Internet Archive library lending service under threat

3 years ago 1

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If The Internet Archive (IA) fails to appeal a recent court ruling that blocked it from scanning and lending out books like a library, it would be a tragedy of historic proportions.

That is the view of The Statesman’s opinions editor Christine Kelley, which likened the potential shutting down of the IA’s book lending service to the disastrous fire that destroyed much of the Library of Alexandria.

Kelly said she had used the IA to acquire research materials unavailable anywhere else.

She criticised a federal judge’s decision in March 2023, which found in favour of four corporate publishers challenging IA’s National Emergency Library programme.

That programme was rolled out during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic to help researchers, scholars, and pupils access information they would otherwise only be able to get by going to a library or buying a book.

Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House took IA to court, arguing that the programme infringed on their copyright.

Judge John Koeltl ruled that IA had created “derivative works” by converting books into e-books and would therefore have required the permission of the relevant publishers before lending them through the emergency library.

Koetl had to decide whether IA’s scanning and sharing of books fell abided by the Fair Use principle of Copyright Law, which provides that certain parts of a copyrighted work might be used or published in specific circumstances.

Factors that had to be weighed include whether the sharing of the work was for the public good, how much of the work was copied, and what impact it had on the copyright holder.

Koetl ruled that the market harm to publishers outweighed any “alleged benefits” from the IA library. The IA is planning to appeal the ruling.

The IA is the world’s biggest online library of free books, movies, software, music, and websites.

Its collection includes roughly 37 million books — including many ancient texts that aren’t commercially available — and numerous classic films and old podcasts.

Records show that it hosted around 70,000 e-book borrows per day.

Multiple libraries, universities, and other research organisations work with the IA to preserve numerous books and make them available in digital format.

IA Open Libraries director Chris Freeland said the decision would have significant consequences for libraries that relied on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online.

“It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online. And it holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere,” Freeland said.

IA founder Brewster Kahle said libraries were more than customer service departments for corporate database products.

“For democracy to thrive at a global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books,” Kahle said.

In addition to the wealth of knowledge held in its archive, the IA also runs the Wayback Machine, a repository of website snapshots over time that proves particularly useful to MyBroadband and other tech sites for tracking online “paper trails”.

Hundreds of authors opposed to lawsuit

Kelly described the court’s decision as a victory for corporations and a disaster for everyone else.

“The Internet Archive is good for literacy. It’s good for the public. It’s good for readers, writers and anyone who’s invested in literary education,” Kelley stated.

“It does not harm authors, whose income is no more dented by it than any library programs. Writers lost nothing from the emergency library and gained everything.”

Over 300 authors have signed a petition against the lawsuit.

Kelley said that even the emergency library’s initial opponents had conceded their income was not dented by the programme.

“If this decision isn’t reversed, human beings will lose more knowledge than the Library of Alexandra ever contained.”