Today, the Internet Archive has taken a decisive final step in our ongoing battle for libraries’ digital rights by submitting the final appellate reply brief [PDF] in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the publishers’ lawsuit against our library. This move reaffirms Internet Archive’s unwavering commitment to fulfilling our mission of providing universal access to all knowledge, even in the face of steep legal challenges.
READ THE FINAL APPELLATE REPLY BRIEF
Statement from Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive:
“Resolving this should be easy—just sell ebooks to libraries so we can own, preserve and lend them to one person at a time. This is a battle for the soul of libraries in the digital age.”
This process has taken nearly four years to work through the legal system, and in that time we’ve often fielded the question, “Why should I care about this lawsuit?” By restricting libraries’ ability to lend the books they own digitally, the publishers’ license-only business model and litigation strategies perpetuate inequality in access to knowledge.
Throughout this legal battle, Internet Archive has remained steadfast in our mission to defend the core values of libraries—preservation, access, and education. This fight is not just about protecting the Internet Archive’s digital lending program; it’s about standing up for the digital rights of all libraries and ensuring that future generations have equal access to the wealth of knowledge contained within them.
I have recently found Internet Archive. I have purchased 100’s of DVD’s over 30 years or so. I put my DVD’s into hard drives. I learned how to get around the locked DVD’s. I paid for them. I have software that can take out everything. I can keep the closed captions also. I have been sent home to die several times. I was in bed for 3 years and I am still here. Learning all of this has been a life saver, somewhat. I have also noted all of the information is given. I have 4Tera bite hard drives and I have been putting all of my movies in order. I found your movie library a few days ago. I added a few hundred of yours. Mine are named, sorted, dated and comments. I have hundreds of movies that I would like to get out to the public. I don’t know the legality of what I am trying. I am hoping that you can tell me how to give away 4T hard drives for free. It seems that someone could get a free copy from me, or you, copy themselves, and send it on and possibly add more. Hopefully it would grow and grow. Quite a bit is dvd quality. I can play surround sound with most of my DVD versions. They are all in hard drives. I use a hard drive connector and plug it into the usb on my computer. I take off most of the fluff so that it is a single, standalone movie. I have been using mpg, mp4, avi, … Cyberlink program for years. Please let me know how to assist. I live in a chair mostly. Thanks
Wow, sounds like you have done some great work. Hope it is legal enough that people can take advantage of it someday. Thanks for your work.
Good luck Clay
Please win this please.
spechial thanks archive.org Team.
Wish internet archive win and come back strong. Long live internet archive members.
Thank you for fighting for the rights of people to be able to read books offered freely from a digital format library! The idea of disallowing that is like people trying to shut down community libraries, whose offerings can sometimes be kind of scant due to local funding. We NEED a digital library that is allowed to offer books to people online!
Keep fighting to preserve the right of an e library to purchase e books for donation only universal access . It’s a wonderful resource. May you win hands down to keep the invaluable internet archive.
There might be a real compromise to be had here…
A reasonable thing to do would be to have agreements between I.R.L. public libraries and the Internet Archive so only viewers located in I.R.L. can access licensed works. 8)
I love the internet Archive!
Well done to Internet archive . All the best with the case..what you are doing is commendable..
The carelessness, greediness, and the thoughtless tunnel-vision that these 4 publishers, including authors such as Sandra Cisneros – Miss “House on Mango Street” herself – had by removing these thousands of books – including banned ones – from the digital library was a HUGE disservice to me and to the people all over the world.
It was such an overwhelming enjoyment to read these books – including the very expensive and hard to find hardcover first editions – that I normally would not have access to because physical libraries do not carry them, and it would be an extreme hassle to order it just to send it to my local library so I can borrow it (in the end, I would not be able to order them because those books would not be available, and they would be too expensive to ship).
Gaining knowledge from the unlimited access to these kinds of books from “Internet Archive” to this magnitude has been so empowering in so many ways. It is like lifting weights and getting into the greatest shape of my life from machines that no other common and limited gyms could provide.
It has helped to improve my English and grammar so much better, it has helped to improve my diction so much more when I read out loud, and it has helped to give me very needed inspiration – through the education of these books – for the sake of self-improvement. Whether it’s improving my knowledge of the world or improving my self-esteem.
For a 2.0 grade point average student who never went – and will never go – to college, these books are the tools to help me improve myself enough for the journey in my life that would help me to become a better contribution for this world in the chosen profession that I would love to do that no other source in the poor living disposition that I am in would help me to achieve.
There has been a very vast difference between when we had access to these thousands of books to now having no access. The limitations have been highly noticed, and the obstruction to knowledge and self-improvement personally has been very unavoidable. Not including how extremely sad and disheartening it was when these publishers and authors took these books away. It put me to tears and made me very despondent.
It would’ve been wonderful to read the Autobiographies of Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King (including other books of his), Margaret Thatcher, Michael Jackson, and Benazir Bhutto for starters.
It would’ve been wonderful to read the highly acclaimed books from author Randy Shilts who wrote the best biographies on Harvey Milk (“The Life and Times of Harvey Milk”) and the AIDS Epidemic (“And the Band Played On”) that have ever been written.
I found the most accurate and the most thoroughly researched telling of the history of the “Ottoman Empire” that I really wanted to read (“Osman’s Dream”).
I can go on and on and on. But in the end, what all of these mentioned books now have in common is that because of these publishers, and because of these narrow-minded and ignorant authors, they are now all gone and I will never get to read them.
I want to thank them all for taking away my access to knowledge to this extent, along with taking away one of life’s many enjoyments amidst this very sad and unmotivating world,
which are these thousands of books.
