Breaking laws and pushing to change them has been the modus operandi for some of tech’s biggest names.
It’d be interesting to see how this might have played out if the IA had the resources that Uber, Airbnb, Google, Facebook, etc have at their disposal.
It’s a sobering look at who actually has power to shape the legal landscape, and which direction it’s likely to be shaped in.
When they are prosecuted for breaking laws, they draw attention to orthogonal issues in court proceedings and hearings, delay the process, and involve a lot of other legal strategies. When they are sued by competitors for infringing on other's interests by breaking laws, they counter-sue, often frivolously.
They also lobby.
Breaking laws and then arguing to change them when caught doesn't work and almost no one does it. The cost in money and time to get to higher courts, win (uncertain probability) and create a precedent with a legal department is 10x-1000x the cost of lobbying congress to pass a bill. The big tech corporate lawsuits that go to appeals are so expensive that one could probably straight up bribe influential politicians for less, should that be the path one wished to take. We know stories where people went to higher courts and won to create a precedent because these stories are heroic and rare.
If IA had the resources of Uber it wouldn't have worked out any differently, because it doesn't for Uber when they break laws. For example, around structuring employment as b2b contracting.
These companies have the resources to shape the legal landscape, but not by breaking laws and getting prosecuted for it. That would show very poor decision-making.
Maybe they can become martyrs and win the court of public opinion when their actions are seen as moral. But an org like IA can do much more good than just become a martyr, so this is a very poor decision.
Every company I mentioned has broken laws, paid fines, and subsequently had laws changed in their favor.
I'm not saying it always works, but it works enough of the time that these companies accept it as a cost of doing business and have won. With that said, as pointed out in a different reply, copyright isn't one of the categories in which these companies are winning, so perhaps a questionable comparison by me in the original comment.
I agree this was a poor decision on IA's part, because they just don't have the horsepower to operate this way (not that I endorse this kind of behavior by businesses in the first place).
> These companies have the resources to shape the legal landscape, but not by breaking laws and getting prosecuted for it. That would show very poor decision-making.
Perhaps it's poor decision-making, but that's exactly what's been going on for years now. I suspect this is part of the reason numerous governments have been increasingly anti-tech in recent years.
Becoming a martyr in US law system (precedential) does not make much sense in my honest opinion. Look at Disney Mickey Mouse casus - nothing will change in here
Tragically, lopsided lobbying by Victor Hugo and cronies brought about the original 1886 Berne Convention. Back then outside of rarified publishing circles very few even knew what copyright was, and to the few who did it was of very little concern as copying anything was a mammoth technical undertaking—and when piracy did actually occur it was usually committed by one of their number—another publisher.
The net effect was there was no effective lobbying to counter the many excesses of Hugo's mob thus, unfortunately, they essentially all passed into international law. What we're witnessing now with the IA is another attempt to redress the imbalance only for it to fail yet again.
International law is nigh on impossible to change, combine that with the fact that publishers are guarding their windfall/golden nest egg like Fort Knox and thus we've ended up with this horribly unfair copyright mess.
Whilst I'd truly hate to see it perhaps if the Internet Archive were to succumb and go under it would be for the best. Maybe it will take a catastrophe of this magnitude to bust Publishing's stranglehold on the lobbying process.
We need a circuit-breaker to make politicians see reason and act in the best interests of the citizenry and perhaps the Internet Archive has to be the sacrificial lamb. That will only happen if the public is outraged enough to force politicians to act. That said, I'm pessimistic enough to believe the political climate is nowhere ripe enough for that to occur.
As mentioned elsewhere, the writing's on the wall for publishers, eventually balance will be restored.