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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

It seems strange to loan a digital copy of ... someone else's book.

As for the lawsuit going on after they stopped lending, well yeah the legal matter wasn't settled, so it can go on.

Why should it seem strange? If you own stock I can lend it and sell it outright, and as long as I buy it back and provide it to you at the exit of the deal everything fine.

If you own a book and I buy it but under a deal that defines you should keep it locked up in a safe. I still own it and have the right to lend it out digitally under CDL, yet it's physically with you. Why is it strange to forgo that madness and just let me provide digital lending services on your behalf? I mean just because it's my lending system doesn't mean I should need to own everything that's being lend out. Amazon doesn't have to own everything they sell.

Did they actually make that deal about not lending out other people's books?

The article seems somewhat fuzzy on that...

Ironically, the same thing happens with banks under a fractional reserve system. If the bank has $1000 in gold, they can lend out a virtual $9000 of that gold.

Why? A library lending someone a book belonging to a partner library because that library is not easily accessible to the lendee is common practice.

But usually a van physically transports the book to the lendee...

I think the debate will be if making a digital copy and locking the original book in a safe is equivalent, and if I were a judge, I would say "no", because to say otherwise significantly weakens copyright in so many other ways.

It seems like "faster vans" and "more effective nagging people to immediately return books they have already finished" would also weaken copyright under that line of argument; both allow you to loan the same copy to more people in sequence.

Yeah, I don't think they're going to win this one, either.

Their best bet is probably to shame the publishers into dropping the suit, since they won't actually win if it comes down to it.

I assume that's what this is meant to do: shame the publishers.

Hopefully they can just settle it in a way that IA goes on, but maybe with some better guidance at the top of IA.

If I were them, I would be signing perpetual data-sharing agreements with other sister companies and archives, and prepare to protect as much of the archive as possible in bankruptcy...

Not really. As long as they are documented to be not in use, then the first party can lend them to whoever, and they can lend to whoever.. and so on as long as the chain links back to a real book paid for then it makes perfect technical sense.

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