The relevant laws are definitely not _entirely_ clearcut. Especially in how it applies to making a digital copy like this. Which means they aren't entirely clearcut against them either. But someone could certainly try suing them. Apparently IA is willing to be a bit risk forward here.
But if they're only doing out of print books, there's less likely to be someone who _wants_ to sue them (a lot of old out of print books are basically "orphaned", there is no identifiable copyright owner, which is what a lot of the relevant laws are targetted at), and if someone did want to sue them, they'd have less chance of winning for an out of print book. (It's not entirely clear to me they're only doing out of print books?)
Don't forget that Google's ability to scan and offer previews of books as 'fair use' was the subject of a multi-year lawsuit too! Which ended in a settlement, not a court ruling...
The relevant laws are definitely not _entirely_ clearcut. Especially in how it applies to making a digital copy like this. Which means they aren't entirely clearcut against them either. But someone could certainly try suing them. Apparently IA is willing to be a bit risk forward here.
But if they're only doing out of print books, there's less likely to be someone who _wants_ to sue them (a lot of old out of print books are basically "orphaned", there is no identifiable copyright owner, which is what a lot of the relevant laws are targetted at), and if someone did want to sue them, they'd have less chance of winning for an out of print book. (It's not entirely clear to me they're only doing out of print books?)
Don't forget that Google's ability to scan and offer previews of books as 'fair use' was the subject of a multi-year lawsuit too! Which ended in a settlement, not a court ruling...