The good news is, as far as I know, they don't have to actually delete the data.
So at least these books have still been digitized if something changes and they are allowed to be accessed in the future. Some of them may not exist in physical form at this point, or only as one or two copies in an academic library.
What I'm hearing you say is that the Internet Archive needs to figure out some underhanded way of making themselves ridiculously profitable and then stop being a non-profit. It worked out quite well for OpenAI after all.
As much as this sucks, it could have been so much worse. The Internet Archive stays up. It's important archives of things like industrial and educational films stay up. The Wayback Machine stays up.
So as disappointing as this is, I do have some relief because I thought it could mean the end.
Right, but my worry was that if the IA went down, no one would be archiving it that didn't have a commercial interest.
A large amount of the Prelinger Archives have been uploaded to YouTube. Which is great as a backup, but the IA is a noncommercial entity. I do not want for-profits controlling such archives. I'm glad that's not a worry, at least not for now.
"To the contrary, the decision barely mentions copyright's ultimate purpose of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts," it said.
It feels like the thoughts of the past came straight out of fiction. Today, nothing seems worth anything if you can't directly make money from it.
The economy is based on goods and services being exchanged for money. A book is a good that took time and resources to create. A publisher invested into that good with the intent to make a profit, and having it available online for free without their consent circumvents that.
I'm not saying it's ethical or that I agree with it, I'm just saying it makes sense.