And yes, I would outright abolish copyrights if I could, so please don't try to what-if me, I won't care about the implications in the way you would want me to.
If anything, imo to be able to hold on to a copyright you should have a burden of proof that society benefits as a whole long-term from your work remaining copyrighted, and virtually nothing meets that burden of proof.
The publishers and the third party platforms libraries force people to use for digital lending can force ebook readers to create accounts and hand over their personal data and reading history and those platforms use that to push ads or sell that data to publishers and other third parties.
What the internet archive was doing didn't allow publishers to collect/sell that personal data, didn't give them the ability to limit/censor/remove titles at any time, and didn't allow them to charge excessive fees for the "privilege" of loaning the book electronically. From the stance of the publisher they risked losing a lot of money and power. From the stance of everyone else what the internet archive was doing was an improvement.
The creative part being protected by copyright are the words, not the physical pages. You're not transforming the words; you're transforming the paper to bitmaps. All the words and concepts within them are the same. It's not transformative in the same way ripping a CD to an MP3 isn't transformative.
If I change the font for an ebook, have I meaningfully transformed it?
Change one pixel and imo yes
Please, defend that point as an actual argument that it's then somehow fair use to change one pixel of an ebook and have it be a meaningfully different work.