There's an odd situation here:
There is information (note the distinction between files) that was at one time released to the public. Most of it likely was legit to do that for, though some may have been not 100% permitted.
Yet, for most of the world, some of those files are as good as destroyed due to old formats.
I don't think there was any statements about making available *the same information* in different formats, but it was not explicitly permitted and the language around alterations/changes may be seen as precluding that.
This seems to be a general problem that applies to information created and stores digitally versus dead-tree products (or things carved into stellae). And it is (to my knowledge) never taken into account by those drafting licenses for the digital content. They really should separate the information itself as a protected IP from the file formats/etc and permit changes to formats so the data can continue to exist in the public domain.
It seems relatively inane to make every person who has what is or was a publicly distributed item go through hoops to change a format. That's an absurdity at best.
TomB