The article makes it sound like digital lending is one at a time, so it falls squarely under how libraries are authorized to work. Thus, it's not at all straightforward that digital lending violates copyright law.
It is very straightforward that making and distributing copies is infringement without specific permission to do so or some specific legal carveout. Characterizing making many copies as sort of the same thing as having one copy which you move around may be how you treat it morally, but it certainly isn't how the law works.
I think the misunderstanding is whether or not IA is making many copies or not. My impression is that they are not.
Regarding the removal of books, if they were licensed to the IA in a way that allows for 'digital lending', and the IA then violates that license agreement, then the IA no longer has the license and cannot anymore do 'digital lending'. And if they weren't licensed to the IA in such a way, then they're making and distributing copies without a license to do so, which is copyright infringement.
For the rest, we're having different conversations. I'm not concerned with the law as much as I'm concerned about what's good for society in this case.
This is why there was so much discussion around how this affects the ebook market: that's part of the fair use analysis, and often the most important part.
I've generally been of the opinion that CDL doesn't stand much of a chance of flying as fair use, but there's a non-ridiculous argument for it.
The period of uncontrolled lending during the pandemic is another matter that's less defensible, but the point of this case for the publishers is to kill "normal" CDL.
It’s a sad state.
1958 Stanislaw Ulam wrote (in reference to a conversation with John von Neumann)
Maybe LLMs will eventually make the profession of writing obsolete. We'd make books too cheap to meter.