[madmulligan]

They don't. They do this with their Great 78 project as well. The way they go about borrowing collections, digitizing them, then returning them (which in itself is illegal reproduction), and then posting them online (also breaking copyright laws), is very sketchy. In in addition it is frustrating to watch (I hesitate to say "unfair") them do this when, say, university or publicly funded archives cannot get away with doing the same and are much more constrained in their methods. There is a whole other can of worms to do with long term sustainability and preservation but I won't get into that

[magashna]

It's not "sketchy". Their DMCA page explains it and they respond to DMCAs with validity.

Now Youtube and their in-house pseudo DMCA is sketchy.