[DaoVeles]

I do worry about the future of IA. Simply because of some of their reckless moves with their book lending policy, they have opened themselves up to being bleed dry financially. That plus the amount of copyright infringement openly available on the site is just waiting to be attacked.

I am waiting for Nintendo to get wind of the huge ROM dumps on there, it is not going to pretty. No manner of 'moral high ground' will defend against lawyers.

[Gud]

I disagree. I am happy the Internet Archive are fighting the draconian copy right laws that exist.

[anonymousab]

They aren't really fighting it, because they never picked a winnable battle.

Rather, they overextended themselves massively in a blunder akin to just throwing themselves on their enemy's sword. They decided to go all-or-nothing on uncontrolled digital lending when there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that the current laws would give them any wiggle room. And unsurprisingly, it will give them a mortal wound.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

But the arena for that fight is legislation. Weed didn't become legal through lawsuits, it became legal because laws were repealed. I hope IA prevails but it's long shot, even more with the Heritage infestation of the courts.

[lolinder]

They risked one of the greatest public goods in the history of humanity on a battle that everyone knew they would lose.

That's not an admirable underdog fight and it's not a glorious martyrdom, it's at best a naive slip up and at worst an ignoble organizational suicide attempt.

Change isn't going to happen because people recklessly throw themselves against the draconian laws and get annihilated by them—it will happen when people strategically set up a battle that they can win or persuade Congress to fix it.

[rwmj]

Back over here in the real world, there is no possible way the IA will win this fight through the courts. It has to be dealt with by legislation.