The Internet Archive’s Open Library, which operates similarly to traditional libraries by lending out digital copies of purchased or donated physical books, has been forced to remove 500,000 books due to a lawsuit by big publishers. Mike Masnick reports via Techdirt: As we’ve discussed at great length, the Internet Archive’s Open Library system is indistinguishable from the economics of how a regular library works. The Archive either purchases physical books or has them donated (just like a physical library). It then lends them out on a one-to-one basis (leaving aside a brief moment where it took down that barrier when basically all libraries were shut down due to pandemic lockdowns), such that when someone “borrows” a digital copy of a book, no one else can borrow that same copy. And yet, for all of the benefits of such a system in enabling more people to be able to access information,