Link rot

Link rot is the progressive failure of URLs to resolve to their intended content over time. It is the default behavior of the web: servers are decommissioned, domains expire, content is reorganized, and administrators delete what they no longer consider worth hosting. The HTTP 404 status code is the web's polite admission that the resource once known by this address has ceased to exist. Link rot is not a bug in the web's architecture — it is a structural consequence of a system in which persistence is not a design requirement. In academic literature, link rot has been measured at rates exceeding 50% per decade, making the web one of the most unstable reference systems ever constructed. The Internet Archive attempts to reverse this entropy by treating the URL as a persistent key in a distributed preservation network, but the mismatch between the web's design intent and the Archive's rescue mission reveals a fundamental tension: the web was built for communication, not for memory.