The other thing they could be doing is using some of that lobbying money to try to reform copyright law to allow them to release the scans that are still covered.

It would likewise earn goodwill from a lot of people.

Copyright law is an implementation of international treaties.

Berne Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention (182 parties)

TRIPS Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement (164 parties - part of WTO)

The United States can't make copyright weaker than what those agreements require without pulling out of the WTO.

The core of copyright law is about who has the right to redistribute a work. If I buy a print of a photograph, scan it and use that as my desktop image... I can do that. I cannot redistribute the scanned image, and if I was to sell the print later I should delete the scanned image.

Note that format shifting is covered under fair use... which is what training is taking place under. However, that doesn't mean that they can release that format shifted content... nor can then re-release the original work if they are retaining the format shifted content.

https://library.georgetown.edu/copyright/fair-use-reformatti...

    Under § 106 of the Copyright Law of the United States, the owner of the copyright in a work has the exclusive right to make copies of that work, unless an exception applies. When considering reformatting media, please note that individuals do not have an automatic right to reformat a work from one format to another. In order to legally convert media, your use must fall into one of the following categories:

    you own the copyright in the work,
    you have permission from the owner of the copyright, or
    you have done a fair use analysis and have determined that fair use applies

They could be, however that would weaken their position as the sole source of knowledge which seems to me is half the purpose of their book destroying initiative.