Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive | |
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Court | United States District Court for the Southern District of New York |
Full case name | Hachette Book Group Inc., et al. v. Internet Archive, et al. |
Court membership | |
Judge sitting | John G. Koeltl |
Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive, No. 20-cv-4160 (JGK), 664 F.Supp.3d 370 (S.D.N.Y. 2023), WL 2623787 (S.D.N.Y. 2023), was a case in which the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York determined that the Internet Archive, a registered library, committed copyright infringement by scanning and lending complete copies of certain books through controlled digital lending mechanisms. Stemming from the creation of the National Emergency Library (NEL) during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, publishing companies Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley alleged that the Internet Archive's Open Library and National Emergency Library facilitated copyright infringement of their books.
The case primarily concerns the fair use of controlled digital lending (CDL) of complete copies of certain books owned by the publishing companies that were party to the case. The case does not concern the display of short passages, limited page views, search results, books out of copyright, out of print, or books without an ebook version currently for sale. [1]
On March 25, 2023, the court ruled on the case. [2] In August 2023, the parties reached a negotiated judgment, including a permanent injunction barring the Internet Archive from lending complete copies through CDL of some of the plaintiffs' books. [3] The decision was upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2024, which the Internet Archive did not challenge further. [4]
In December 2020, Publishers Weekly included the lawsuit among its "Top 10 Library Stories of 2020". [5]
The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization and legally a library; it is governed by copyright laws specific to libraries. It is based in San Francisco, California; the Archive maintains Open Library, a digital library index and lending system. As many of the works in the Internet Archive are under copyright, the Archive used a controlled digital lending (CDL) system, a practice that relies upon digital rights management (DRM) to prevent unauthorized downloading or copying of copyrighted works. Open Library can generate digitized material (ebooks) from print copy. The Open Library CDL system ensured that only one digital copy is in use for each print copy or otherwise authorized ebook copy available.
On March 24, 2020, following shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive opened the National Emergency Library, removing the waitlists used in Open Library and expanding access to these books for all readers. More than one user could borrow a book at the same time. [6] [7] Two months later, on June 1, the National Emergency Library (NEL) was met with a lawsuit from four book publishers. Two weeks after that, on June 16, the Internet Archive closed the NEL, [8] and the prior Open Library CDL system resumed after the 12 weeks of NEL usage.
On June 1, 2020, Hachette Book Group and other publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive for the National Emergency Library. [9] [10] The plaintiffs argued that the practice of CDL was illegal and not protected by the doctrine of fair use. [11] Furthermore, they argued that the Internet Archive was not abiding by CDL, as it had acknowledged that its partner libraries were not always withdrawing their physical copies from their shelves. [12]
By June 2022, both parties to the case requested summary judgment for the case, each favoring their respective sides, which Judge John G. Koeltl approved of a summary judgment hearing to take place later in 2022. [13] No summary judgment was issued, and instead a first hearing was held on March 20, 2023. [14] Over the course of the hearing, Koeltl appeared unmoved by the IA's fair use claims and unconvinced that the publishers' market for library e-books was not impacted by their practice. [15]
The 127 publishers' books in the suit are also available as ebooks from the publishers. The Internet Archive said afterwards it would appeal this ruling, but otherwise would continue other digital book services which have been previously cleared under case law, such as books for reading-impaired users. [1] [16] [17]
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, chairman of the intellectual property subcommittee on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter to the Internet Archive that he was "concerned that the Internet Archive thinks that it—not Congress—gets to determine the scope of copyright law". [18]
As part of its response to the publishers' lawsuit, in late 2020 the Archive launched a campaign called Empowering Libraries (hashtag #EmpoweringLibraries) that portrayed the lawsuit as a threat to all libraries. [19]
In a 2021 preprint article, Argyri Panezi argued that the case "presents two important, but separate questions related to the electronic access to library works; first, it raises questions around the legal practice of digital lending, and second, it asks whether emergency use of copyrighted material might be fair use" and argued that libraries have a public service role to enable "future generations to keep having equal access—or opportunities to access—a plurality of original sources". [20]
Shortly before oral arguments, the Internet Archive held a press conference with comments from several people who implied that the issues in this case were much broader than the 127 books specifically named in the suit. [21] All presenters agreed that book publishers need to make money to pay their expenses including authors. The question is whether the National Emergency Library (NEL) actually harmed the publishers.
