To be honest, it is a few things. First of which is pride, we take pride in being the origin of many scans that are mirrored elsewhere. I believe that Internet Archive would not have a single Nintendo Power on their site if it wasnt for us scanning them. I forget when IA started to host magazines, but back in 2005 I don't remember anyone scanning Nintendo Power, EGM or GamePro. It is so easy to just find and rehost files. We exist to preserve what has not been preserved.
Second is we are not big enough. Even with over 4000 magazines, this website barely clears $45 per month in donations. While this site probably actually costs twice that to keep running. If we just became a mirror for thousands of more magazines that we just stumbled upon, those costs would rise. The donations however would proabably stay at the current levels. Being a site that is not paywalled, and doesnt beg for donations every week on Twitter, plus providing unlimited downloads to users who don't even need to register. Not many can claim to do that along side of us.
Third, there is always users who claim ownership of their scans. I dont want to deal with users coming here and complaining about something that was ripped from their website and released here without their permission. Do they have a claim, probably not. But all the same, its draining and I would like to stay clear.
Anyone who scans stuff for IA, is more than welcome to give us permission to put their scans over at Retromags. If they do, great. If they don't, we will eventually scan our own copies
Plus some of the stuff over at IA and these other sites, is not the best quality, its just thrown together and uploaded. We have quality checks, where we try to scan these magazines just once, destroy just 1 issue per scan, to get that perfect digital copy so that no other copies need be destroyed.
Hopefully this cleared it up