During the initial COVID lockdown, IA implemented their National Emergency Library lending program, which is the only uncontrolled (not 1:1) lending of works kn

During the initial COVID lockdown, IA implemented their National Emergency Library lending program, which is the only uncontrolled (not 1:1) lending of works known to be under copyright that I know of: 1. Almost all physical libraries, including at universities, had shut down, and IA's efforts were to compensate for that. Supply of previously-purchased-for-public-use books had dried up overnight. 2. Normal 1:1 lending was not observed, but DRM was still applied. No books lent during that period were usable outside of a narrow window, without the end user intentionally circumventing the DRM which is a distinct crime and isn't trivial for the average computer user. 3. IA entered into dialogue with major academic publishers before implementing the emergency library. They published an opt-out address on their blog. That wasn't as visible to all publishers or independent authors as it probably should have been, but everyone knows if it had been opt-in instead, authors and publishers all would have reflexively refused, despite the unique situation. Mainstream publishers and most authors simply do not care if people can't access library books for a month or two. They would ban libraries if they could. They're so high on their intellectual property rights they think those can't be relaxed no matter what. 4. As far as I know, all NEL books were scanned PDFs, from donated library book collections. Casual readers don't read scanned books for entertainment. The idea that this significantly displaced kindle purchases, for instance, or lending of real ebooks from local libraries, needs a citation. There's plenty of additional background here: https://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/ https://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/