Back in early April, the Internet Archive (i.e., a non-profit organization that stores websites and other in digital form), or IA, launched what it calls the “National Emergency Library.” This library according to its website is “a collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed.” When this library was launched, it opened to both great praise from supporters of free and equal access to education and ridicule from publishers and authors whose copyrights were allegedly infringed. Today, a group of four publishing companies have bought a copyright infringement lawsuit against the IA.
As per the complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the publishers claim that IA has engaged in “willful mass copyright infringement. Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, IA scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites. With just a few clicks, any Internet-connected user can download complete digital copies of in-copyright books from Defendant.” As stated further in the compliant, the IA has a library of 1.3 million books that it is distributing without a license.
When IA launched it’s library, it claimed it was not infringing on any copyrights as it purchased physical copies of all of its books, scanned them, and then distributed e-copies of the book under the theory called “Controlled Digital Lending” (“CDL”). As mentioned previously on Secondary Meaning News, the CDL is a
"method that allows libraries to loan print books to digital patrons in a ‘lend like print’ fashion. Through CDL, libraries use technical controls to ensure a consistent ‘owned-to-loaned’ ratio, meaning the library circulates the exact number of copies of a specific title it owns, regardless of format, putting controls in place to prevent users from redistributing or copying the digitized version.”
The compliant, however, states that this theory has no legal foundation and was “concocted from whole "cloth and continue to get worse.” Specifically, since the pandemic began, IA has abandoned the CDL model and began lending out unlimited e-books without waiting for readers to return a checked-out e-book or via purchasing licenses to distribute multiple e-books.
“What Internet Archive is doing is no different than heaving a brick through a grocery store window and handing out the food — and then congratulating itself for providing a public service,” as per Douglas Preston, President of the Authors Guild that supports the complaint. “It’s not a public service to violate the rights of thousands of hard-working authors, most of whom desperately need the income.”
The plaintiffs seek an injunction, damages, and lost profits.
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