The Internet Archive announced today that it has appealed a previous court ruling in a major e-book copyright case. A notice indicates that it has filed Hachette v. Internet Archive, a publishing industry lawsuit against the nonprofit Open Library Initiative, with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal follows a settlement in which the archive restricted access to some of its scanned books and a music publisher filed a second lawsuit over the archive's digitization of antique records.
In 2020, Hachette and three other publishers — HarperCollins, Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House — sued the Internet Archive after the agency launched a program called the National Emergency Library. The National Emergency Library has expanded the Archives’ long-running Open Library program, allowing people to digitally “borrow” scanned copies of physical books. The publishers called both systems "intentional digital piracy on an industrial scale," and a New York judge largely agreed in a March ruling.
A March ruling found that the Internet Archive's scanning and lending of books was not protected by fair use laws, and an August settlement required it to remove public access to commercial books that were still protected by copyright. In addition to affecting archives, the ruling also casts doubt on a legal theory called "controlled digital lending," which would allow other libraries to provide access to digitized versions of books they actually own, rather than relying on often expensive and limited lending systems like OverDrive.
Chris Freeland, director of library services at the Internet Archive, acknowledged that an appeal could be a difficult legal battle. "As we said when we ruled in March, we believe the lower court erred on fact and law, so we will continue to fight in the face of monumental challenges," Freeland said in a statement from the Archives. "We know it won't be easy, but it is a necessary battle if we want library collections to survive in the digital age." Freeland said the Archives will share more details about the case as it progresses.
Court documents show that the Internet Archive is still preparing its response to the lawsuit from Universal Music Group and other record labels; a pretrial conference in the case is currently scheduled for October.