Yep. If the Internet Archive goes down, piracy is going to be the last bastion of preservation for the masses. It’s incredibly fucked up. The whole copyright system is incredibly fucked up.
I suspect after the book loss, copyright lawyers for huge media industries all over the place are drooling over potential earnings.
Makes me feel angry and helpless, honestly. The people in that industry know damn well a rip of an old record isn’t the same as a sanitized digital file, but they don’t care about preserving shit as much as squeezing a few extra bucks from the super fans and history buffs who may enjoy those files.