I think they are in the legal sense of right, and I think they only discarded the remains of these dissected books because previous rulings (e.g. archive.org's lending practices of digital copies of books they physically owned) gave rise to a situation where destruction bore less legal risk. As for the moral case, I don't have much to say on that, we all have our own lines in that sand.

It can be the case that everyone in “a fight” is wrong.

yes. in the sense that they probably wouldnt want to do this but the law forces them to do an extremely dumb thing.

they're paying for the books, no shady things going on there. whether the publishers should deserve more than a single copy's worth is a separate question.

having the law such that its illegal to scan a book and then keep it, but legal to scan it and destroy it - gg no re there, law people retardmaxxed themselves as they tend to do with anything related to digital data.