500,000 books disappeared from Internet Archive due to copyright

The Internet Archive’s Open Library, which functions similar to traditional libraries and lends digital copies of purchased or donated physical books, had to remove about 500,000 books from its range due to a copyright lawsuit from major publishers. Chris Freeland, librarian at the San Francisco-based non-profit organization, made the announcement in a blog post. According to the company’s own information, the loan project, which began in 2007, included 24 million bibliographic records and links to 1.2 million digitized books just two years later. In 2020, about 1.5 million works were available for rental. This means that about a third of the online inventory is no longer available.

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Publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House (Bertelsmann) sued the Internet Archive in New York in 2020. In the highly publicized case, they accused the operator of knowingly violating copyrights with the Open Library by scanning books, uploading digital copies to its servers and offering them on a publicly accessible website. Authors and publishers will not be compensated for these uses. During the corona pandemic, the creators temporarily opened their online library to students without restrictions, which was already criticized by rights holders, as a “national emergency library”, which eventually triggered a lawsuit. In March 2023, the court ruled that the archive was liable for copyright infringement and should pay damages.

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The Internet Archive appealed against this decision late last year. The operator argues that its “controlled digital lending program” represents a legitimate use based on the American “fair use” principle. In this case, it is also about preserving the principle of traditional library lending in the digital world and the free transfer of knowledge associated with it. A hearing will take place on June 28, for which the Internet Archive is now preparing itself publicly and explaining the extent of the effect of the first instance decision so far.

“Important works for readers and writers”

According to the cease-and-desist declaration under discussion in the second round of proceedings, all corporate groups of the plaintiff publishers can at any time send the operator lists of works they are currently marketing commercially as e-books. The Internet Archive has 14 days to remove them from its online library. A lot has come together over the past few months. If publishers do not offer a title as an e-book, the archive can initially continue to lend self-made scans online.

“Our position is clear,” Freeland now explains: “We simply want to make it possible for visitors to our library to borrow and read the books we have just like any other library. We buy and receive books — yes, physical, printed books — and make them available to an individual.” This work is important for readers and writers alike, as many young and low-income readers can only read if books are available to borrow for free.” Furthermore, many works will only be discovered through the work of librarians or preserved only through their efforts.

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“We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed,” Freeland emphasizes. This refers to the digital rights control management (DRM) used. To defend against it, the Internet Archive has already taken action against an anti-DRM tool. “This is the same technology that is also used by commercial publishers,” Freeland explains. However, the plaintiffs demanded that “we are not allowed to borrow our books.” The first court ruling and the resulting interim injunction had “deeply negative consequences” for users in general. “You have made many requests to us,” the librarian writes. “It is clear from the hundreds of testimonials we have received that access to our books remains an absolute necessity for many people around the world who rely on our library for their education and professional development.”

The director has written an open letter to publishers calling for restoring access to books and the knowledge they contain. The petition is open for co-signatures. The treatment of the case is likely to be successful again. For example, in 2015, a US appeals court ruled that Google’s Books book scanning project did not violate copyright. The use corresponds to the concept of fair use. However, with Google Books, you cannot borrow them, but rather search through digitized books and read excerpts. In addition, US courts ruled largely against the latter in a copyright dispute between a university and the publisher Cambridge University Press in the context of fair use. The obstacle here was that students had posted excerpts of protected works on the university’s online forums.

(Never)