Book budgets differ depending on their projected return & editor. 10k or a million, point is you’re not paying for that book.

I know publishers don’t create books but they pay the authors, editors, artists, production, marketing and distribution. If an online global archive can just make copies and give them away that affects the whole industry right down to the author.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an ebook (which these copies weren’t), at the end of the day they were giving out free copies of peoples work.

The IA is neither a physical building or an online library. Libraries share copies they have purchased or were given or can use freely (public domain) , they don’t make extra copies from an original and share them.