You're assuming the country being closed is especially relevant. The point is rather that they had physical books and weren't physically lending them out, in which case they should be able to digitally lend them out. If you're not lending more copies than you have, how is that not a reasonable argument?

> typically a single case is hand-picked to serve as the exception to the rule taking great care to make it as palatable, appealing, and free of recriminations as possible and you take that to the courts.

It's a well-loved actual library that only wants to lend out its books, what more do you want?

And if they'd only lent out a single book, would that have gotten them into court? It had to be enough for the plaintiffs to care.

> some other website or organization should gamble their entire existence that isn’t worth as much as the Archive to get this precedent

Why? It has to be a real library. You would rather some other library take the risk, or that nobody ever do it?

> It’s not like the Archive doesn’t know what kind of people they are dealing with.

And that's the point. The people they're dealing with are the bullies and the Archive is supposed to back down? Somebody has to fight the fight.

That's the crux of the problem, though. The Internet Archive originally followed that model making that very argument; that argument hasn't actually been tested in court and the legality of it isn't settled, but publishers were generally looking the other way. But in March, the IA lifted the limit, allowing an unlimited number of people to read the same book on the grounds that closing physical libraries created a national emergency.

And we still haven't heard their response, only what the plaintiffs are claiming.