The First Sale doctrine SHOULD apply, As someone else replied in a sibling comment. A digital sale should be just that, a perpetual license that can be transferred, inherited, etc.

First Sale doctrine evenly applied to digital books would allow you to freely resell the ebook you purchased. It probably wouldn't mean allowing you to make infinite copies and distribute them freely, abolishing the market for the actual book.

Yes, that's not the technical definition of FS doctrine, but that doctrine was written before this technological context existed.

Thing is, the IA did not make infinite copies and distribute them freely. They specifically made limited copies and for every copy the lent out, they took a physical copy out of circulation.

I don't see anything in IA's FAQ or elsewhere that they limited digital lending to physical copies. I read that they only lent ebooks they had physical possession /of/, but that there was no limit to how many such copies they lent out (i.e., they had one physical copy of Mark Twain, allowed an unlimited number of people to digitally borrow Mark Twain for up to two weeks).

If I'm mistaken, I'd appreciate a link that explains their approach.

They say in the article that they used controlled digital lending, where they only circulate the EXACT number of copies they (and partner libraries) physically own and are not currently lent.

They only did controlled digital lending before (and after) they pulled the National Emergency Library stunt that got them sued.

Here's the link to their FAQ:

https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360042654251-Nati...

To quote:

Is this controlled digital lending?

No. It is close to controlled digital lending but is significantly different while waitlists are suspended. This library is being mobilized in response to a global pandemic and US national emergency. It shares aspects of controlled digital lending by controlling the physical book that was scanned and the redistribution of files through digital rights management software, but differs by having no waitlists for users borrowing books. Once the US national emergency is over and waitlists are back to their normal capacity, the service will return to full controlled digital lending.

Yeah, I see what you mean - the posted article is definitely misleading in that case. What an idiotic thing to do.

No, that is not true. But it is understandable that you would think that. IAs statement seems written to obscure exactly what they did.

Read this: http://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/

> The National Emergency Library launched on March 24, 2020, and closed on June 16, 2020.

> After June 16, books in the National Emergency Library are available to one borrower at a time using controlled digital lending.

This very strongly implies that between March 24 and June 16, they did not pracise controlled digital lending by lending each copy only once at a time.

Then they did the emergency Covid library, where they just gave copies of everything away.

Yeah, the original link was written in a very confusing way.

> A digital sale should be just that, a perpetual license that can be transferred, inherited, etc.

Even if that was the case (which it isn't) then the IA would still lose this case.

I don't think this is the kind of result anyone wants. Even if you do get a ruling that ignores license agreements and says first sale applies to infinetely copiable and distributable content - it'll give every monetary incentive from the copyright overlords to bankroll Congress into further archaic laws. There's every good argument to be made that digital is not the same as physical, and thatll result in more terrible laws.