4 September 2024
From Publisher’s Weekly – read the entire article here
In a swift decision, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously affirmed a March 2023 lower court decision finding the Internet Archive‘s program to scan and lend print library books is copyright infringement. In an emphatic 64-page decision, released on September 4, the court rejected the Internet Archive’s fair use defense, as well as the novel protocol known as “controlled digital lending” on which the Archive’s scanning and lending is based.
“This appeal presents the following question: Is it ‘fair use’ for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer
[SNIP]
In his now affirmed 47-page opinion, Koeltl forcefully rejected the Internet Archive’s fair use defense. “At bottom, IA’s fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” Koeltl wrote in his opinion granting the publisher plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and denying the Internet Archive’s cross-motion. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.”
Read the entire article here