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Originally Posted by Fbone
I don't know the particulars. You would need to review the court cases that IA has won.
My opinion, from what I remember, is that as a registered library they are entitled to exemptions for scholarly study. It's been established that they can post an ebook for lending if they have a print version. Other books can be available for online viewing only. I may be wrong about this as I didn't delve too deep into the matter.
The library designation is important. For example, a library is a government entity and as such is treated differently than say a torrent site or even Gutenberg. The example being that a copyright holder demanding IA or OL to remove their book would be the same as them walking into the New York Public Library and demanding their books be destroyed. Would the government agree to their demands?
This doesn't excuse the copyrighted uploads from the general public.
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A copyright holder has no right to demand the destruction of any kind of physical copy that was legally obtained, which is generally the case for library collections. I thought that libraries are free to lend out their physical copies as they see fit under the
first-sale doctrine, which doesn't apply to digital copies, since you're actually copying the bits when you lend them out.
I believe that the first-sale doctrine is also why Redbox, which runs the DVD and Blu-ray rental kiosks, is able to advertise that they have movies that won't be available for streaming for a long time, because they can legally go to a store, buy a DVD or Blu-ray at the regular price, and then rent it out as they see fit, while streaming video services have to negotiate licenses.
The NYPL actually isn't a government entity; it's a private non-profit organization. Most of the funding for the circulating neighborhood branches does come from the city government, but the research libraries, including the main library on 42nd Street (the one with the lion statues in front) get nearly all of their funding from private donations. The NYPL also only operates in three of the five boroughts of NYC (Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island), while Queens and Brooklyn have separate public library systems, which are also private non-profit organizations.