Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Marxists Internet Archive was created in 1990 by a person known online as Zodiac, who began by transcribing the Communist Manifesto into electronic text. The current site at marxists.org was established in July 1998 after a split with the original Marx.org domain.
The archive was created by an individual known only by the Internet handle Zodiac. Zodiac's real identity was never publicly disclosed. Volunteers eventually broke away in 1998 to form the current MIA after Zodiac moved to restrict the archive to writings by Marx and Engels only.
The Marxists Internet Archive holds over 180,000 documents from more than 850 authors in 80 languages. By 2014 it had over 50,000 items covering more than 600 authors, and it has continued to grow since.
Beginning in November 2006 and intensifying through early 2007, the archive suffered denial-of-service attacks that exploited a misconfiguration in its server. Most of the attacking systems were traced to China or Chinese institutions, leading to speculation that the attacks were politically motivated, particularly since the site had been blocked in China in 2005.
In late April 2014, the British publisher Lawrence and Wishart demanded that the MIA remove its English-language edition of the Marx/Engels Collected Works from the site, threatening litigation if the material was not deleted by the end of April. The MIA complied. A petition opposing the decision collected more than 4,500 signatures within the month.
Yes. The MIA is incorporated in California and registered with the US tax service as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation. It is run entirely by unpaid volunteers and offers all material free of charge to users. It is also listed in the OCLC WorldCat catalog and has been selected for archiving by the British Library and the US Library of Congress.