Anecdotal, but every library I have ever been in had a copier that patrons could use to make copies of books for a couple cents per page.

Some copying is covered by fair use. Making a whole copy of a book, especially in a way that might limit the copyright owner's profits, usually doesn't count. I've seen signs in libraries like this one https://www.shopbrodart.com/Library-School-Equipment/Signage... warning about copyright infringement.

Those signs may seem scary, but they're just stating a basic fact that everyone already knows: If you commit copyright infringement, you have committed copyright infringement.

Likewise.

That's a relatively new development, though. Historically libraries were responsible for making copies of the works they held.

Actually, sometimes you are able to. ILL in academic libraries or special collections/archives sometimes requires doing so (e.g. because the original material is bundled in a giant 10 year journal binding). That said, legal agreements between research libraries and academic publishers are basically opaque dark magic.

When I buy a physical book, I can lend that book to a friend. I own the book.

When a library buys a physical book, they can loan that copy out to patrons. They own the physical book.

For over ten years now, libraries have taken a single physical book, scanned it and removed the book from circulation, and lent out a single ebook. This has been a common practice founded on an interpretation of fair use laws, which allow format shifting (recording a vhs to DVD, for example) and lending, and also copyright laws which explicitly mention the legality of digitizing books for accessibility reasons, to serve the visually impaired.

This "one physical book in storage equals one ebook" lending is the "controlled digital lending" the archive does, and is the issue at stake in this suit. Publishers argue that libraries should not be allowed to lend any ebook except those which they set a specific lending limit to- charging the library a fee every X number of checkouts or every X number of months.

This is obviously not how lending physical books works- the library can buy a hardcover and loan it out to patrons, repairing the spine and binding over and over, eventually moving it to a special collection for viewing on site when it's hundreds of years old and can't be handled.

As a seperate, and legally shaker issue, the internet archive created the "national emergency library" during the pandemic. The logic here was that nearly every library in the country was closed, there were within those libraries physical copies of these books that weren't being lent out, and so the same concept as controlled digital lending could apply. This move by the archive was signed onto and supported by thousands of libraries around the country, who agreed that their uncirculated physical copies could stand in for the extra copies checked out of the archives emergency library.

It's important to note the archive does not loan any book published in the last five years, period. This is a self imposed limitation that your neighborhood library does not work under, but it means that the "lost sales" publishers allege were not of new books. Nobody ever got screwed out of bestseller status because too many library patrons read their book, and that goes doubly so in this case.

All that said, the issue isn't whether the internet archive messed up with it's national emergency library. It's whether the whole concept of loaning a book is limited to printed copies, and thus ebooks must be repurchased by libraries ad nauseum-- or if libraries can keep a physical copy in a storage room and loan out a digital copy one at a time, exactly as they do now.

Bottom line, our libraries (and especially their ebook collections) will be much poorer if this decision goes to publishers.

> Publishers argue that libraries should not be allowed to lend any ebook except those which they set a specific lending limit to- charging the library a fee every X number of checkouts or every X number of months.

so this is yet another attempt at digital feudalism, where you bought something, but must pay the supplier a subscribtion or a cut forever?