The internet archive were probably counting on publishers goodwill to temporarily allowing relaxed lending rule. It’s not like they were distributing unlocked copies anyway (each copy expire in a few days IIRC thanks to DRM). Turns out the publishers don’t have any empathy even during pandemic and blow it out of proportion, as if the internet archive was turning into libgen and distributing unlocked pdf to everyone on the internet.
My own personal theory is the internet archive is not afraid of getting shut down and testing the water to see how far they can get away with poking the copyright law. They must have a contingency plan in case their non-profit organization got shut down to ensure its archive preservation in order to be this brazen.
But it is. The ebook contains drm and can only be opened with adobe software. It can’t be opened anymore once the lending time expired. The internet archive simply allowed more people to borrow them, but not letting them borrow the books indefinitely so the lent books will still expire (though they can still re-borrow again by logging in to the internet archive library).
But those are only during the pandemic, right? Not indefinitely?
Why does that make a difference? They were making copies, that’s copyright violation. The pandemic didn’t suspend copyright law.
The internet archive were probably counting on publishers goodwill to temporarily allowing relaxed lending rule. It’s not like they were distributing unlocked copies anyway (each copy expire in a few days IIRC thanks to DRM). Turns out the publishers don’t have any empathy even during pandemic and blow it out of proportion, as if the internet archive was turning into libgen and distributing unlocked pdf to everyone on the internet.
My own personal theory is the internet archive is not afraid of getting shut down and testing the water to see how far they can get away with poking the copyright law. They must have a contingency plan in case their non-profit organization got shut down to ensure its archive preservation in order to be this brazen.
I hope they learned a valuable lesson. A valuable, expensive, obvious lesson.
It’s not like those copies self destructed after the pandemic.
But it is. The ebook contains drm and can only be opened with adobe software. It can’t be opened anymore once the lending time expired. The internet archive simply allowed more people to borrow them, but not letting them borrow the books indefinitely so the lent books will still expire (though they can still re-borrow again by logging in to the internet archive library).