted it to never burn down. Let’s be blunt: Yes

In 1996, he founded the Internet Archive. The mission was noble: "Universal access to all knowledge." He built the "Wayback Machine," a digital time capsule that allowed users to travel back and see the internet as it existed in the past.

For years, the Archive was the darling of the tech world. It was the good guy. While Belfort was scamming retirees, Kahle was saving GeoCities pages and archiving government websites that would otherwise disappear. The Archive was a non-profit, surviving on donations and grants, operating with the moral authority of a saint.

But then, like Stratton Oakmont expanding into new markets, the Archive got ambitious.

For years, the Archive had been scanning physical books and lending them out digitally. They operated under a system they called "Controlled Digital Lending" (CDL). The logic was this: If we own one physical copy of a book on a shelf, we can lend out one digital copy. When the digital copy is out, the physical copy can’t be accessed. It was a legal theory that mimicked physical libraries. Kahle didn’t want a yacht

To the Archive, this was the future. To the publishing industry, this was theft.

In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Archive made a move that would prove to be their "Stoke-drifton" moment—the point of no return. They launched the "National Emergency Library." With libraries closed, they removed the waitlist for digital books, allowing an unlimited number of people to check out copyrighted works simultaneously.

It was a power move. They argued it was for the public good. The authors and publishers argued it was a flagrant violation of copyright law.