At least the Adobe Digital Edition is a nominal attempt at controlled lending. It's not a great attempt, but it's something.

The thing that really concerns me is the fact that people are treating IA a general file sharing site. You can find complete sets of ROMs for basically any game system you can think of, TV shows and movies that can be downloaded completely uninhibited, completely DRM-free versions of books.

To some extent data harboring laws will protect them, but that's not a silver bullet; if they're not making an active effort to deal with copyright stuff I really think it's going to bite them, and that's a shame. The IA is an extremely valuable resource when used right.

In this case, the IA has applied DRM, just as media companies do, and anyone breaking that DRM is the person liable for infringement, not the Internet Archive. Even breaking weak sauce DRM violates the terms of the DMCA, and media companies have fought to protect their use of such insufficient schemes. I see no reason that legal wrangling shouldn't also apply to the Internet Archive as well as it does members of the MPAA.