Whilst Lawrence and Wishart have the copyright to the collected works and translations, some original english language parts are well out of copyright. As both marxists.org and L&W are presumably unwilling participants in capitalism and view the message of Marx and Engles more important than profits, one possibility could have been that marxists.org keeps the public domain articles along with a note saying it is from MECW and refers the reader to somewhere where they could buy the volume where it had come from.
No-one wins with the current situation, it is being handled badly by both sides. I don’t know who though it was a good idea to have them taken down on May Day, of all days (I’m not ruling out marxists.org from having decided this).
