The Web Archive has lost traction amid a battle to loan scanned e-books without publisher approval. In a ruling on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that allowing the Internet Archive’s digital library would “allow mass copying, thereby depriving creators of compensation and undermining incentives to create new works.”
The decision is another blow to nonprofits Hachette v. Internet Archive case. In 2020, four major publishers—Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins—sued the Internet Archive over claims that its digital books The library constitutes “deliberate digital piracy on an industrial scale.”
Online archives have long offered a system called the Open Library, where users can “loan” digital scans of physical books. The library is based on a principle called controlled digital lending, in which each loan corresponds to a physically purchased book held in the library, theoretically avoiding accusations of piracy. It has a fundamentally different system than programs like OverDrive, where publishers sell limited-time licenses of e-books on their own terms.
However, the Internet Archive has expanded its library programs during the covid-19 pandemic. It launched the National Emergency Library, which allows an unlimited number of people to access the same copy of the e-book. That’s when publishers banded together to file a lawsuit against the two online libraries.
The Second Circuit’s decision recognized the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet Archive’s digital library. But it ultimately sided with the publishers:
On the one hand, e-book licensing fees may burden libraries and reduce access to creative works. Authors, on the other hand, are entitled to compensation for reproduction and distribution of their original works. Congress balanced these “competing claims of the public interest” in the Copyright Act. We have to maintain that balance here.
“We are disappointed with today’s comments regarding the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere,” Chris Freeland, director of library services at the Internet Archive, said in a post on the site wrote in. “We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend libraries’ rights to own, loan and preserve books.” Freeland also noted that you can sign a petition to restore access to the 500,000 books the publisher has restricted access to .
