I don’t follow. The Internet Archive only allows 1 copy of each physical book to be loaned at a time. If someone has the book you want already, then you need to wait until their loan expires. It’s not like shadow libraries that allow unrestricted DRM-free downloading.
And publishers’ profits are rising and don’t seem to be at all correlated to library access, so of course nobody is suggesting they should close.
What am I not understanding?
During the pandemic, Internet Archive very publicly announced they were relaxing their one physical copy per digitally loaned copy.
I think of they had maintained their 1:1 CDL method, the publishers would still be uncomfortable to be the one to sue first, especially since there was a decent argument and IA would have been pretty sympathetic.
Their pandemic policy was effectively not substantially different from a shadow library., and just set up a slam dunk case for the publishers.
