Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
The decision covers that point:

"IA maintains that it delivers each Work “only to one already entitled to view [it]”―i.e., the one person who would be entitled to check out the physical copy of each Work. But this characterization confuses IA’s practices with traditional library lending of print books. IA does not perform the traditional functions of a library; it prepares derivatives of Publishers’ Works and delivers those derivatives to its users in full. That Section 108 allows libraries to make a small number of copies for preservation and replacement purposes does not mean that IA can prepare and distribute derivative works en masse and assert that it is simply performing the traditional functions of a library. 17 U.S.C. § 108; see also, e.g., ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 658 (“We are not free to disregard the terms of the statute merely because the entity performing an unauthorized reproduction makes efforts to nullify its consequences by the counterbalancing destruction of the preexisting phonorecords.”)."

This is really an issue that has to be fixed legislatively rather than in the courts.

In short, it sounds like the answer to the "why" question at the top of this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447904) is: the scan is a derivative and copyright law lets you lend books, not derivative works thereof

Which seems like a nitpicky distinction to me when it's the same words on the same page and they're not shown to anyone else at the same time... but such is a judge's job as opposed to a legislator