Lila Bailey, Senior Policy Counsel for the Internet Archive, [22] noted that:
In the past, publishers stood against microfilm and photocopiers, crying harm. They said they would be harmed by interlibrary loan. They lobbied for decades against libraries being allowed to provide access for the blind and print disabled. They were wrong. It took years, but eventually, the law affirmed each of these things, and the public benefitted. With this lawsuit, publishers have repeated those same claims of massive harm from controlled digital lending. ... When asked under oath, their own executives admitted this. ... [They even] instructed their own 950 dollar per hour expert not to even try to measure economic harm. ... On the other hand, when we invited economists from Northeastern University and the University of Copenhagen to look at the sales and library lending data produced in this case, they came to a singular conclusion: The Internet Archive's digital lending had no measurable effect on the market whatsoever. [23]
Bailey's conclusion was supported by other speakers. [24] [25] [26]
Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig said that book publishers need to make a profit to serve the public, but the material available to the public should not be limited to what commercial enterprises find profitable. Netflix, for example, offers subscribers access to thousands of movies and television shows but routinely stops offering content for which the demand is too low. That doesn't happen with libraries. Without controlled digital lending, out-of-print books become essentially unavailable to the vast majority of humanity. "We need access to our past, not just the part of our past that is economically or commercially viable." [27]
An expert report filed with the court by Northeastern Econ Prof. Imke Reimers also reported that "sales in the first five years after an edition's publication account for up to 90% of lifetime sales." [28]
On the other side, University of Chicago computer science professor Ian Foster reported that the Internet Archive's actual CDL practices sometimes violated their claims, lending out more copies than they physically had. [29]
Judge John G. Koeltl ruled on March 24, 2023, granting the publishers' request. [30] He held that the Internet Archive's scanning and lending of complete copies constituted copyright infringement and that the Internet Archive's fair use defense failed all four factors of the "fair use test". He rejected the Archive's argument that their use was "transformative" in the sense of copyright law. [31] He further stated that "Even full enforcement of a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio, however, would not excuse IA's reproduction of the Works in Suit". [30]
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle declared their intention to appeal the ruling. [2]
While Judge Koeltl issued a summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs and against the defendant, he did not assess damages. Instead, he directed the parties to brief the court on how they thought the case should be resolved in a way that comports with the judge's decision. [30] The deadline for this was extended several times; [32] the final extension was granted on July 28, extending the deadline to August 11, 2023, with Judge Keoltl writing, "No further extensions." [33]
On August 11, 2023, the parties reached a negotiated judgment. The agreement prescribes a permanent injunction preventing Internet Archive from loaning the plaintiffs' books in full through CDL, except those for which no e-book is currently available for sale from the publisher, [3] as well as an undisclosed payment to the plaintiffs. [34] [35] The agreement also preserves the right for the Internet Archive to appeal the previous ruling. [34] [35] As a result of the lawsuit, more than 500,000 books were made unavailable from loaning in full through CDL. The Internet Archive appealed to restore full CDL access to the affected books. [36]
On September 11, 2023, the Internet Archive filed a notice which appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. [37] On December 15, 2023, the Internet Archive filed its opening brief in its appeal. [38] [39] Shortly afterwards, several other organizations filed friend of the court briefs. [40]
The oral argument phase of the appeal occurred on June 28, 2024. [41]
On September 4, 2024, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court rulings. The court stated "On the one hand, eBook licensing fees may impose a burden on libraries and reduce access to creative work. On the other hand, authors have a right to be compensated in connection with the copying and distribution of their original creations. Congress balanced these 'competing claims upon the public interest' in the Copyright Act. We must uphold that balance here." [42] [43]
The Internet Archive did not petition to have the case reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States by the Second Circuit's deadline in December 2024, leaving the court injunction in place. [4]
The Association of American Publishers released a press statement that said, "In celebrating the opinion, we also thank the thousands of public libraries across the country that serve their communities everyday[ sic ] through lawful eBook licenses. We hope the opinion will prove educational to the defendant and anyone else who finds public laws inconvenient to their own interests." [44] The AAP has been critical of the Internet Archive for suggesting that libraries engage in the same practices that they do, arguing that only 13 public libraries in the US had cooperated with the Open Library. [45]
Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. The U.S. "fair use doctrine" is generally broader than the "fair dealing" rights known in most countries that inherited English Common Law. The fair use right is a general exception that applies to all different kinds of uses with all types of works. In the U.S., fair use right/exception is based on a flexible proportionality test that examines the purpose of the use, the amount used, and the impact on the market of the original work.
