[antiverse]

It's disappointing to hear, with the number of people here claiming how IA has run afoul of the copyright law, that it's an open-and-shut case and there is nothing more to discuss. I feel like the air of the hacker spirit on the website is greatly diminished when we take an ice-cold approach to a difficult problem like this.

I for one commend them for doing a noble thing in a very turbulent time. We didn't know how the pandemic was going to play out early on in 2020 and they went ahead to help out in any way they could. Perhaps the US Federal Government will give them some kind of an exemption (if such a thing exists). I'm sure they can find a case where their action is justified in the eyes of law.

[PragmaticPulp]

> I feel like the air of the hacker spirit on the website is greatly diminished when we take an ice-cold approach to a difficult problem like this.

That “hacker spirit” has put years of extremely valuable internet archives at risk for an extremely insignificant gain, all due to a legal issue that anyone could see coming from a mile away.

Hacker spirit and playing fast and loose with the rules might fly when you’re a fresh startup with nothing to lose. It’s just plain irresponsible when you start putting an established business at risk in ways that were trivially avoided.

[jacquesm]

Indeed. They could have easily isolated themselves from the fall out if they wanted to make a point about the law.

[wmf]

I don't consider it an open-and-shut case, but they're putting the archive at risk and they may not have enough money to win and I don't want to donate money to their lawyers. I wouldn't have a problem if they spun off a separate organization for this so it didn't threaten the archive.