Yes, but also, the Internet Archive knowingly broke copyright law and hoped that the courts would side with them when shit hit the fan. A valiant effort, but that's not how the law works. Money talks.

As much as I appreciate everything the Internet Archive does for humanity in general and myself in particular, I can see why some may take umbrage at 'allowing an unlimited number of people to access the same copies of E-books'. When a library purchases a book for the purposes of lending it out that doesn't grant the library a license to make unlimited copies of the book to lend out to anyone, after all.

I also don't get why people are making a big deal out of this, the IA basically shot themselves in the foot here. It's so obvious: if you let unlimited people lend the book, the publishers are gonna throw a fit. Just stick to the 1 book, 1 loan paradigm; that's what libraries do. If you want to loan unlimited copies, get permission from the copyright holder, if they say 'no', then the answer is 'no'.

Name names.

Never forget.