Internet Archive is sued for offering free e-books
A group of publishers sued Internet Archive on Monday, saying that the nonprofit group’s trove of free electronic copies of books is robbing authors and publishers of revenue at a moment when it is desperately needed.
Internet Archive has made more than 1.3 million books available for free online, according to the complaint, which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for a period of 14 days. Then in March, the group said it would lift all restrictions on its book lending until the end of the public health crisis, creating what it called “a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.”
But many publishers and authors have called it something different: theft.
“There is nothing innovative or transformative about making complete copies of books to which you have no rights and giving them away for free,” said Maria A. Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, which is helping to coordinate the industry’s response. “They’ve stepped in downstream and taken the intellectual investment of authors and the financial investment of publishers; they’re interfering and giving this away.”
The lawsuit, which accused Internet Archive of “willful mass copyright infringement,” was filed in federal court in New York on behalf of Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House.
Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of Internet Archive, defended his organization and said it was functioning as a library during the coronavirus pandemic, when physical libraries have been closed.
“As a library, the Internet Archive acquires books and lends them, as libraries have always done,” he said in an email. “This supports publishing and authors and readers. Publishers suing libraries for lending books, in this case, protected digitized versions, and while schools and libraries are closed, is not in anyone’s interest.”
But Internet Archive operates differently from public libraries with e-book lending programs. Traditional libraries pay licensing fees to publishers and agree to make them available for a particular period or a certain number of times. Internet Archive, on the other hand, acquires copies through donated or purchased books, which are then scanned and put online.
Kahle said that the group decided to drop lending restrictions because teachers were looking for more resources to help facilitate remote learning after school buildings were closed. Authors who do not want their work included on the site could opt out, he said.