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books or individual stories in the public domain. All files can be accessed for free under an open format layout, available on almost any computer. As of 13 February 2024, Project Gutenberg had reached 70,000 items in its collection of free eBooks.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is the national trade association of the American book publishing industry. AAP lobbies for book, journal and education publishers in the United States. AAP members include most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and nonprofit publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies.
The Internet Archive is an American non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including websites, software applications, music, audiovisual, and print materials. The Archive also advocates a free and open Internet. Its mission is committing to provide "universal access to all knowledge".
The first-sale doctrine is a legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property. The doctrine enables the distribution chain of copyrighted products, library lending, giving, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works. In trademark law, this same doctrine enables reselling of trademarked products after the trademark holder puts the products on the market. In the case of patented products, the doctrine allows resale of patented products without any control from the patent holder. The first sale doctrine does not apply to patented processes, which are instead governed by the patent exhaustion doctrine.
The Authors Guild is America's oldest and largest professional organization for writers and provides advocacy on issues of free expression and copyright protection. Since its founding in 1912 as the Authors League of America, it has counted among its board members notable authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including numerous winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. It has over 9,000 members, who receive free legal advice and guidance on contracts with publishers as well as insurance services and assistance with subsidiary licensing and royalties.
Open Library is an online project intended to create "one web page for every book ever published". Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu, and Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization. It has been funded in part by grants from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation. Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domain, out-of-print, and in-print books.
Google Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database. Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives.
A copyfraud is a false copyright claim by an individual or institution with respect to content that is in the public domain. Such claims are unlawful, at least under US and Australian copyright law, because material that is not copyrighted is free for all to use, modify and reproduce. Copyfraud also includes overreaching claims by publishers, museums and others, as where a legitimate copyright owner knowingly, or with constructive knowledge, claims rights beyond what the law allows.
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience, and effort, the key element to determine whether a work is copyrightable under US law is originality.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of online services for copyright infringement by their users.
Authors Guild v. Google 804 F.3d 202 was a copyright case heard in federal court for the Southern District of New York, and then the Second Circuit Court of Appeals between 2005 and 2015. It concerned fair use in copyright law and the transformation of printed copyrighted books into an online searchable database through scanning and digitization. It centered on the legality of the Google Book Search Library Partner project that had been launched in 2003.
John George Koeltl is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
An ebook, also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., 1:2008cv01425, was a case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in which three publishers, Cambridge University Press, SAGE Publications, and Oxford University Press, initially filed suit in 2008 against Georgia State University for copyright infringement.
Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, 755 F.3d 87, is a United States copyright decision finding search and accessibility uses of digitized books to be fair use.
E-book lending or elending is a practice in which access to already-purchased downloads or online reads of e-books is made available on a time-limited basis to others. It works around the digital rights management built into online-store-published e-books by limiting access to a purchased e-book file to the borrower, resulting in loss of access to the file by the purchaser for the duration of the borrowing period.
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Controlled digital lending (CDL) is a model by which libraries digitize materials in their collection and make them available for lending. It is based on interpretations of the United States copyright principles of fair use and copyright exhaustion.
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