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Exploring the Outcome of the Internet Archive Lawsuit

On March 24, The Verge reported, “A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hachette v. Internet Archive, a lawsuit brought against it by four book publishers, deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library.”

On March 25, Mashable shared, “Prior to COVID, the Internet Archive lent e-books via a ‘controlled digital lending’ system, or CDL: Libraries offer loans of digitized book copies on a one-to-one basis—that means that they circulate the exact number of copies they own. When [its National Emergency Library] launched, Internet Archive removed all waitlists for books and lent out any amount of copies on a two-week basis.”

On March 26, NPR noted:

The Internet Archive, which strives to provide ‘universal access to all knowledge,’ said its emergency online library was legal under the doctrine of fair use.

But on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York sided with the publishers, saying established law was on their side. …

The Internet Archive said it will appeal the ruling.

On March 27, industry expert Nate Hoffelder stated, “I think where the Internet Archive went wrong was that they took their years of experience as a research library (archiving content with little commercial value) and tried to apply the same practices as a public library (sharing commercially available works). The problem with this is that applying a research library’s preservation practices to commercially available content destroys that content’s value. This is why the [Internet Archive] got sued, and why internet lefties such as myself are opposing the [Internet Archive].”