The dispute started in the early days of the pandemic when the organization expanded access to a free online collection of books.

When libraries across the country temporarily closed in the early days of the pandemic, the Internet Archive, an organization that digitizes and archives materials like web pages and music, had the idea to make its library of scanned books free to read in an online database.

The question of that library’s legality became a long-running saga that may have finally ended on Wednesday, when an appeals court affirmed that the Internet Archive violated copyright laws by redistributing those books without a licensing agreement.

The decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, is a victory for the major book publishers that brought the lawsuit in 2020, and could set a precedent over the lawfulness of broader digital archives.

A federal court ruled against the Internet Archive in March 2023, and the archive removed many works from its online library of books. It appealed the decision last September.

A final appeal could potentially be taken to the Supreme Court. In a statement, the Internet Archive said it was “reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend and preserve books.”

In its appeal, the nonprofit argued that its Free Digital Library was protected by so-called fair use laws, and that scanning the books was a transformative use of the material done in the public interest. The court firmly rejected that claim.

“People are worried about book bannings and the defunding of libraries, but I don’t know that there is really an awareness of what’s going on in the movement toward license-only access to electronic material,” Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Libraries are “not just a Netflix reseller of books to their patrons,” he added. “Libraries have always been more than that.”

Unlike traditional libraries, which pay licensing fees to publishers to make their books available for lending, the Internet Archive acquires copies through donated or purchased books to scan and put online. The nonprofit is also known for the Wayback Machine, a popular database of past web pages.

Archive link

  • AlsephinaOPEnglish
    2911·
    11 days ago

    This is why stuff like this should be hosted in Russia or China…

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
      143·
      11 days ago

      Really? Both of those countries have tight controls over their intranets.

      Kazakhstan, on the other hand, has done quite well with a similar enterprise….

    • Daxtron2@startrek.website
      1815·
      10 days ago

      ah yes two countries that are well known for their freedom and easy access to information. gtfoh

      Criticize authoritarian governments and who shows up? Hexbear squad

      • AlsephinaOPEnglish
        351·
        11 days ago

        Tons of piracy sites are hosted in Russia. They’re comparatively lenient on it.

        • RubicTopaz@lemmy.world
          131·
          11 days ago

          Yeah that idiot probably doesn’t have much experience pirating.

          cs.rin.ru, kemono.su, rutracker.net, etc. are all in Russia. Their social media platform Vkontakte is also full of pirated content. Hosting this in the US instead was doomed from the start.

          • Daxtron2@startrek.website
            44·
            10 days ago

            Its not just about pirated content it’s about censorship from the state. Do you think China will have no issue with all of the things hosted on the archive that directly go against their ideology? Host in a country that isn’t a totalitarian state.

      • FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        222·
        11 days ago

        US is literally the worst country to host “copyrighted” content. It’s a oligarch run shithole, all the courts work for them.

        Heck even western Europe clears the US.

      • brainw0rms [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        181·
        11 days ago

        clearly, freedom and easy access to information has nothing to do with the issue at hand, which is enforcement of copyright law.

        so long as they don’t plan on violating russian or chinese (or whatever country’s) copyrights (and other applicable laws), why should those countries care at all? archive.org is hosting material copyrighted in a country where said copyright can be enforced (the US). it’s really that simple. while china or russia may not be the most suitable option (I imagine they also host plenty of content that those countries would find to be inflammatory or illegal but not for copyright reasons), they’d be an improvement overall.

            • Daxtron2
              21·
              10 days ago

              Its like you saw the first episode of the Maquis storyline and didn’t understand the deeper struggles that it embodied.

              • AmericaDelendaEst [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                41·
                10 days ago

                It’s like you don’t understand dick all, liberal

                The U.S. is 100x the authoritarian hellhole literally any “dictatorship” your dumbass two neuron brain could think of, but you’re blinded by liberalism into a directionless anti “authoritarianism” that precludes ever questioning who that authority benefits.

                Your ignorance leads you to defend the worst fucking empire in history by attacking its enemies because you don’t fucking know any better.

                It gives me great solace knowing liberals like you will have to watch Chinese living standards increase at exponential rates, having to conjure more and more wacked out reasoning for why that is (spoiler: it’s a dictatorship of the proletariat)