I work in the space and routinely access material that predates the Berne Convention. There are indeed traditions that archives and libraries follow going back centuries.

This is entirely separate from US copyright law and if we were actually conversing I'd imagine we'd discover that we share a lot of views there.

> You don't get to destroy them just because you've got a temporary lease on it.

And that's where we disagree. For starters, nothing has gotten destroyed here. Yet. The problem as I see it is that some weird-ass white guy annointed himself keeper of the material. And now he's started behaving erratically and unlawfully, and putting everything at risk. Seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

Insiders at the Archive have gone as far as to say Brewster's sabotaging things since there's no plan for funding or running the thing after he passes. Getting sued over and over (and losing) is awful. And imagine how the employees feel -- scanning moldy books for 20 years and then your boss makes one weird decision and now nobody can see your work.