And what, we are just supposed to trust that they're actually archiving these things instead of relaxing on a beach somewhere pretending they are? If they were to only focus on archiving, nobody would know if anything has actually been archived for nearly 100 years; after we are all dead.

By making the archive public, sure, we have a bit of a "piracy" issue. However, we can also verify they are actually archiving the things they say they are, point out mistakes, and ask them to remove things from the archive.