Considering reocities vs. archive.org and in light of copyright law:
Is reocities a registered non-profit organisation? Do archive.org do this - http://imgur.com/vKHha2M to pages to add donation links? (Answer: https://web.archive.org/web/20100218100003/http://www.geocit...). This used to be called "framing" and was considered about the scummiest thing domain owners could do - wrap other peoples content in a frame that was intended to harvest money, or rebadge, without doing anything else.
This was just a random page choice (the imgur.com) link. It's interesting to note they expected the page to be withdrawn, except now it's still here. Archive.org record, at least, that the content owner removed all content and the [new?] domain owner 302ed the site to http://www.ki-society.com/english/.
Archive.org, along with Google, at least at some point was committing copyright infringement in the USA I believe. In the UK (probably NL too by virtue of EU legislation) both these bodies, and the likes of reocities, definitely are still acting tortuously. In USA Field vs Google established a change to the Fair Use rulings that considered SERPs to be transformative and that cached copies - as temporary and unmodified (neither of which reocities pages are) - should be allowed in view of the transformative nature (the court effectively asserting that Google's copy wouldn't be used for content viewing !!).
Internet Archive were sued in 2007 by Shell, http://archive.org/post/119669/lawsuit-settled, and settled stating that Shell's copyright was "valid and enforceable". Internet Archive were sued in 2005 (Healthcare Advocates v.) for failing to remove past archives when a site owner had updated their robots.txt - clearly reocities have no way of assessing a current content owners wishes as to continued archiving.
There is a library exclusion in the USC for archiving digital content (http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/11/10/digital_preservation_...) but it requires the content to be kept off-line and only accessible by those physically present. This could be used, or donation of the content to Archive.org or such, if the purpose of the reocities project was simply preservation for posterity.
Aside: The facts of tortuous infringement aren't at all related to my ability to raise finance and sue you on behalf of those content creators whose content you copied without permission (AFAICT none of my content made it through FWIW). I have no wish to at this time. Although presumably I'd only need to issue a DMCA take-down notice as otherwise the domain itself could be targeted for take-down (as it's a .com). But, like Google, I don't think you care if reocities is copyright infringing, do you? You appear to consider the law to be errant and so choose to ignore it.
tl;dr reocities is not transformative (it's just a "framed" copy), is potentially modified without license, is commercial (ie is not registered non-profit and requests donations and is used for SEO purposes (eg footer links to an SEO!)). Ergo not Fair Use in USA (where the content was copied from).
Abi made the logo and did some of the css, he did so in record time after I put in a call here on HN if there was someone that could do some design. I was not aware of his SEO activities and I promise solemnly that he did not do anything of the sort for reocities. You're really trying very hard here to tie me to SEO activity, I have no idea what it is that you think you're proving but I'm not going to lose any sleep over that.
As for the rest of your rather long comment, in creating reocities, I, right along with archive team and a bunch of others performed a public service, at considerable expense both in time and funds I might add.
If you feel that your content was copied unjustly then you are free to use the self-service tool to remove it, and if you can't use the self service tool then I'll remove it for you on first request (assuming you are the author of the content).
I've received many thousands of notes from people who were extremely happy their content got saved, and many thousands of requests to remove content, the vast majority of which have been honored. A few by people who are not the original creators were not honored (most of these: SEO scum trying to increase the visibility of their customers by attempting to force offline pages that they don't like).
If you feel like mis-characterizing this you're totally welcome to do so, but I fear that that says more about you than it does about me.
>You're really trying very hard here to tie me to SEO activity //
I was merely suggesting that the guy that did your website might not be the scum of the Earth you seem to believe all SEOs are and thinking that - as you appear to judge characters well in general, obv. not mine ;0) - he might be able to disavow you of that notion. When he designed your reocities layout he designed in on-page SEO ... horror! Indeed his prime motivation might well have been the footer link, perhaps he is evil after all.
OK, so 'everyone loves reocities' (many people love torrent hosts too); but it's still a massive copyright infringement. Personally I think the content that people cared about was saved, moved, backed up already and that very little would have been lost that was worth keeping. The real value was to harvest the content to stick an ad-block or donation wrapper around it.
The point where we started [my paraphrase of course] was that you ostensibly said "all SEO are scum" and I said that as you were able to see past your own tortuous activities to see your perceived good in them I found it strange that you'd classify everyone working in SEO, like your web-designer, that way.
I find it really hard to see how you think making sure a website gets a deserved position in the SERPs (yes SEO can be used nefariously too, I'm not denying that) is so evil. Yet you think wrapping someone else's work up in a donation and ad-banner that take up half-a-screen without so much a as a by-your-leave is fine.
If it's about saving content owners then you can simply announce "all content owners wishing their content to be retained on reocities contact us by December 2015; content we don't have a license to use will be removed at that date". You can even keep an offline copy of the archive if you're in to historic preservation. Even better, if you cared at all about not infringing on peoples copyright would be to have the content available and put it up at owners request - or if a fair use argument for a particular piece of content was made.
I've said it before - you're well off the mark both morally and legally with this one I'm afraid.
Considering reocities vs. archive.org and in light of copyright law:
Is reocities a registered non-profit organisation? Do archive.org do this - http://imgur.com/vKHha2M to pages to add donation links? (Answer: https://web.archive.org/web/20100218100003/http://www.geocit...). This used to be called "framing" and was considered about the scummiest thing domain owners could do - wrap other peoples content in a frame that was intended to harvest money, or rebadge, without doing anything else.
This was just a random page choice (the imgur.com) link. It's interesting to note they expected the page to be withdrawn, except now it's still here. Archive.org record, at least, that the content owner removed all content and the [new?] domain owner 302ed the site to http://www.ki-society.com/english/.
Archive.org, along with Google, at least at some point was committing copyright infringement in the USA I believe. In the UK (probably NL too by virtue of EU legislation) both these bodies, and the likes of reocities, definitely are still acting tortuously. In USA Field vs Google established a change to the Fair Use rulings that considered SERPs to be transformative and that cached copies - as temporary and unmodified (neither of which reocities pages are) - should be allowed in view of the transformative nature (the court effectively asserting that Google's copy wouldn't be used for content viewing !!).
Internet Archive were sued in 2007 by Shell, http://archive.org/post/119669/lawsuit-settled, and settled stating that Shell's copyright was "valid and enforceable". Internet Archive were sued in 2005 (Healthcare Advocates v.) for failing to remove past archives when a site owner had updated their robots.txt - clearly reocities have no way of assessing a current content owners wishes as to continued archiving.
There is a library exclusion in the USC for archiving digital content (http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/11/10/digital_preservation_...) but it requires the content to be kept off-line and only accessible by those physically present. This could be used, or donation of the content to Archive.org or such, if the purpose of the reocities project was simply preservation for posterity.
Aside: The facts of tortuous infringement aren't at all related to my ability to raise finance and sue you on behalf of those content creators whose content you copied without permission (AFAICT none of my content made it through FWIW). I have no wish to at this time. Although presumably I'd only need to issue a DMCA take-down notice as otherwise the domain itself could be targeted for take-down (as it's a .com). But, like Google, I don't think you care if reocities is copyright infringing, do you? You appear to consider the law to be errant and so choose to ignore it.
tl;dr reocities is not transformative (it's just a "framed" copy), is potentially modified without license, is commercial (ie is not registered non-profit and requests donations and is used for SEO purposes (eg footer links to an SEO!)). Ergo not Fair Use in USA (where the content was copied from).