this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Frankly, good. As it always should have been.
Internet Archive is not Library Genesis, the two organizations have very different functions and should be structured very differently.
Internet Archive is for preserving data, not necessarily distributing it as widely as possible. If distributing the data puts the preservation of that data at risk then don't distribute it, keep it stashed safely away. Maybe a decade or two from now things will change and they'll have the only copies, and keeping them snugly away out of sight will have been vital to preserving them after that point. Internet Archive has a public corporate presence that makes it easy to donate to and easy to run their servers, but also makes them easy to sue. So avoid doing anything that gets you sued.
Library Genesis, on the other hand, is piracy central. Their mandate is distributing this stuff and sticking their thumbs in the eyes of the publishers. So they're structured entirely differently. They run on the shady side of the internet, making them hard to donate to but also hard to sue. They should be the ones "fighting the fight" right now. It would be sad if they got taken down but not an irrecoverable tragedy, a new Library Genesis can rise again.
Internet Archive are being idiots by poking the bear like they have been lately, it's like they're carrying a precious irreplaceable baby and they've decided to take a run through a minefield. I hope they learn from this debacle.
If they have the only copy and their datacenter goes belly up, lot of good it did to have the only remaining copy because now it’s lost to existence. Offsite backups and ideally by many different organizations is the only sure-fire way to preserve this stuff. I donate to archive.org because I believe on what they’re trying to do and I hope they can continue on as long as needed.