So doing a bit of digging around archive.org on copyright legalities and it appears they operate on an
exclusion policy:
What is the Wayback Machine's Copyright Policy?
The Internet Archive respects the intellectual property rights and other proprietary rights of others. The Internet Archive may, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, remove certain content or disable access to content that appears to infringe the copyright or other intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that your copyright has been violated by material available through the Internet Archive, please provide the Internet Archive Copyright Agent with the following information:
Identification of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed;
An exact description of where the material about which you complain is located within the Internet Archive collections;
Your address, telephone number, and email address;
A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner of the copyright interest involved or are authorized to act on behalf of that owner;
Your electronic or physical signature.
Internet Archive uses the exclusion policy intended for use by both academic and non-academic digital repositories and archivists. See our full exclusion policy.
The Internet Archive Copyright Agent can be reached as follows:
Internet Archive Copyright Agent
Internet Archive
300 Funston Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94118
Phone: 415-561-6767
Email: info at archive dot org
Furthermore, it appears that copyright status for materials on the site are never guaranteed, and rights are to be researched by uploaders before upload, as per this information:
Rights
Can I use this ____ for ____ ? Internet Archive does not itself seek to limit use of its digital materials. However, we cannot give ironclad guarantees as to the copyright status of items in our Collections and cannot guarantee information posted on items’ details or collection pages regarding copyright or other intellectual property rights. Our terms of use (
https://www.archive.org/about/terms.php) require that users make use of Internet Archive's Collections at their own risk and ensure that such use is non-infringing and in accordance with all applicable laws.
The person who uploads an item often provides information related to use rights, either by way of directly entering it in the description field or by selection of a Creative Commons license. The latter, if included by the uploader, will be viewable via a Creative Commons logo on the details page, which serves as a link to a description of the specific type of license that the uploader has assigned.
One way to attempt to contact an uploader about information that they have posted is to post a review to the item.
The Internet Archive follows the Oakland Archive Policy for Managing Removal Requests And Preserving Archival Integrity.
It would seem that an uploader who put something on the site that they were not legally able to do so would bear the brunt of the lawsuits or whatever that would be forthcoming. Archive.org would remove anything which is requested of them to do so, and only the uploader and users of the things on their site are responsible and liable for damages as according to their terms of service.
So I think the message is still: use at your own discretion and risk. I wonder now actually if physical libraries operate on this same principle?
