> Archive.org was sued for renting one book on an exclusive basis (unless one would return, another wouldn't be able to rent)

No, this is what they were doing before, but they explicitly started lending out "unlimited" copies, which is why they got sued.

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ndiddy 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's why they got sued, but the suit is mainly over whether controlled digital lending is legal at all rather than their "emergency library". Archive.org lost the case on summary judgment, meaning that they could not come up with a single fair use argument for CDL that the judge found compelling enough to let the case go to trial. The full judgment is here https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53... but here's a couple excerpts:

> The crux of IA's first factor argument is that an organization has the right under fair use to make whatever copies of its print books are necessary to facilitate digital lending of that book, so long as only one patron at a time can borrow the book for each copy that has been bought and paid for. See Oral Arg. Tr. 31:10-15. But there is no such right, which risks eviscerating the rights of authors and publishers to profit from the creation and dissemination of derivatives of their protected works. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1), (2). IA's wholesale copying and unauthorized lending of digital copies of the Publishers' print books does not transform the use of the books, and IA profits from exploiting the copyrighted material without paying the customary price. The first fair use factor strongly favors the Publishers.

> In this case, there is a "thriving ebook licensing market for libraries" in which the Publishers earn a fee whenever a library obtains one of their licensed ebooks from an aggregator like OverDrive. Pls.' 56.1 ¶¶ 577-578. This market generates at least tens of millions of dollars a year for the Publishers. Id. ¶¶ 170, 172. And IA supplants the Publishers' place in this market. IA offers users complete ebook editions of the Works in Suit without IA's having paid the Publishers a fee to license those ebooks, and it gives libraries an alternative to buying ebook licenses from the Publishers. Indeed, IA pitches the Open Libraries project to libraries in part as a way to help libraries avoid paying for licenses. See Pls.' 56.1 ¶ 383 (presentation IA gave to libraries asserting that pairing with IA means that "You Don't Have to Buy It Again!"); id. ¶ 382 (different presentation promising that the Open Libraries project "ensures that a library will not have to buy the same content over and over, simply because of a change in format"). IA thus "brings to the marketplace a competing substitute" for library ebook editions of the Works in Suit, "usurp[ing] a market that properly belongs to the copyright-holder."

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SideQuark 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> suit is mainly over whether controlled digital lending is legal at all

No, it was not, even supported by the quotes you pulled. Libraries right now, with publisher blessing, offer all manner of controlled digital lending. The suit was because IA did it buy undercutting the publishers copy rights to that legal market. Had IA simply done what every other library has done to provide controlled digital lending, there would be no suit.

	▲	ndiddy 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Controlled digital lending" is not a generic term for "lending digital items". It specifically refers to the practice of a library digitizing physical materials in its collection, then lending them digitally based on a 1:1 owned-to-loaned ratio. The idea is that the library should be able to treat digitized versions of a book the same way it treats the physical book, and the total number of physical and digital copies of the book that are lent out at once should never be more than the number of physical copies that the library has. In contrast to this, the e-book lending practiced by most libraries with publisher blessing involves the library purchasing special library-specific e-book licenses from the publisher. These licenses contain various contractual restrictions, such as the library having to re-purchase the e-book after a certain amount of time or after a certain number of borrows.

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allturtles 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is so much misinformation/confusion about this... they go sued after lending "unlimited" copies, but they were sued (and lost) for lending exclusive copies (controlled digital lending):

> “At bottom, [the Internet Archive’s] fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan wrote. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.” [0]

[0]: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/teaching...