Yeah I agree. I wasn't totally following what they were doing but;
If they bought 100 copies of a book, lent them out digitally 1:1 (lend out 1, now 99 are available to borrow), then this whole case is horseshit.
If they were doing... pretty much anything else, yeah, they're not lending, they're copying. Pretty cut-and-dry bad-take on IA's part.
Disclaimer; this opinion is from someone who both 1: believes that all media should be freely distributed and 2: is an aspiring writer (and current artist, and former cartoonist). Yes, I recognize that there is cognitive dissonance there, in the context of being able to support myself creatively.