A U.S. judge has ruled that an online library operated by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive infringed the copyrights of four major U.S. publishers by lending digitally scanned copies of their books.
The decision 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 works of writers and publishers protected by U.S. copyright laws.
The San Francisco-based non-profit has scanned millions of print books and lent out digital copies for free over the past decade. 3.6 million of them are protected by valid copyrights, while many are in the public domain.
It includes 33,000 titles belonging to the four publishers, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley Sons Inc and Bertelsmann SE Co's Penguin Random House.
In 2020 they sued over 127 books after Internet Archive expanded lending with the COVID 19 epidemic, 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 returned to what it calls controlled digital lending. It currently hosts about 70,000 daily e-books, which are protected by the doctrine of fair use, which allows for the unlicensed use of others' copyrighted works in some circumstances.
Koeltl said there was nothing transformative about the Internet Archive's digital book copies that would warrant fair use protection, as its e-books replaced the authorized copies publishers license to 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 digital copies en masse, he wrote.
The Internet Archive promised an appeal, saying that the ruling holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere. The head of the Association of American Publishers, Maria Pallante, said in a statement that the ruling underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society.