I think it's more like "piracy is legal if you do it on a large enough scale".
If some snot-nosed teenager scanned a book and posted it on the web, the court would squash him like an insect. But a multi-billion-dollar company with an army of lawyers at their disposal scans every book and puts them all online, suddenly that's "fair use".
It's like the old saying: if you owe the bank $100 you have a problem, but if you owe the bank $100 million, the bank has a problem.
If some snot-nosed teenager scanned a book and posted it on the web, the court would squash him like an insect. But a multi-billion-dollar company with an army of lawyers at their disposal scans every book and puts them all online, suddenly that's "fair use".
It's like the old saying: if you owe the bank $100 you have a problem, but if you owe the bank $100 million, the bank has a problem.