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Originally Posted by pietvo
I think in the original case the copies were also made available for general purposes, not only for scientific ones. I think that makes a big difference. Unless you can convince a judge that reading a book is a scientific exercise. Maybe a good lawyer can convince the judge.
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Well, the term 'study' is really pretty general. While I have no doubt that the majority of people who downloaded stuff from this archive did so purely for reasons of entertainment, it's not hard to concoct a story that you were analysing the changes in popularly-perceived threats as presented by thriller writers over the two decades since the end of the Cold War.
The law was clearly introduced with a noble aim: to make it easier for real libraries to do their job of preserving cultural heritage without having to waste money tracking down authors who have abandoned their work. But it's very difficult to get the formulation right so that it can't be abused. We've seen several efforts fail in the US and other European countries. One obvious deficit here is that the clauses don't contain any language relating to the distribution of the copies (apart from 'giving access').