[bgalbrecht]

I think your questions have turned this thread into something more appropriate for the General Discussions forum.

IANAL, so I don't know whether the OpenLibrary is doing anything illegal. I'd like to point out that the Author's Guild basically made the same arguments about Google's book search (e.g., didn't get copyright holders' permission before scanning, etc.), and when the courts ruled it to be fair use, Google didn't need their permission before scanning. In OpenLibrary's case, I think they're claiming they fall under some other exception that libraries have. It could be that IA and OpenLibrary have exceeded the boundaries of whatever exception libraries have.

It's not clear to me whether it is, or should be illegal, for a library to purchase and scan a print book, never loan the print book, and instead, loan a single time-limited copy-protected ebook for each hardcopy edition of the book they own, or for that matter, serially loan either the physical book or ebook, so that only one copy is on loan at a time. It's my impression that this is what OpenLibrary is doing. I'm sure that the Authors Guild's position is that it should be illegal, but that doesn't necessarily make it so.

I'd also like to point out that here in the US, copyright has a rationale for copyright in the Constitution as “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries”, whereas in other countries, most notably in Europe, copyright is viewed as some sort of moral right of the author and so it may be that in the US, what OpenLibrary is doing is perfectly legal and ethical, yet not at all legal or ethical in some or all of the EU.