But copyright law disagreed. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) ensured that almost nothing from 1980 onwards was public domain in 2005. By the letter of the law, downloading Super Mario Bros. from the Archive was identical to stealing a DVD from Wal-Mart.
As media companies scrambled to protect their assets, any platform that copied digital content without explicit, individual permission was viewed with intense suspicion. The Internet Archive, which used automated crawlers to take snapshots of the entire public web, found itself directly in the crosshairs. internet archive pirates 2005
The Digital Frontier of 2005: Preservation, "Piracy," and the Internet Archive But copyright law disagreed
In the early 2000s, many developers sold software directly via download links on their websites. When these businesses closed or changed models, the old versions—and sometimes the registration bypasses or full "shareware" packages—remained fully functional inside the Wayback Machine. Software publishers argued that the Archive was actively distributing proprietary code for free, effectively acting as a "pirate" host for abandonware. The Media and Literary Pushback from the Archive was identical to stealing a
Abandonware and active commercial software (often called "warez"). Bootleg recordings of movies, anime, and television shows.