This is the person who ran the network infrastructure behind the WACE Vault. The decision has been made by my collaborators to take the Vault down, following a copyright request from the director of WA Exam Papers (WAEP), Charlie Watson.

While this is not my decision, I respect their wishes. Our infrastructure is resilient against these kinds of attacks, but we've put up with it for almost a year now—understandably, they have concerns for their own safety. To the community, please understand that this was not an easy decision. It was also our decision. There has not been any threat or identity reveal of our collaborators, or the students who have contributed to the archive.

I joined this project with the intention of alleviating educational inequality across WA. Ultimately, not a single document that was on the WACE Vault was original. Every single one was sourced from schools or tutoring companies, who were already in clear breach of copyright in providing resources to their own students, either for profit or a desire to better their own students.

It saddens me that any meaningful action to improve the appalling situation of educational inequality has been met with legal action, while the tutoring companies profiting off of this situation (especially ones that will just sell resources to students) face zero consequences. Unfortunately, shutting down the WACE Vault is great for the profits of private tutoring organisations.

To be very clear: every single file on the WACE Vault existed online beforehand and will continue to exist, thanks to the wonderful efforts of students in this state. Ask in the right places, and Google Drives and MEGA links will magically exist. No, don't ask us, we're not involved. We will not reply to you.

I wanted to share some highlights from this wild journey.

At the peak of the Vault, there were 1,600 unique users per day. Daily download bandwidth was reaching 20GB every day... remember that the Vault does not contain textbooks by design, so these are all test papers. To me, that is a massive win.

I've heard stories of teachers from underprivileged schools, who have recommended this resource to their students. To you, to your students, I am sorry that this project could not have lasted longer. You were the group that this website were made for, and I hope you made the most of it while you still could.

If you, as a student or teacher, want to do something about this:

1. Write to Tony Buti, MLA, State Minister for Education. Let him know that it is unacceptable that SCSA refuse to release papers pre-2016. Many of the private schools across WA distribute those taxpayer-funded examination papers to their students - why shouldn't everyone have access to these? In Victoria and NSW, official papers all the way to 2000 are available publicly for free from the Government.
2. Collaborate with your fellow students. You are all in the same boat, and working together will benefit all of you. Please don't hold back sharing papers with your fellow students; the better your peers will do, the better the scaling algorithms will help you all.
3. If you have privilege, give it back to the community. Once you graduate, there are a plethora of volunteering programs at university which aim to alleviated educational inequality hands-on. The impact you can make in such a program is unbelievable.
4. Petition your school to preserve their purchased WAEP and WATP test papers and make them available to you privately. Is this a breach of copyright? Absolutely, but it's what most schools in WA already do.
5. Tell Charlie Watson and WAEP to go after the tutoring companies. No company should be making a profit off of the distribution of copyrighted material. If you're a teacher or student, and have an opportunity to attend a seminar series with Charlie, let him know that his copyrighted material is being distributed at a significant profit by certain organisations. Some of those organisations advertise the size of their own collections.

If anyone wants to get in touch or run the WACE Vault, please contact us at wace-archiver@proton.me.

It's been a good run while it lasted, boys. Thanks for being a part of this—it was my little contribution to the world and I hope it made a positive difference. And as for me? I have a job and my own life now, so it's about time to move on.