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"Uncontrolled digital lending" seems a very strange term for

* lending in specified forms, which require illegal activity to make further copies, and

* lending for a specified time, which requires illegal activity to extend.

Welcome to NewSpeak, where "uncontrolled" means fairly tightly controlled.




Controlled Digital Lending is a well established term meaning one physical copy for each copy digitally lent. This lent more than the physical copies, so it was “not controlled digital lending”. There is little linguistic difference between “not controlled” which is awkward and “uncontrolled.”

Uncontrolled does not have to mean zero restraints. The word never meant that. Especially in a well defined context where controlled has precise meaning (and that meaning is not “every constraint”). Neither word need mean the absolute extreme.

This is not NewSpeak.


There is considerable difference between "uncontrolled" and the status of digital books lent by the "national emergency library". For one thing, all of those copies have expired and are unusable to either the person who checked them out or anyone else without illegal actions by those people. To argue that these digital copies are, or were, "uncontrolled" is ridiculous and quite inverts the meaning of "uncontrolled".




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