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> but as someone who produces content, I also want some way of controlling its usage.

Nobody at this point is making an argument in favor of uncontrolled lending. And the judge is arguing against controlled lending.

The judge barely has to argue; the law on this seems totally clear-cut[0]. 108(c)(2) says:

> ...any such copy or phonorecord that is reproduced in digital format is not otherwise distributed in that format and is not made available to the public in that format outside the premises of the library or archives.

My understanding is that controlled digital lending is its own thing, with its own procedures and licenses. What IA did here was come up with its own controlled digital lending scheme based on ownership of print copies.

This doesn't look like one of those tense cases where judges add to the law with rulings that involve reading in-between the lines. This looks like a case where the judge read the law, saw that the law discussed exactly what the defendent did, and so ruled according to the law.

0. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108

> "is not made available to the public in that format outside the premises of the library or archives"

This seems 1) at odds with the point of a library and 2) a death knell for CDL.

Assuming that is the correct interpretation, then the law is pretty obnoxious in terms of preventing libraries from format shifting their collections from physical to digital.

It doesn't seem like good public policy to:

1) Try to make digital copies less portable and usable than their physical counterparts

2) Prevent libraries from converting their physical - or digital - lending collections from one format to another

It sucks, but the courtroom is not the place to change it when it’s spelled out so plainly. The judge would’ve been wrong to rule any other way.

Copyright and patents shoukd stop at a stage like classification documents.After that it should be free to use by all. Or less govt should subsidise publications and patents by leving tax on the users.The subsidies to tge creators can be extended on registration. Afterall these creators use the resources and materials from tge society.They want recognition and money as profit for lifetimes. Those are moribund economic measures. Tax uses and leave all copyrights and patents off the hook.This will increase the coffers and some can be shared as subsies with creators. Books business (digital and hard copies ) is of high profit margin. Further these creators are obligated to universities and libraries for content discovery and creation. How will they pay back to society after living here andassimilating all content from libraries?

> was authors’ reluctance to release their books publicly without the ability to stop the then-rampant piracy by publishers." This original application for copyright is strikingly similar to its current use to prevent digital copying and distribution.

Depends. One of them is about an end-user action, one of them is about another publisher getting into distribution of the work.

They may involve the same technology (especially in 2023), but they are not the same action at all, which is a substantial part of the TFA.

> the consensus seems to be that publishers weren't going to do anything about CDL until the IA started freely distributing digital copies in the early stages of the Covid pandemic

I've seen that argument here many times, but I don't think it's true. It may have accelerated the lawsuit, but it was inevitable. IA was likely just going to buy more and more copies of books and lend them out digitally.