Fahrenheit 2020: Torching the Internet's Library of Alexandria at the Height of a Global Pandemic Notes 2021 University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy 2021

"The Internet's Library of Alexandria [namely, the Internet Archive] faces the threat of a weapon that would be altogether foreign to the knowledge stewards of antiquity: copyright law. A group of publishers, despite years of discontent and cries of illegality regarding IA's program of virtually lending in-copyright books, decided that the height of a global pandemic was the perfect time to wield their legal weapon. To be sure, IA had been lending its books in this manner long before COVID19 became a household word." It does so through a controversial, legally untested concept known as "controlled digital lending" (CDL), which rests on a novel legal theory that libraries should be allowed to scan and virtually lend over the internet their lawfully acquired physical books, to one patron at a time, without any special licenses.'  Though a small but persistent chorus of dissenters have bemoaned this practice over the decade-plus that libraries have increasingly experimented with it, it was not until the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic did CDL finally reach the courts...."