Internet Archive Loses Ebook Battle In Federal Appeals Court

The Internet Archive cannot lend out scanned ebooks without the approval of publishers.

In a decision on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that permitting the Internet Archive’s digital library would “allow for widescale copying that deprives creators of compensation and diminishes the incentive to produce new works.”

The decision comes from the Hachette v. Internet Archive case. Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins sued the Internet Archive in 2020 over claims its digital library constitutes “willful digital piracy on an industrial scale.”

The Internet Archive’s Open Library allowed users to “check out” digital scans of physical books. The library relied on a principle called controlled digital lending, where each loan corresponds to a physically purchased book held in a library.

However, the Internet Archive expanded its library project during the COVID-19 pandemic. It launched the National Emergency Library, allowing an unlimited number of people to access the same copies of ebooks.

Last year, a federal judge ruled that the Internet Archive doesn’t have the right to scan and lend out books in the same way a library would. The Internet Archive later appealed that decision.

“We are disappointed in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere,” Chris Freeland, the director of library services at the Internet Archive, wrote in a post on the site. “We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.”