It's ending its unlimited free books program, and going back to the old version, which is limited.
The issue that caused all the outrage was the National Emergency Library program, where the Internet Archive was simultaneously lending out an unlimited number of digital copies of a book, regardless of whether it only possessed one physical copy.
This is (on its face) a violation of copyright. Under the first-sale doctrine, you're free to lend out a copy you've purchased. But you aren't free to make unlimited copies of a copy you've purchased and lend them out.
Are they scanning each (virtually identical) copy individually?
Not really: Publishers oppose controlled digital lending as well. The Emergency Library just painted a bigger target on the Internet Archive's back due to its more obviously questionable legality.
> The lawsuit, filed June 1, does not just object to the National Emergency Library but to the way Internet Archive has long operated. Traditional libraries pay publishers licensing fees, and agree to terms that restrict how many times they can lend an e-book. Internet Archive, by contrast, takes books that have been donated or purchased, scans them and posts them online.
I fully support the publishers' complaint against the National Emergency Library program. Lending out more copies than you own is the same as making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works, and it should be stopped.
But I do not share their opposition to Controlled Digital Lending. I think it is a reasonable system of lending that attempts to achieve parity with lending of physical copies, and I think it has a good chance of being defensible in court.
Of course, I know why these publishers oppose CDL. E-book licensing is an income stream they don't want to dry up. And it's quite possible that losing that income stream might mean that they will need to make cutbacks or reduce the number of titles they publish, which could be bad for authors. But I can't see how CDL can be a violation of copyright when lending physical copies under the same terms is not.
Cf https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement
Properly implemented, CDL enables a library to circulate a digitized title in place of a physical one in a controlled manner. Under this approach, a library may only loan simultaneously the number of copies that it has legitimately acquired, usually through purchase or donation. For example, if a library owns three copies of a title and digitizes one copy, it may use CDL to circulate one digital copy and two print, or three digital copies, or two digital copies and one print [...]
You can strip the DRM with DeDRM and calibre.