I'm very worried that IA has risked the parts of what they do that are fully legal, or unenforced (eg. abandonware), by going after targets guaranteed to make deep-pocketed pro-copyright industries like publishing and music labels come after them.
At this point, it seems like the sensible course of action would be to create a new entity that leaves still-in-copyright books and music alone, grabs a snapshot of the entire archive, hires everyone who used to work at IA, starts accepting donations so us supporters can switch over, and then picks up, letting IA declare bankruptcy and fall into the sun.
[Edited to add:] Don't get me wrong. I think the current copyright regime is complete nonsense, and I mostly support everything IA has done from an ethical point of view (except maybe giving away recent books for free), but I'm also a pragmatist, and the idea of IA's archive falling into the memory hole because of picking bad fights is distressing.
Brings to mind the line about the behavior of most organizations being best explained by it being controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Just mass-violating the copyright of deep pocketed plaintiffs is like writing them checks that need to go through court first. The Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to make laws concerning copyright. Congress used that power. The statutes say what they say. There is no wriggling out of it; there are centuries of case law reconciling copyright with the 1A. If the IA is going to be provocative like this it should do so outside of the reach of the judgments of US courts.
It would take a massive amount of labor to determine what in the existing archive is out of copyright in a legally verifiable manner.
There’s nothing keeping the record labels or other corporate copyright aggregators from declaring legal warfare on your hypothetical child organization.
Jason Scott and others all the way to the top have been saying "Just upload! We'll figure it out later!" for a decade. That turned out to be a bad strategy.
They're also infamous for ignoring DMCA requests. Requiring a driver's license or passport before they'll even talk to you. Then they leaked those, ugh.
Archiving stuff is Fair Use, but where's the fun in that, I guess. People should be able to upload things and say "Yes, this is a bootleg mix of a Prince song. Archive it but don't publish it, please."
A combination of bizarre policies and subverting their own DMCA protections is why they're in this mess. Again.
Musk showed up for lunch looking to vacuum things up. I hope that's not how this story ends. But it's starting to look like it.
Yes, the recent history of the IA is of its shooting itself in the foot in full auto. I don’t understand how the board members pushing these obviously dangerous actions haven’t been turfed out.
At this point, it seems like the sensible course of action would be to create a new entity that leaves still-in-copyright books and music alone, grabs a snapshot of the entire archive, hires everyone who used to work at IA, starts accepting donations so us supporters can switch over, and then picks up, letting IA declare bankruptcy and fall into the sun.
[Edited to add:] Don't get me wrong. I think the current copyright regime is complete nonsense, and I mostly support everything IA has done from an ethical point of view (except maybe giving away recent books for free), but I'm also a pragmatist, and the idea of IA's archive falling into the memory hole because of picking bad fights is distressing.