> It's really a pretense, because you can have DRM without copyright. DRM is just a weak, autonomous enforcement layer being bolted on. That pretense is the only thing that's keeping IA online at this point. Otherwise, there would be no excuse to allow their distribution of copyrighted works at all.
Well sure there is, because it also works the other way around. You can have copyright without DRM, and enforce it not via some weak and easily bypassed technological fig leaf but with the full force of the government. A patron who makes a permanent copy even though they've claimed and agreed to have destroyed their temporary one would be liable for copyright infringement. There is no reason the law couldn't still prohibit that while allowing temporary lending.
Copyright holders would have no more or less trouble enforcing this than they do any other infringing copying that happens in private, like when the user downloads the same book from a shadow library in a foreign country. The difference is that the local library has paid the copyright holder for an official copy, implying that they haven't done anything wrong, and neither have any patrons who don't illicitly retain a copy. Why should people doing nothing wrong have any liability?
Well sure there is, because it also works the other way around. You can have copyright without DRM, and enforce it not via some weak and easily bypassed technological fig leaf but with the full force of the government. A patron who makes a permanent copy even though they've claimed and agreed to have destroyed their temporary one would be liable for copyright infringement. There is no reason the law couldn't still prohibit that while allowing temporary lending.
Copyright holders would have no more or less trouble enforcing this than they do any other infringing copying that happens in private, like when the user downloads the same book from a shadow library in a foreign country. The difference is that the local library has paid the copyright holder for an official copy, implying that they haven't done anything wrong, and neither have any patrons who don't illicitly retain a copy. Why should people doing nothing wrong have any liability?