[cvadict]

> But during covid archive.org decided to just remove the limit and lend unlimited copies concurrently

IIRC, this was 100% it. Lending one digital version of one physical asset was likely already a violation copyright. Lending UNLIMITED digital versions of one physical copy was DEFINITELY a blatant violation of copyright.

[phasefactor]

Correct, it was switching to unlimited lending instead of one lend per physical book that got them in trouble.

[butlike]

How is lending one digital version of one physical asset a violation of copyright? Since I MAY be able to lend out the physical as well?

[ndiddy]

From the court decision:

"IA maintains that it delivers each Work “only to one already entitled to view [it]”―i.e., the one person who would be entitled to check out the physical copy of each Work. But this characterization confuses IA’s practices with traditional library lending of print books. IA does not perform the traditional functions of a library; it prepares derivatives of Publishers’ Works and delivers those derivatives to its users in full. That Section 108 allows libraries to make a small number of copies for preservation and replacement purposes does not mean that IA can prepare and distribute derivative works en masse and assert that it is simply performing the traditional functions of a library. 17 U.S.C. § 108; see also, e.g., ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 658 (“We are not free to disregard the terms of the statute merely because the entity performing an unauthorized reproduction makes efforts to nullify its consequences by the counterbalancing destruction of the preexisting phonorecords.”)."

[card_zero]

Derivative works? That seems to translate as "because the books are digitized, it's strange and new and we can't allow it".

[nektro]

sure, but there's no way you believe that that's not the way they should've been doing it all along, right?