Technology

DRM is relevant to the legal redistribution because that is part of the terms of their license agreement and for no other reason.

This is simply not true. If someone takes means to prevent illegal action, in a situation where they can choose to either do so, or not do so, taking those means shows they are attempting to prevent any negative legal outcomes.

The Internet Archive was explicitly, voluntarily enacting similar policy to libraries that directly license books from publishers, because they knew that it would show they were making an effort to lend responsibly. To me, it seems they carried on this set of ethics to when they opened up more copies than they originally had on hand, because that was during a time when library branches were becoming physically inaccessible, and physical resources were becoming increasingly hard to access, thus, responsible lending would include effectively making the inaccessible physical copies in other libraries accessible. That part might not be considered legal, but again, who cares? These publishers saw a substantial increase in profits during the time they were supposedly hurt by the Internet Archive, and continue to squeeze traditional libraries for every penny they can get under exploitative lending agreements. What the Internet Archive did was for the objective moral good of society.

If anything's illegal, it's compelling libraries to only license your content directly from you for a higher rate, while trying to discourage them from using the physical copies they can buy once like any other sane person.

Petition for changes to the law. Don’t lie and pretend the law says what you want it to.

I have not misrepresented the law by pretending it says something else. I have given you citations and quotes straight from the letter of the law, directly backing up my claims, while proving your blanket statements that all digitized lending was illegal as patently false.

Petitioning to change the law is not the only way to change it. For instance, I believe piracy from, say, streaming services, is ethical, if those same streaming services are jacking up rates, adding ads, and enshittifying their core product for the sake of making a quick buck. how else are you supposed to change things?

I'm sure you've seen the immense public backlash and legislative attempts to fix the rapidly enshittifying entertainment industry. They haven't worked.

Look, even regardless of all my arguments for how I believe the vast majority of what the Internet Archive did was legal, I don't care if it was. Because, in the end, If you own a book, you should be allowed to let other people read it. If people are losing access to literature, you should be able to make it available to as many people as possible. If companies are rapidly exploiting the public library system and looting it for everything it has, you should be able to offer an alternative.

These publishers do not deserve my, nor your sympathy.

Your arguments read like you believe a DRM-protected ebook file is a verbatim copy that can be freely distributed and used. I just want to clarify that it is not, not even on a technical level. The form of DRM that libraries use is not just a license you agree to. It is an ecryption that turns that ebook into a garbled mess for anyone but the person who borrowed the ebook, during a set timeframe. After that period expires it cannot be decrypted anymore and stays a garbled mess forever, irrevocably ceasing to be a copy.