i think my hunch is they made it so you can invite people to dinners who believe themselves above requesting private accounts

a world where the ia loses still probably has the wayback machine & a lot of archival data in it. but it is soon to no longer have libraries, just netflix for books. a world where the ia wins, though, is one where every library in the world is the library of alexandria. (10/10)

these books are still being bought! unlike most libraries, the ia doesn't even lend books published in the last 5 years--when basically all primary market sales of most books happen. if your book is a hit, libraries buy more copies. this is like, the status quo for authors. (9/n)

want a rare book? if any library has a copy, they can loan your library theirs instantly through inter-library loan. the ia has already digitised it, & all the other library has to do is set their copy aside. you're reliant on the feds not seizing russian servers no longer. (8/n)

so this isn't authors vs piracy. it's about the possibility forging a pathway, in our existing, awful, law, for libraries to function like they're supposed to. every copy of every book a library owned could be checked out as an ebook. at that point, who even needs libgen? (7/n)

under cdl, libraries can simply... buy, & lend, books. you can either loan your copy either digitally or physically, but not both at once. this is what the ia aims to establish as legal precedent. libraries can own books again! no more books without legal ebooks available! (6/n)

at the moment, libraries can't buy many ebooks at all. your local library doesn't buy ebooks from overdrive; they pay overdrive like 3x normal-book-price for a certain # of reads. after enough readers, the 'book' vanishes. great business to be in, unless you like books. (5/n)