The point is that independent preservation is necessarily at odds with the way copyright is policed in the modern day. Modern copyright is centered around the d

The point is that independent preservation is necessarily at odds with the way copyright is policed in the modern day. Modern copyright is centered around the dogma of "copyright holders should have the right to absolutely control everything regarding a work". The copyright rent-seekers have, at every step, used the available technology and legal framework at the time to exert maximum control and give the individual minimum rights, and push the "final payment" date of public domain further and further away. If independent preservationists cannot legally archive material (and that includes redistributing it, otherwise the media is still at risk of loss due to the same mechanisms that cause it to be at risk of loss without independent preservation). Preservation needs to be explicitly codified in copyright law as accepted and legal. My recommendation would be to gate it behind the original length of US copyright law - after 14 years, archiving and distribution (along with incidental monetization for the purposes of maintaining and expanding the archive) should be allowed. After 14 years, infringement should require specific commercial usage of the work (selling individual copies versus merely ads across the board, especially if there is an effort to pass it off as an authentic copy). It could also require transparency in the money involved, to assure that it is entirely going towards maintaining the archive (which could include purchasing digitization equipment, acquiring copies of media, a small amount for time spent processing said media and for any hosting costs one might incur). Monetization is a red herring. YouTube is running ads on those videos whether or not the channel owner monetizes. Money is made either way. Money does not automatically erase fair use defense, either.