What you can do with issues that were published before your journal came to eScholarship Publishing will depend on what agreements were signed with your previous publisher, if any, and with the authors whose work appeared in those issues.
If a commercial publisher, university press, or other entity published the earlier issues of your journal, consult your old agreements with that organization for potential restrictions. In most cases, journals that move to eScholarship have parted from their previous publisher on good terms, with the expectation that the journal’s archive will move to eScholarship along with its ongoing publishing operations. However, if there is language to the contrary in the publisher contract, you will need to get agreement in writing to modify it.
Review your old author agreements to see whether they granted broad rights to the journal, or whether they were limited to publishing in a particular location instead.
If the language in your agreements is unclear or missing, submit a ticket. As part of signing the eScholarship Terms of Service when starting to publish with us, you stated that you would not use eScholarship to violate any third party rights, including copyright. You are responsible for complying with those terms and we cannot give you legal advice, but we can discuss your options with you.