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this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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Did you read literally the next sentences I wrote after that one? Here they are:
The Internet Archive is like someone carrying around a precious baby. The baby is an irreplaceable archive of historical data being preserved for posterity. I do not want them to go and fight with a bear, even if the bear is awful and needs to be fought. I want them to run away from the bear to protect the baby, while someone else fights the bear. Someone better equipped for bear-fighting, and who won't get that precious cargo destroyed in the process of fighting it.
Who else is better equipped? In my view it would solely depend on the lawyers that internet archive hires, and money plays a big factor in that.
Also, internet archive is going through the route process of how legislation gets overturned or upheld. Just because you perceive them as unworthy to bear the challenge doesn’t make that true, and as a result your commitment to not support them because they aren’t the one true chosen is ill-informed.
The EFF. This kind of thing is why they exist.
The Archive making themselves an easier target was a huge misstep IMO. All it takes is one overreaching judge telling them they need to purge all copyrighted data (a common judgment in lawsuits like this) and the world becomes a worse place.
Realistically, they could just move their servers abroad to a country with less problematic copyright rules and wind up their US operations. It would make no difference to the end user, unless ISPs are also ordered to block access. And even then it'd only be a VPN away.
The risk of total data loss is not zero, but it's also not the likely outcome.
The EFF, for example. Fighting lawsuits for the sake of internet freedom is their reason for being. Sci-hub, for ebooks more specifically. Or Library Genesis. Those are organizations specifically devoted to fighting against excessive copyright restrictions on books.
You're not understanding what I'm saying here. I don't think Internet Archive is unworthy to bear the challenge. I think they're not well suited to it, and when they inevitably lose the lawsuits they've jumped head-first into they're risking damage to other causes that are very important and unrelated to this particular fight.
What makes the internet archive well-equipped for that? They have money from donations? Donations that were more than likely intended for preserving the archive, and not facilitating book piracy in an obviously illegal way that now requires them to piss those donations away in legal fees?