U.S. judge rules Internet Archive's digital book lending violates copyrights

John Wiley & Sons

25/03/2023 03:01

By Nate Raymond and Blake Brittain
       March 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday ruled that
an online library operated by the nonprofit organization
Internet Archive had infringed the copyrights of four major U.S.
publishers by lending out digitally scanned copies of the books.
    The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan
came in a closely-watched lawsuit that tested the ability of the
Internet Archive to lend out the works of writers and publishers
that remained protected by U.S. copyright laws for free.
    The San Francisco-based non-profit over the past decade has
scanned millions of print books and lent out the resulted
digital copies for free. While many are in the public domain,
3.6 million are protected by valid copyrights.
    That includes 33,000 titles belonging to the four
publishers, Lagardere SCA's  LAGA.PA  Hachette Book Group, News
Corp's  NWSA.O  HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons
Inc WLY.N  and Bertelsmann SE & Co's  BTGGg.F  Penguin Random
House.
    They sued in 2020 over 127 books, after the Internet Archive
expanded lending with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when
brick-and-mortar libraries were forced to close, by lifting
limits on how many people could borrow a book at a time.
    The nonprofit, which partners with traditional libraries,
has since returned to what it calls "controlled digital
lending."
    It argued its practices were protected by the doctrine of
"fair use," which allows for the unlicensed use of others'
copyrighted works in some circumstances.
    But Koeltl said there was nothing "transformative" about the
Internet Archive's digital book copies that would warrant "fair
use" protection, as its ebooks merely replaced the authorized
copies publishers themselves license traditional libraries.
    "Although IA has the right to lend print books it lawfully
acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and
lend the digital copies en masse," he wrote.
    The Internet Archive in a statement promised an appeal,
saying the ruling "holds back access to information in the
digital age, harming all readers, everywhere."
    Maria Pallante, the head of Association of American
Publishers, in a statement said the ruling "underscored the
importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a
global society."
        
  

 (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Blake Brittain in
Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)
 ((Nate.Raymond@thomsonreuters.com and Twitter @nateraymond;
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nate.raymond.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))