Controlled digital lending

Also in 2011, the basic principles of CDL were articulated by Michelle M. Wu[1] in her paper Building a Collaborative Digital Collection: A Necessary Evolution in Libraries.

[4] One of the core activities of a library is to loan materials, and proponents argue that CDL is a modern digital extension of this function.

[7][8] Brazilian experts have argued that CDL can be applied in the country through a systematic interpretation of cultural rights that extrinsically limits copyright.

[14] In early 2019, the National Writers Union and a coalition of forty national and international organizations and federations of writers, photographers, visual artists, translators, publishers, and reproduction rights organizations released a statement entitled "Appeal from the victims of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)" [15] that claimed that CDL "violates the economic and moral rights of authors."

The Authors Guild relies on the case of Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., which established that ReDigi could not resell digital music, to argue that libraries would similarly be prohibited from loaning digitized version of books that were legally purchased, and argues that CDL results in lost sales.

[17] Various scholars have framed the Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc. as leaving room for CDL as part of a library's non-profit, educational mission.

For example, the opinion, authored by Judge Pierre N. Leval, found ReDigi had no actual control of the digital music being sold (licensed iTunes mp3's) and that ReDigi "made reproductions of Plaintiffs' works for the purpose of resale in competition with the Plaintiffs' market for the sale of their sound recordings."

The court stated "On the one hand, eBook licensing fees may impose a burden on libraries and reduce access to creative work.

On December 4, 2024, the Internet Archive announced that it had decided to refrain from petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn the Second Circuit's decision.

[23] Although the Second Circuit decision is not binding outside its territory, the Internet Archive itself remains bound by the permanent injunction,[24] and affirmed that it would "honor the ... agreement to remove books from lending at [the] publishers' requests.