Implement Internet Archive Data Fetching Pipeline

Problem

We currently lack a mechanism for systematically and regularly harvesting license-aware metadata from the Internet Archive (IA), a massive source of CC-licensed content. This data is essential for understanding the large-scale adoption and usage of Creative Commons licenses on the platform.

Proposal / Solution

Implement a new Python script and pipeline specifically designed to query the Internet Archive's API, process the results, and generate aggregated statistics.

Scope of Work (What this pipeline will do)

1. Query: Search the IA for all items with a Creative Commons/open-source license.
2. Data Fetching: Implement robust API calling with exponential backoff and retry logic to handle network and rate-limiting issues across large result sets.
3. Normalization: Clean and standardize the messy raw license URLs provided by the IA using a lookup table (ia_license_mapping.csv).
4. Aggregation: Collect counts for licenses, languages, and countries.
5. Output: Save the aggregated counts into three separate, version-controlled CSV files.
6. Automation: Include optional flags (--enable-save, --enable-git) to support dry runs and automated Git commits/pushes for regular data updates.

Expected Outcome

We have a baseline and a recurring process for measuring CC usage on the Internet Archive.

Related Links

• Tools and APIs — Internet Archive Developer Portal
• Internet Archive: Search Engine
• jjjake/internetarchive: A Python and Command-Line Interface to Archive.org
  • Searching Items — Developer Interface — Internet Archive Developer Portal
• Pre-automation effort:
  • pre-automation/internetarchive/
  • pre-automation/sources.md