In 2020, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, the Internet Archive (IA), a digital non-profit library, temporarily lifted its borrowing restrictions and was promptly slapped with a lawsuit by four out of five of the “Big Five” publishers. Prior to lockdowns, IA followed standard lending library practice and made digital loans on the following conditions: 1) one loan per copy of item; 2) only one user could borrow an item at a time; 3) the loans were restricted to standard library times, i.e. fourteen days with a significant number of items being available for borrowing by the hour. Anecdotally, the latter situation originates in American academia where university libraries frequently hold two copies of an item, one for take-away borrowing and the other for in-house consultation. The
Controlled digital lending is on trial
Controlled digital lending is on trial
Controlled digital lending is on trial
In 2020, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, the Internet Archive (IA), a digital non-profit library, temporarily lifted its borrowing restrictions and was promptly slapped with a lawsuit by four out of five of the “Big Five” publishers. Prior to lockdowns, IA followed standard lending library practice and made digital loans on the following conditions: 1) one loan per copy of item; 2) only one user could borrow an item at a time; 3) the loans were restricted to standard library times, i.e. fourteen days with a significant number of items being available for borrowing by the hour. Anecdotally, the latter situation originates in American academia where university libraries frequently hold two copies of an item, one for take-away borrowing and the other for in-house consultation. The