Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making every book on the site available for unlimited download, not just rare things but contemporary best sellers, did huge reputational damage. Following it up by claiming he was saving scratchy old 78 RPM records, but in the process also making LPs from Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix available, continued the trend. Tweeting out promotional links to the pages with those materials, while asking for donations on the…
Libraries make «contemporary best sellers» and «LPs from Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix» freely available. You call it «reputational damage», others may call it "advancing demands over rights", "stirring a stagnating reality in view of effective progress" (with reference to dematerialization), "pushing a debate" (about where we want to go societally". It is unwise to push these latter points with the outmost care wi…
For music, the Music Modernization Act set up a statutory process for making things available, even downloadable. Brewster and others celebrated the measure in blog posts and speaking gigs. Then didn't follow the process, didn't honor polite requests to stop, then got sued for $700 million.
Previously they did some seriously stupid things in their implementation of Controlled Digital Lending, and got the whole concept killed. Not even a debate, just destroyed on summary judgement without even a trial. This set the future many of us want back decades, and ruined a lot of proper efforts that were run much better than the well-intentioned but undermanaged Internet Archive.
Combined with them giving the finger to the fairly innovative and progressive music act, this caused damage not only to reputations, but also the culture.
Regarding copyright basics, we're likely to agree on many positions, including some radical ones. But Internet Archive cannot be a long-term archive, an activist organization, and an open library. There are different laws, risk profiles, and financial/management requirements for each.
And you can't beg people for donations to "save the internet" then set it all on fire to save a bunch of old records that already existed at the Library of Congress. Or act surprised that just because you scan them, it doesn't mean you can then make them available for unlimited download without permission. Again, archives behave differently from libraries. Although it's annoying to tech people, there are good reasons for it.
Brewster likes his honorary library status and degree but he and the site violate the majority of the librarian code of ethics. https://www.ala.org/tools/ethics