I am so proud of you, Internet Archive, for continuing to fight to not only restore those thousands of removed books that were unjustly taken away, but to defend digital libraries – and the concept of digital libraries – all over the world for me and for the people who are in so much worse positions in life than I am in who want to improve themselves.
That is one of the many reasons why I love you guys so much.
I am also proud of the people who have protested against the removal of these thousands of books, along with other forms of media such as rare movies and music.
Had I known that these protesters were in front of San Francisco City Hall protesting, I would’ve joined them.
I continue to keep you in my prayers and I also hope that these publishers and authors would get their head out of the sands of greed, and thinking that this is about theft – which it isn’t – and see this for what it really is, and see the ramifications of what they are doing – besides what they have done so far – since the removal of these thousands of books.
I wish Internet Archive the best of luck with their lawsuit. Archives are not associated with robbing of copyrights and trademarks from original owners – even if takedown requests are similar to YouTube. Anyone who enters the grey zones of legal stances (as far as I have seen with fan creators) have patrons and donation features on the sites.
Why any corporation or publisher would refuse to have investment in an online archive site (third party or personally owned) may as well be brought up in these situations. Fair Use (E.g., U.S. Code, Section 107 – Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use) exists bylaw, and the Creative Commons site supports free information, so the legal grounds of the Internet Archive should be more solid than many would realize.
If Hachette ever had legitimate concerns on potential copyright infringement and that issue in of itself impacts their revenue income, a filed request for a fee or royalty as future planning would have been the most polite approach over a lawsuit – it is just an idea amid the chaos and unneeded imperfections of all the copyright laws of the world (I hope things improve eventually no matter what).
I wish Internet Archive the best of luck with their lawsuit. Archives are not associated with robbing of copyrights and trademarks from original owners – even if takedown requests are similar to YouTube. Anyone who enters the grey zones of legal stances (as far as I have seen with fan creators) have patrons and donation features on the sites.
Why any corporation or publisher would refuse to have investment in an online archive site (third party or personally owned) may as well be brought up in these situations. Fair Use (E.g., U.S. Code, Section 107 – Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use) exists bylaw, and the Creative Commons site supports free information, so the legal grounds of the Internet Archive should be more solid than many would realize.
If the Hachette Book Group (I.e., The publishers full name) ever had legitimate concerns on potential copyright infringement and that issue in of itself impacts their revenue income, a filed request for a fee or royalty as future planning would have been the most civil approach over a lawsuit – it is just an idea amid the chaos and UNNEEDED imperfections of all the copyright laws of the world. (I hope things improve eventually no matter what).
Libraries allow multiple readers to share a single copy of a book, but for the author and publisher no additional revenue accrues and potentially many people avoid buying a copy. In the UK we recognised that this was unfair, particularly given the very low incomes of the vast majority of authors, and so we have a scheme that pays a small sum for every loan, analogous to the fees that musicians, film actors etc receive when their work is shared.
We all like something for nothing but unless the Internet Archive is prepared to buy out the rights of the author in the way that some music publishers do with certain recordings, they ought to be prepared to pay a little more than the price of a single volume, or stick to work out of copyright.
I pay a little to the Internet Archive, just as I do to Wikipedia to avoid being a total freeloader.
I give to internet archive and agree with your statement. It is unfair to the authors and publishers to expect them to forego payment for their works. Libraries loan out books they have purchased or have been given to them by benefactors who pay for them.
laws need to change. internet archive does an objective good for all of humanity. stop hurting preservation! this information needs to live for centuries to come! god bless archive.org and every one of its fantastic people
I really admire you and your intention and all the good things you have done through. It is yours online library and I hope you will stay strong and people are supporting you and you are doing a great job in helping people to achieve easy and free knowledge and contents.
Sincerely Melissa
These days, I prefer to do all of my reading via ebooks – not what I call “real” books, and definitely not audiobooks. I have library cards with ebook borrowing privileges at several libraries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia (due to owning property in two of these states with reciprocity in other counties). The libraries use three different ebooks software packages – Libby, CloudLibrary, and Hoopla. Fron an interface perspective, I much prefer Libby. All but one of the library systems where I have ebook borrowing privileges use Libby. The advantage of Hoopla is that there are no holds lists, so I can get a book right away. The disadvantage is a limit on how much I caa borrow in a given month. Unlike Libby and CloudLibrary, the libraries who use Hoopla often restrict it to cardholders who actually live or own property in the jurisdiction. That’s fine because every library has the same titles in Hoopla, but it’s not fine if I’m approaching my monthly limit. I rarely borrow ebooks from that one CloudLibrary system these days unless it’s the only source for a particular ebook among my libraries, for two reasons – I don’t like the interface as much as Libby (but I rank if about the same as Hoopla), and that one library system has only a two-week checkout. Only one of my Libby systems limits checkouts to two weeks. All Hoopla ebook checkouts are three weeks, at least at the libraries where I’ve used it.
Anyway, my big gripe is related to the fact that the ebook format is fairly new. I want to read books by authors who began writing in the 20th century and have remained popular, but I’m not finding their early books in library ebook systems. Reason number one is probably that the earliest books by these authors have never been converted to ebook. Reaons number two is probably that if these early books were converted to ebook, they came to the library systems in a licensing agreement. They probably didn’t get enough checkouts to justify renewing the licenses.
One thing that is really frustrating is when a library ebook system doesn’t have every book in a series, even in small series in which all of the volumes have been releaseed in the past 10 years. Or even worse, they have every book in audiobook format (sorry, I have to insert an “UGH” here), but there are gaps in the ebook collection. This can also happen to “real” books in a library, but at least in that case, there is interlibrary loan, to get it elsewhere. Several years ago, Libby (then known as OverDrive) was working on an interlibrary loan system, but it looks like nothing every came of it.