The irony is not lost on me that the Internet Archive went out of its way to acquire the physical versions of millions of books and loan them out carefully and in a limited way, and is facing a near-extinction-level event over it, while for-profit and VC-backed companies are just stealing people’s content and making up excuses to validate the bad behavior.
@ernie omg I hate to be the lazy non-reseacher, but... I knew of the issue with loaning books, but does "a near-extinction-level event" mean the entire site is under threat?!
@sstrader When you have to pay massive legal bills for a long-running case, it doesn’t do amazing things for your financial situation.

@sstrader I think this NYT story really does a great job of highlighting just how dangerous this has all been for the archive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html

The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers

In the pandemic emergency, Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive freely lent out digital scans of its library. Publishers sued. Owning a book means something different now.

The New York Times