IA contends that the CDL program lends one digital copy per physical copy the lender owns (ie. the “owned to loaned” ratio). Which is in direct contradiction to the copies-of-copies described by the NWU.
Can you shed light on this discrepancy?
I've been recently working on a project in digital book distribution for libraries, and the terms that publishers want to force on libraries for digital distribution are pretty harsh and enforced by DRM by the publisher. Things like you can only loan this book 50 times before renewing its license.
IMO thats what this is really about, trying to undermine the clever work around of digitizing physical works and loaning them like a normal library would so that is can be replaced with a more revenue friendly model where publishers can dictate terms using DRM.
Or, more realistically, you could borrow an audiobook or CD and copy it perfectly - but people don't seem to be overly opposed to allowing libraries to lend those out.