Someone needs to save the Internet Archives from the lawyers and I have an idea
Someone got rightly flagged for making a call for vigilantism. I'd like to respond to them in a non-flagged comment.<p>To the person apparently so frustrated that they were brainstorming vigilantism-- I'd suggest first at least trying the <i>one</i> thing that HN is allergic to-- getting engaged with politics. Few to none of the respondents here who are vaguely complaining about lobbyists (at the Library of Congress, of all places!) have any experience whatsoever organizing politically.<p>There is a pair-- literally, <i>two</i> humans-- who were able to get legislation passed in a state that is of general benefit to a) an industry where they weren't big players, and b) to society in general. They weren't oligarchs or billionaires or whoever HN thinks controls the keys to the kingdom. They were just interested and diligent enough to attempt the work. (Well, one of them had enough free time to go and meet with nearly every representative-- I'm not saying it's easy or quick.)<p>Think about the number of times a bugfix can fail to compile before you finally get it to work. If you apply that discipline and focus to find real, lasting legislative protections to projects like the IA or Sci-hub, you're way more likely to end up making positive changes than through vigilantism.<p>And of course if you're successful, HN will <i>still</i> criticize you for failing to solve the problem with a fast, homomorphically-encrypted, decentralized, statically-linked, non-Electron, portable executable. I guess you'll just have to accept the tragic ending that the most intelligent people in the world won't understand what you achieved. :(