[matthewdgreen]

I'm not exactly sure what you're proposing to do here. This case involves a private media archive being sold to a private buyer, with said private buyer (potentially) using the purchase to suppress older reporting. An obvious immediate fix would be to eliminate the incentives that drive this behavior, i.e., ensure that the Streisand Effect makes this approach worthless.

Specifically: if this buyer is attempting to "catch and kill" stories by purchasing and destroying the archive, then a good fix is to ensure that there is new reporting that undermines the purchaser's goal and actually drives more attention to their activities. Indeed, far from being something to complain about, this Washington Post story seems like the first step in achieving exactly that goal. It now needs to be followed up by further investigation that identifies the specific individual(s) at issue so they can be explicitly named and shamed.

Your alternative approach is what exactly? Clearly you're correct that posting the archives to a public library would have been better. But I'm not sure how to force for-profit publishers to do this in the past (impossible) or even in the future.