> Whether it's legally permissible to copy a printed material and distribute that copy as though it were the printed material was/is unresolved.
A lot of IA supporters wish they would have gone about discovering this in a way that protected the actual internet archive. Maybe I don't understand the actual risks to the IA, but it feels like a reckless move.
This could be tricky. As I understand it (not a lawyer, etc.), whether an organization believes it is operating within the confines of the law can impact the outcome of a legal dispute. The important distinction here is that these are competing interpretations of Fair Use; there's no case law (as far as I'm aware) that settles this one way or the other.
So, for the Archive to go, "well, let's set up a shell corporation and do this thing through some structure that might shield us from harm" would require that they believed they were doing something illegal. See for example para. 3 in https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-national-eme...
I don't think anyone is suggesting the archive create a shell corporation. If archive leadership desperately wanted to get sued by publishers, they could have resigned from working at the archive and formed a different organization.
A lot of IA supporters wish they would have gone about discovering this in a way that protected the actual internet archive. Maybe I don't understand the actual risks to the IA, but it feels like a reckless move.