They should never have thought they'd need to. It's kind of insane that we have the ability to put the vast majority of the world's knowledge, art, and literature online where everyone can freely access it all instantly yet we hold back the education and cultural enrichment of humanity so that a tiny number of massive corporations can further enrich themselves.
Copyright is broken, and it's now acting counter to its original purpose which was to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". 14 years of special protections was considered enough back when printing and publication was a massive expense and worldwide distribution was nearly impossible to achieve, but now that those things are virtually free and happen at the speed of light we have copyrights that last hundreds of years and can be extended forever.
The internet archive has been doing the best they can while operating in an intentionally broken system that is designed to prevent them from their goals.