AFAIK the borrowing was still limited in time and with the DRM protection.
Whoever "took" the book at that time lost the access to it long ago already, thanks to the DRM protection remaining and working.
Edit: answering "I'm not sure I'd call what they're doing "DRM". Read the court case: explicitly Adobe DRM technology for encrypted e-book formats is mentioned, implemented in different e-book readers and used in this case.
If there's no limits on how many copies they would hand out and no limit on how often you can check out the same book, then for practical purposes it's not time limited.
> no limit on how often you can check out the same book
There was always a fixed limit on how long the book remains checked out, and it must have already expired to all that checked it out at that time. The DRM protection remained active.
Edit: answering the post below:
> They had a limited number of licenses to produce works and they produced more than that.
It was at the times that all the physical libraries were closed, one can argue that the demand wasn't bigger than what the public libraries would have been able to handle, and even it had been bigger, it was only because of that exceptional emergency happening.
But I agree it would have been much clearer had they made some fixed limits corresponding to the estimated number of the books in the physical libraries.
> one can argue that the demand wasn't bigger than what the public libraries would have been able to handle
By this logic, I can speculate that there is probably at least one copy of the Star Wars ep V DVD sitting in some library's bookshelf not being watched right now. So it's completely ok if I "lend" myself a copy and watch it without paying. Since the demand was probably not higher than what could have been satisfied with the number of phyiscal copies of the DVD present in the libraries of the world today. Or maybe it was, who knows man?
This is, to put it mildly, not how copyright works. Internet Archive will have to learn that the hard way now in court. Which sucks, because I really like IA. I wish they will refrain from pulling any more crap like this.
I don't think the fact that physical libraries are closed is relevant, because they weren't loaning out physical books. They were loaning out ebooks, which many (most? All?) libraries had continued to do, totally unaffected by COVID-19
This really doesn’t matter because the work was duplicated regardless of the fact that it was time limited. They had a limited number of licenses to produce works and they produced more than that. Doesn’t matter if it was for 5 days or 5 minutes.
If I own a DVD and distribute more than copy simultaneously even if it’s time limited and even if I keep the DRM I’ve still violated copyright.
Right, but digital lending looks a lot more like software licenses where libraries buy "seats" that correspond the number of simultaneous borrowers. If you have more borrowers than seats you've violated copyright.
Most libraries work with publishers to buy lending rights directly but IA is arguing that if I hold one physical copy of a work and promise not to "perform" (copyright jargon is odd) it while it's in my possession then I may transmit that work digitally to another person kinda bridging first sale and seats of digital lending licenses.
I guess we'll find out if the court buys it. Because under normal circumstances this is open and shut copyright violation.
This is ironic because Uber "innovated" by being a taxi service that didn't follow taxi laws and AirBnB "innovated" by being a hotel service that didn't follow hotel laws.
Sure enough, the Internet Archive chose to "innovate" libraries with the National Emergency Library, by simply not following copyright laws.
Instead they allowed unlimited borrowing. They fundamentally broke the "controlled" part.