They aren’t strictly contradictory; but there is a decent case to be made that if you love the IA you would not love them doing something that carries a real risk of turning into a judgement for eleventy-zillion dollars in damages for deliberate copyright infringement.
That is effectively rolling the dice on the possibility that the IA either just gets shut down or turned into some Elsevier subscription service in order to expand their ability to lend more copies of books simultaneously. Decent case to be made that the cost/benefit on that one does not really advance the goals of the project.
I can exactly how this is going to play out too. IA goes to court and loses, has to sell off assets to cover fines. Some large companies get into a bidding war over the Wayback Machine and more than likely Google ends up buying the servers. Access will be severely limited and full of ads and they’re gonna sell what you look up to whoever wants to know.
I borrowed a book by J G Ballard so my son could read War Fever. Had I not done this the only other option would be buying a second-hand copy from ebay. No royalties are received by Ballard’s estate in either case. I use my local library and borrow ebooks and audiobooks for which the author gets something like 40p but hard-to-find books are why this facility is so helpful.
