Agreed. It was poking the bear. The other big three grey-circuit services have nothing to lose because they never claimed to be legit.

If you claim the moral high ground you have to be impeccable. It also didn't help anyone during COVID because all the stuff was out there already on less legit services. Some make it super easy with telegram bots etc.

I'm sad that they screwed this up. Because the archive is a very valuable service. They've lost a lot of money, goodwill and reputation now. And gained nothing.

The worst part is, it's unimaginable that this would ever have ended well.

It wasn't a bad idea in principle but they should have worked to get some publishers on board, could have been a PR win for them too.