Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Pandemic “National Emergency Library” Decision

  • Many see IA’s uncapped lending during COVID as morally justified: digital access when physical libraries were closed, and a public good publishers should have praised, not sued.
  • Others call it a “boneheaded” stunt: clearly illegal “dropping the C from CDL,” sabotaging the stronger legal position of controlled digital lending and triggering a lawsuit publishers had long hesitated to file.
  • Some frame it as breaking a MAD-style balance: IA had operated for years without suit; the emergency move “pulled the trigger” and lost.

Copyright: Reform vs. Enforcement

  • Broad agreement that copyright terms and DMCA abuse are broken; some want the entire system torn up or time-limited by medium (e.g., short terms for programming books, TV).
  • Counterpoint: copyright is still the legal basis even for permissive licenses and is needed so authors, editors, and other creators can earn a living.
  • Debate over whether most authors make real money from books, especially older works, and whether many now rely on speaking, courses, or “personal brand” instead.

Role and Risk-Tolerance of IA

  • One camp: IA should stop tying high‑risk experiments to the core institution; it’s too important (Wayback, historical media) to jeopardize with “kooky” copyright fights. Proposals include a separate, more conservative mirror organization.
  • Other camp: IA’s value comes precisely from “eccentric, untamed idealism”; without that boundary‑pushing, projects like the Wayback Machine might never have existed.

Corporate Double Standards, AI, and Google Books

  • Some argue there’s a double standard: profit‑driven giants (OpenAI, Google) can mass-copy works for models or search; idealistic public-access projects get crushed.
  • Others insist IA’s book lending is legally different from private training datasets or snippet search, and that equating them is misleading.
  • Google Books is cited both as a clear fair‑use legal win and as a practical loss, since much material vanished or became snippet‑only.

Libraries, Capitalism, and Piracy

  • Claim that if public libraries were invented today, publishers would sue them out of existence; only historical precedent and billionaire philanthropy entrenched them.
  • Pushback: current public libraries lend one copy at a time; IA tried to go beyond that, closer to a shadow library.
  • Long subthread on piracy: some point to studies suggesting little sales harm and note pirates often buy more; others emphasize friction, institutional piracy (universities skipping purchases), and the risk of automated derivative works undercutting originals.

Importance and Fragility of the Archive

  • Strong consensus that IA/Wayback is irreplaceable: a “last pre‑slop snapshot” of the web and media history otherwise lost.
  • Concern over centralization and legal risk: mention of a full copy in Alexandria, calls for more independent mirrors and torrent-based replication.
  • Estimates of IA’s size vary in the thread (hundreds of TB to ~15 PB+), and feasibility of multi-region replication is left unclear.