I'd be OK with both requirements.
On the other hand, contributing a TB or two to a torrent swarm is much more feasible for most people.
In any case, if you're okay with that, you should do it. Please report back in 6 months with how it's going.
Point being, if I tried to torrent the whole thing, it probably would take 6 months, and would likely get me booted from my ISP and/or sued. I would much rather buy a set of hard drives with the contents already loaded. Or tapes, as userbinator suggests.
(And as for the hypothetical "average person" you keep citing, I don't see anyone meeting that description around here.)
And my point is that this is an absurd suggestion. I shouldn't have to explain why a shadow library shouldn't be selling (tens of) thousands of dollars worth of hard drives containing pirated content. Beyond that, and what I was getting at earlier, is that maintaining a 1PB storage array at home isn't exactly easy, or cheap.
Depends on what their goal is. I shouldn't have to explain why a "library" that's operating illegally in virtually every jurisdiction, with few or no complete mirrors, is vulnerable to being shut down by a small number of governmental or judicial entities.
If I were running the archive, not being a single point of interdiction would be high on my list of priorities. Especially when any number of people are indeed willing and able to keep 1 PB+ of content in circulation, samizdat-style. I would work to find these people, put them in touch with each other, and help them.
Beyond that, and what I was getting at earlier, is that maintaining a 1PB storage array at home isn't exactly easy, or cheap.
Not everything that's worth doing is easy or cheap, or otherwise suited to "average people." Again, I don't know where you're coming from here. What's your interest in the subject, exactly?
You're right, and I was not trying to suggest that. I was merely disagreeing with "You are never going to" because I know there are people who are reading this who can and maybe will.
Ultimately that content is going to need to be represented as raw UTF-8 text and encoded images, so I don't see much upside to migrating it from one intermediate lossy file format to another.
As ndriscoll points out, the only feasible way to distribute an archive of this size is with physical hard drives. I sure wish they would find a reasonably-trustworthy way to offer that.