"Save itself"?
Despite occasional prior histrionic kayfabe about "IA in existential danger" in the media (& HN threads) – sometimes fanned by the IA's supporters themselves – that's never been the real stakes.
For the serious librarians, publishing businesspeople, and lawyers involved, this has been about legal clarity for a gray area at the intersection of copyright, fair use, & traditional rights of first-sale and library practices. It's not really about damages, nor the IA's (or traditional publishers') existence. Instead: the principles controlling what's allowable going forward.
To that end, per Wikipedia, as of eight months ago (August 2023), the lawsuit parties already reached & had the court approve a negotiated settlement that caps the potential costs to the IA at a survivable level, & sets ground rules for future similar e-book activities that the Hachette et al (4 major publishers) plaintiffs and AAP (publishers' trade group) find acceptable. But further: this mutual settlement permits IA to continue its legal appeal on the principles involved.
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive#F...>:
> On August 11, 2023, the parties reached a negotiated judgment. The agreement prescribes a permanent injunction against the Internet Archive preventing it from distributing the plaintiffs' books, except those for which no e-book is currently available,[3] as well as an undisclosed payment to the plaintiffs.[25][26] The agreement also preserves the right for the Internet Archive to appeal the previous ruling.[25][26]
That is: the publishers were never b-movie villains trying to destroy a public resource; the IA was never reckless anarchists gambling all its other programs for a quixotic legal precedent. They were all adults with a legitimate legal dispute about what's allowed, seeking a clear definitive resolution in the culturally-appropriate manner.
And via the settlement and appeal, the parties are still working out the issues.
This author misdescribes the IA as "a profitable enterprise (bringing in between $20 and $30 million per year) that is on the verge of a potentially devastating legal ruling which could put [it] out of business". But IA is a non-profit, arguing for a mission-critical principle – a principle which is a plausible extrapolation of existing fair-use rights and library/IA practices into a new domain. And it's doing so with explicit permission under the existing settlement, capping financial risks far below any existential risk.
This author further deceptively excerpts IA's central argument as being just "Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook online for anyone to read". Against this, the author writes, essentially, "nuh-uh, that's exactly what they did".
In fact the full necessary context of IA's argument is:
> First, Publishers disregard the key feature of controlled digital lending: the controls that ensure borrowing a book digitally adheres to the same owned-to-loaned ratio inherent in borrowing a book physically. Publishers repeatedly compare IA’s lending to inapposite practices that lack this key feature. Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook online for anyone to read or copy (contra Resp.Br. 27) or to peer-to-peer file-sharing by companies like Napster (contra Resp.Br. 5). Neither practice is based on use of a library’s lawfully acquired physical copy, and neither ensures that only the one person entitled to borrow the book (or recording) can access it at a time. Controlled digital lending is also distinct from the digital resale considered in Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi, Inc., 910 F.3d 649 (2d Cir. 2018). Contra Resp.Br. 35. The former’s purpose is nonprofit library lending, while the latter’s was commercial resale. Controlled digital lending is fair use, even if these other practices are not.
That is: the heart of IA argument is that its "controlled digital lending" practices were technologically limited in purpose and duration to be like libraries' other traditional legal reuses of owned works. (Typically, this meant maintaining the 1:1 physical-copy-to-leant-ebook ratio, but even under the temporary "National Emergency Library" program, it meant no permanent unrestricted copies were created – all rights-managed borrowings could and did expire when the crisis ended and normal book sources reopened.)
This author's manipulative clipping distorts the IA's filing into a strawman not matching the actual arguments advanced.