[E14n]

If the people you borrowed from say its OK after the fact then yes it is OK.

If I borrow a neighbours defibrillator, without asking, to save their child it would be insane for the manufacturer of the defibrillator to sue me for not buying my own defibrillator. While in theory the neighbour could object to me borrowing the defibrillator without permission, that does not appear to be what happened. Based on IA's statements it appears that libraries are saying after the fact that they were happy for their copies of books to be loaned by IA.

I would assume from their actions these publishers hoped to make a windfall on book sales when people were no longer able to access libraries and they saw IA's actions as attacking this potential profit. I can't think of any other reason why they would peruse their current course of action.