- Their e-book library during normal times, with the one-borrower-at-a-time restriction (the one whose temporary removal is at issue here). Even with that restriction, "it seems like a stretch" from a legal perspective. [1]
- Their online emulators for old computer software and games. Copyright lasts for around a century, so those are all still copyrighted unless explicitly released by their authors. Some of them are orphan works, which might make a difference under EU law [2], but not under US law, and some of them aren't even that.
If someone sues the Internet Archive over the National Emergency Library, there's a good chance they could get a ruling that lending e-books without permission from the copyright holder is illegal regardless of restrictions, effectively forcing them to shut down the library completely.
The emulators probably wouldn't be directly affected by a lawsuit over the library, since there are different issues and different copyright holders involved, so I'm less concerned about them. Still, I fear that a lawsuit could lead to increased scrutiny and criticism of the Internet Archive in general, which could possibly lead to someone else suing over the emulators.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/internet-archive...