On Sept 4, 2024, the US Court of Appeals in New York affirmed the lower court ruling in the lawsuit filed against us by Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House. While the Internet Archive is disappointed by this opinion—it was never the Internet Archive’s intention to get into a lawsuit over lending digitized books—we respect the outcome.
To date, we have removed over 500,000 books from lending on archive.org (and therefore also openlibrary.org). While we are reviewing all available options, this judicial opinion will lead to the removal of many more books from lending. It is important for the Internet Archive and all libraries to continue to have a healthy relationship with publishers and authors.
Please be assured that millions of digitized books will still be available to those with print disabilities, small sections will be available for those linking into them from Wikipedia and through interlibrary loan, books will continue to be preserved for the long term, and other protected library uses will continue to inform digital learners everywhere.
The Internet Archive is also increasing its investment in digital books from publishers willing to sell ebooks that libraries can own and lend. While this is currently from a small number of publishers, the number is growing and we see it as a future for the long term sustainability of authors, publishers, and libraries. Encouragingly, the Independent Publishers Group recently endorsed selling ebooks to libraries. The growing number of libraries purchasing and owning digital books brings fair compensation to authors and publishers, along with permanent preservation and access to author’s works for communities everywhere.
We respect the opinion of the courts and, while we are saddened by how this setback affects our patrons and the future of all libraries, the Internet Archive remains strong and committed to our mission of Universal Access to All Knowledge. Thank you for your help and support.
What about those outside the USA? Will they still be able to borrow books? Have you been asked to remove more books? If yes, which ones? Kindly do respond. All this is very sad. It’s difficult to imagine a world without IA..
IA is a US based organization and as such is bound by US court decisions and laws. While IA is examining the decision as Brewster noted the immediate high level takeaway is IA may not distribute any digitized book that is under copyright protection under US law. Period, full stop. There are no exceptions or carve outs for them to distribute outside the US, in fact doing so would place them in great legal jeopardy as this is now settled case law. The phrases willful infringement and statutory damages (up to 150k USD per instance – in this case potentially per book or per instance of distribution) immediately come to mind.
“…may not distribute any digitized book that is under copyright protection under US law….”
Does that preclude the IA from donating the hard copies to a charity outside the USA with more library-friendly laws, I wonder?
Presumably the necessity to store the hard copies of the original books is no longer relevant.
I’ll support your mission no matter what Brewster Kahle.
what you’ve done with the internet archive is beyond commendable, it’s something that should be cherished and respected now and forever; dare i say it’s sacred at this point.
the lawsuit was a horrible blow, yes but the fact that your not stopping your mission no matter what is not just respectable, it’s awesome.
Please keep us informed of any and information and news you or your people can provide to us.
Sincerely: Kelsey.
” While we are reviewing all available options, this judicial opinion will lead to the removal of many more books from lending. ”
This sounds quite ominous. At the moment there are a lot of factual, travel and childrens books from the eighties and nineties still viewable – I presume that this will mean that they will disappear, although they are long out of print, and never will be again most likely.
What is the Internet Archive’s strategy for it’s continued survival as an organization in the face of the music companies that are currently suing for an exorbitant amount as well as in the face of the possible amount of money from other lawsuits that may follow.
The recent Wired article on this topic is alarming and I am very worried about the future of The Wayback Machine and The Internet Archive in general and what the loss of these could mean for the Internet and for society.
How dire/bleak is the situation currently?
You need to take this to congress. The US is shooting themselves in the foot with this preventing other countries from becoming developed enough to not send any migrants. They need a lot of cheap or no cost access to books to become developed countries. Many if not most of those books are only available in the US.
Suzy Q above is correct. IA may not distribute any digitized book that is under copyright protection under US law. Period, full stop. That all being said and acknowledged, this might serve as an opportunity to carefully review the copyright status of all items which potentially fall under this decision. With items first published in the United States before 1978, copyright owners had to abide by strict notice and renewal requirements in order to establish their claim and keep their copyrights viable. For example any item published before 1963 had to be renewed 28 years after first publication in order to secure the renewal term, which was originally an additional 28 years but extended to 47 (in 1978) then to 67 years (1998). If a work first published before 1964 was not renewed it entered the US public domain after expiry of the initial 28 year term. Period, full stop.
Publishers also made errors in terms of the required notice of copyright. Publishing a book in 1937 and reprinting it in 1947 with a new copyright claim and no mention of the original 1937 claim injected a work into the public domain as an incorrect notice (wrong year) is the same as publication without notice (= dedication to the public under the old law). Unless additions and revisions were made to the original a new claim was invalid and case the original notice still had to appear if it a revised edition was being issued. These notice requirements remained in place until March 1, 1989. Even with foreign items whose copyright was “restored” (in many cases copyrights simply created ex nihilo) under the GATT amendments of 1996, there are limitations. Items already public domain in the country of origin in 1996 were not eligible for the “restoration”, nor were items published in the US within 30 days of their publication abroad.
Don’t let the cartel push you around or gaslight you into to taking all of their claims at face value. The clowns who ran the whole “Happy Birthday” racket for decades finally got caught in their own web of inflated claims and burial of contrary evidence. It’s technically against the US statute to place a false claim of copyright on something which is not eligible for copyright – like a reprint of a public domain book. Unfortunately, this provision is never enforced as only the US Attorney General can being charges and the penalty is a mere 2000 dollars – chicken feed for the publishing and recording cartels presently waging a war to destroy public domain – and archive.org.
PS: This site has the entire run of the “Catalog of Copyright Entires” available – uploaded by Library of Congress. Surely some of those here with programming abilities would be able to create some kind of search engine for this massive set of volumes to locate items which were not renewed. One had to register the original copyright claim in order to file the renewal claim – even if it was in the 28th year of its first term. Things first published in 1950 to 1963 can be checked on the copyright office’s own database. Items issued in 1964 forward were renewed automatically.
Taking a quick look at the items on the ‘Banned Books’ list to be removed, one immediately spots a number of potential absurdities. Some examples:
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (first published 1884-85)
“The Awakening” by Kate Chopin (first published 1899)
“An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser (first published 1925)
“Candide” by Voltaire (first published in 1759, also in English translation, again in English 1762)
“The Decameron” by Giovanni Bocaccio (written ca.1353, published in English by 1620)
I am curious what, exactly, is under copyright in editions of these books published in the 1950s, 60s, 80s, which are on that list? I understand a claim upon a fresh translation of Voltaire’s 18th century French but the first three were in English from the very start. Just upon a cursory glance it strikes me that many of these claims must be upon prefaces, afterwords, new illustrations and other new things included with the obviously public domain originals. Of the five authors listed above, the most recent (Theodore Dreiser) died in 1945, well over 70 years ago which means his work (and that of the other four) is free in most countries on the planet.
In the US at least, a new typeset does not qualify for a fresh copyright as a derivative work. Only newly added material is covered by copyright. While there are obvious things which are really under copyright like the Harry Potter and Stephen King titles, there seems to be a lot of claims which are on derivative works – or even mere reprints. For example, if an edition of Mark Twain’s book contained new illustrations one could simply omit them form the scan and no copyright would be violated. It would not even have to be ‘borrow only’. It’s really kind of crazy looking at that list and seeing all sorts of very old things there.
Sorry for discussing this at such length but this whole lawsuit is quite disturbing. I expect that archive.org would have to get rid of far fewer than half a million titles just going by the short sampling above – if someone actually took the time to address the claims being made here by the publisher cartel and culling out the obviously nonsensical ones. The lawfare gang no doubt picked their 127 titles carefully, but the list I just looked at contains many claims on books where the original is public domain worldwide.