Washington Post: “At the start of the pandemic, teachers and librarians pleaded with a prominent nonprofit to make it easier for kids at home to check out books from its digital library. The organization, called the Internet Archive, agreed. While it traditionally loaned out its more than a million digital books one at a time to the public and through partnerships with libraries, it dropped that limit in what it described as a “National Emergency Library.” Roughly two months later, major book publishers including Harper Collins sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement — saying its digital library initiative “grossly exceed” what libraries are allowed to do. A few months later, it reinstated lending limits, court documents show. The fight, which the publishers and the Internet Archive asked a federal court to end earlier this month, has triggered a larger ideological debate about the application of copyright law when it comes to digital copies of books, pitting publishers and authors against librarians. At stake is the future of how libraries are allowed to buy and lend out digital books to the public, which advocates say is core to a functioning democracy as technology takes over…”