IA is in bad need of a leadership change. The content of the archive is immensely valuable (largely thanks to volunteers) but the decisions and priorities of the org have been far off base for years.
I'd say they need support. They didn't abandon or pervert their mission, they relied on people they trusted who weren't equipped to also handle security. If your house were broken into, I wouldn't start a neighborhood petition for you to move out, because you didn't cause it.
They may be in a rut, but short of you or someone else building an IA replacement that settles all of your concerns and commiting to it for twenty five years with no serious compromises, you're probably punching a little above your weight on the topic.
Website caches can be handled differently, but bulk collection of commercial works can't have this same public access treatment. It's crazy to think this wouldn't be a huge liability.
Battling for copyright changes is valiant, but orthogonal. And the IA by trying to do both puts its main charter--archival--at risk.
The IA should let some other entity fight for copyright changes.
I say this as an IA proponent and donor.
What makes you feel entitled to the content of the publisher before the copyright expires? Do you feel that you deserve access to everything because you've deemed the concept of ownership around book publishing immoral?
You can't just take a digital copy of a physical book and give it to everyone worldwide. That isn't your choice or decision to make nor is it ethical to ascribe malice to simply retaining distribution rights to content they own.
"Make publishers richer", it's actually just honoring the concept of ownership...
If publishers didn’t engage in tactics like “library pricing” and preventing people from actually purchasing the books, I might feel differently. Right now, I see this archiving stuff as a Robin Hood story (which fwiw, every version of this story you may have seen/heard is probably still copyrighted) and I hope the publishers die or are replaced.
Internet Archive should focus on its mission of archival. Let other groups figure out copyright.
By taking on both tasks, IA risks everything and could stumble in its goal to be an archivist platform. We need an entity dedicated to recording history. IA is that. They're just biting off way too much to chew and making powerful enemies along the way.
By making the archive public, sure, we have a bit of a "piracy" issue. However, we can also verify they are actually archiving the things they say they are, point out mistakes, and ask them to remove things from the archive.
Which means no one alive today would ever be able to see them out of copyright. It also requires an unfounded belief that major copyright owning companies won't extend copyright lengths beyond current lengths which are effectively "forever".
And it doesn't.
IA should collect these materials, but they shouldn't be playing fast and loose by letting everyone have access to them. That's essentially providing the same services as the Pirate Bay under the guise of archivism.
This puts IA at extreme legal risk. Their mission is too important to play such games.