Here's a general lesson in the history of media companies: they don't care about art, especially if it doesn't rake in the dough. If it does, then they pretend to care about it, and give themselves credit for its success (while, often, still screwing over the artist in every way imaginable).
Here's a more specific lesson: in 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery decided to take a tax write-off on the well-received Adult Swim series Final Space, essentially deleting it from their archives, ceasing production of future seasons and physical versions of existing seasons, and scrubbing the entire series from streaming and VOD platforms. The creator, Olan Rogers, saw years of his life and work get deleted in the name of business. Its physical versions are now long out of print, it cannot be rented on Amazon, and only recently did they allow Rogers to complete the story as a graphic novel with absurd limitations placed on its release. The Water Tower has made it incredibly clear how much they care about Final Space: they don't. So, what is to be done about a piece of copyrighted media that has been discarded by its owners?
This is where the Internet Archive comes in. High-quality rips of all three seasons are available on the Archive at no cost to anyone who wants to see them. Sweet, sweet piracy saves the day once again. Yar har fiddle dee dee.
Normally, I don't condone or practice sailing the high seas in search of media you want to experience, but in cases such as this, there is not only no choice, there is no reason for media companies to care. Warner Bros. Discovery is not making any money off of Final Space, so why should they give a damn that people are watching it for free? This applies to so many other instances. The reason Nintendo (a company famously anal-retentive about protecting their copyrights) hasn't taken any action against the fan-made English translation of Mother 3 is because they know it was their choice not to release the highly-lauded game in America. Guess what? The Mother 3 Fan Translation on the Archive too. So are millions and millions of other pieces of media, from books to concert recordings to feature films. While some of them have clearly been uploaded without the legal justification of being out of print, the Archive is nonetheless home to millions of works that otherwise would be unavailable to the public at large.
This is what makes the forced removal of over 500,000 books from the Archive at the request of a group of book publishers especially horrible. As many patrons have attested, large swaths of the removed books are out of print, or have their access severely regionally restricted. These publishers aren't trying to make money (as many have pointed out, they have struggled to make the case that their business has been meaningfully harmed), they're trying to restrict access to books they're not making much money off of anyway.
Plus, it's important to note that the Internet Archive is not just giving away free PDFs of every book in its collection. It operates ethically: it scans a book that has been legally purchased, and never lends out more digital copies than it has physical copies. You know, like every other library on Earth. Plus, they have Fair Use on their side. Digitizing a book is a transformative action, one that fundamentally changes the book's format. The law does not suggest that they are infringing on the copyright of the publishers, nor does the evidence. The publishers are engaging in what is little more than an exercise in control, trying to make the case that only they have the power to make their books available to people. I don't have to point out what is wrong with this defense, or the chilling lengths it could potentially be taken to (public libraries beware).
Additionally, the Internet Archive doesn't just serve Mister Piracy who doesn't want to pay for his books. It serves people in communities that may not have access to libraries, or whose libraries are being threatened with the removal of "indecent material" (which the right mostly uses as a blanket term for anything with a viewpoint they disagree with). Killing the Archive would limit millions' access to books and other media.
Most importantly, losing the Internet Archive will be a major blow to history. I am of the belief that any content that is covered by the First Amendment is worth preserving. The Internet Archive protects against the loss of things like TV episodes, radio transmissions, and yes, obscure, out of print books. Without those, a significant chunk of our culture and history is lost. Not only would the death of the Archive be a blow to history that has already happened, it will be a blow to the emerging history of our current time. YouTube videos, Flash games and animations, long-unsupported software, all of it is there. This is not even mentioning the over 860 billion webpages saved on the Archive's Wayback Machine. The work of the Archive is enormously important not just in keeping the past alive, but the present. As Eisenhower said of the Holocaust, "Get it all on record now--get the films, get the witnesses--because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." We may not be dealing with the Holocaust, but that quote is nonetheless applicable to any other time in history, including today.
We cannot allow the Archive to go away, or be threatened. When the Internet Archive begins letting go of its preserved history, that will be the beginning of the end. Currently, they are appealing the ruling. They have a group of lawyers from the wonderful Electronic Frontier Foundation representing them, and according to reports, the judges in the case are more considerate of the Archive's defense than previous judges, and a ruling is expected sometime in the next year. I hope they succeed.
Access to knowledge and media helps everyone, and when the media is lent out ethically or unavailable elsewhere, it harms no one. That is what needs to be understood more than anything.
(Update 7/25/24: randomly thought of a line that would absolutely jam in the context of the post, decided to add it)
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