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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

Because the Internet Archive keeps breaking the (unjust) law. You can't change the law by breaking it because courts do not care whether the law you broke is just, only the question of whether or not you broke it. No amount of spitting in the face of copyright holders is going to change that. The dollars which are about to be paid to rightsholders would've been better spent on lobbying people who can actually change the law, or on the people who vote for those people.

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I am close to having 0 empathy towards the IA, specially since they basically decided to just don't give a damn about copyright law and become yet another pirate file sharing website. E.g., https://archive.org/search?query=office+2019

I really don't know why they do this, since they are one lawsuit away from being forced to dismantle what should have been their main task (archiving).

They also selectively archive - which I find more problematic. Just check out the special treatment internet mean girl and professional crybaby Taylor Lorenz got through familial connections. If they are willing to censor for such a banal reason what else are they lying through omission on?

What familial connections?

https://www.logicallyfacts.com/en/fact-check/false-taylor-lo...

For more context, here is the official guide to request removing content from the Archive, which anyone can request for their own social media account.

“… indicate … the time period during which you had control of the site or relevant user account (if applicable)”

https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-som...

They seem to think they're going to pull a Sci-Hub and just flout the law so long they start gaining mainstream acceptance. The problem with that is Sci-Hub is distributing material we the people already paid to create through taxes, so people are inclined to support them. Secondly and more importantly, Sci-Hub is a small group of people who operate outside the US. The IA is a multi-million dollar organization headquartered in California. The IA can't just ignore lawsuits.

Those were uploaded by users without IA review and are subject to Section 230 protection and DMCA takedown, without putting the Archive at much legal risk. Their flagrance re: CDL is a lot more troubling, IMO.

But surely you must have an opinion on whether or not what is arguably the greatest digital archive ever created should be lost over this issue.

its not clear if those CDs are actually cracked, or which would require license.

For Office that's fair enough, the ISOs are usually freely available from MS themselves (though a quick look suggests the ISOs on IA includes a crack).

But try to justify this: https://archive.org/search?query=playstation+2+dumps

it could be that they don't have capacity to check all links. Copyright owners usually submit dmca removal requests. If IA refused to remove, this would be another story.

Nonsense!

Throughout history laws have been changed by repeated protest and civil disobedience in breaking those laws.

Often it seems likely that breaking the law was the only way to get it changed on any non-geological timescale.

Especially here, we should be calling for everyone to join IA in breaking a bad law — or take on the task from them so they can focus on archiving and supporting from the sidelines — rather than pretending that we should all sit around being subjugated further by the day by corporate interests while we donate to the EFF or whoever (which we should also do) and hope one day for someone in government to listen and change the law.

> Especially here

I think there's probably a lot less support for the IA's strategy here than you think. At the very least, it's certainly not unanimous. For example, there are a bunch of HN regulars who have created software. Some don't want their work used in particular ways and the license they choose spells that out. To use Techdirt's word, they are gatekeepers.

For example, Onyx has built a (very good) product from GPL code and refuse to release their modifications. Is that a good thing? I think it's complicated.

You can change it like that.....if you can get the general public to care. That's the entire idea behind civil disobedience, which has worked many times in the past.

The problem is that almost no one currently cares about this issue, or cares if IA loses this case. The disobedience part, on it's own, is extremely ineffective. You have to convince a large majority (probably a super majority) that the punishment is unjust, so that they push for laws to change.

I don't see a path to that happening in this case, so ya, IA is unlikely to be succesful with this strategy long term.

This take get touted out every time the IA CDL thing comes up, and it's baffling because it's flat out wrong. Many, many, laws get changed because someone brings it to court by breaking it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

And it's not limited to civil disobedience. Hell, the single most touted decision in internet rhetoric, Citizens United, was based on an organization breaking the law.

There are many reasons the IA doing this was ill-advised, but "you can't change the law by breaking it" flat out isn't one.

> laws get changed because someone brings it to court by breaking it.

they probably get changed because lawmakers noticed the issue. Breaking the law and going to court not only way to draw lawmakers attention, and probably not the most efficient one.

I don’t understand the IA’s strategy. How do they think it’s going to go?

The only thing that makes sense to me is they are hoping to get it in front of a jury that isn’t afraid of nullification. Seems like a long shot though.

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