> If IA had won, IA would be hailed as a cultural hero
This is ends justifying the means logic. (More accurately, it is showboating.)
Let’s concede for the sake of argument what they wanted to do was unarguably good. It’s still an astronomical long shot. And one with real costs, financial and institutional.
IA incurred those costs, and in the process not only destroyed the library but set a harmful precedent. They threw out the good in pursuit of perfection.
I honestly think what IA did was vital for their survival. The IA can not exist without the media library.
I see that many people here do not care about IA and their goal. I am not sure why that is. Maybe HN is filled with people in places were access to books is easy and think that there is an alternative. What IA did was the only sane option, I agree that it was bound to be destroyed the same way Google Books was.
Maybe because other shadow libraries exist. IA could have sneakily donated a copy of their data to one of these openly illegal ventures, instead of being illegal itself.