So how does one find this archive and how can it be kept alive in a decentralized way? I’m not super familiar with it.

annas-archive.gl

It's a treasure trove of knowledge. A true priceless gem. Enjoy it while it lasts.

If you want to help keep the site's content alive in a decentralized way, just buy $20,000 worth of hard drives and a very big internet pipe and start downloading their torrents.

Otherwise if you're broke like me, donate and/or leech every valuable book on every subject you can think of from their servers, while you're able to do so, and keep them stored safely offline. Buy only server grade hard drives and use them gently. Buy backup drives and use a ZFS mirror.

In either case, get an older tape drive and some tapes, and learn about tar, lzip, par2, mt-st. Get multiple tape drives if possible (for spares) and make sure your written tapes are readable in all of them. Store the tapes and hardware properly and securely.

Eventually Anna's Archive will be shut down. It's only a matter of time. It will be a great tragedy for humanity, akin to the day the Library of Alexandria was burned down. Until that happens, people who care need to do all they can to help save anything and everything of value while it's still online.

"Anything truly good and useful that is put on the internet, especially if it's of large benefit to humanity, will eventually be shut down and replaced with some watered down paywalled garbage, if anything at all." - kdhaskjdhadjk's Law

Ironically thanks to Putin piracy sites have safe harbour in Russia.

Someone in the Kremlin understands "bread and games" and they're not very receptive for sob stories from Hollywood.