If your goal is to prevent orphaned works there's much better and more targeted changes that could be made to the law! Don't need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
> Library game borrowers are not big game buyers in the first place.
That's because today there is effectively no such thing as digital game borrowing. If there were then there would be a platform that seamlessly grants and revokes licenses on application startup/shutdown.
People just want things cheaply. Why pay $60 for a game when AmezarakGamesStore lets you play for just $5? People used to buy used discs from GameStop for $55 instead of buying a new copy for $60. Consumers don't care. They justifiably just want to spend the minimum amount of money necessary!
IA did not charge nor did they get revenue from their users in other ways. They did have a system to handle borrowing and make it cumbersome to read stuff. That is an important distinction.
Steam effectively implemented digital game borrowing years ago. Works just fine.