[geofft]

The distinction is that each library needs to buy a copy - if not several copies - of the book. Patrons of libraries cause money to end up in the pockets of authors/publishers. If a library wants to make a book available to multiple patrons, it needs to buy multiple copies.

IA is suspending the check-out logic they'd previously been using on these scans, which breaks that connection. Now a thousand people stuck at home can read the same scans free online.

(My opinion here, without thinking very hard, is that what IA is doing is reasonable for out-of-print books or books not available in ebook form, especially textbooks and such, but probably less reasonable for recent books easy available as ebooks. It may still be fair use in both cases, though.)