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June 1, 2020 04:49 pm

Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive for Systematic Mass Scanning and Distribution of Literary Works

Today, member companies of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Internet Archive (IA) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the Court to enjoin IA's mass scanning, public display, and distribution of entire literary works, which it offers to the public at large through global-facing businesses coined "Open Library" and "National Emergency Library," accessible at both openlibrary.org and archive.org. In a statement, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) wrote: IA has brazenly reproduced some 1.3 million bootleg scans of print books, including recent works, commercial fiction and non-fiction, thrillers, and children's books. The plaintiffs --Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House -- publish many of the world's preeminent authors, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Newbery Medal, Man Booker Prize, Caldecott Medal and Nobel Prize. Despite the self-serving library branding of its operations, IA's conduct bears little resemblance to the trusted role that thousands of American libraries play within their communities and as participants in the lawful copyright marketplace. IA scans books from cover to cover, posts complete digital files to its website, and solicits users to access them for free by signing up for Internet Archive Accounts. The sheer scale of IA's infringement described in the complaint -- and its stated objective to enlarge its illegal trove with abandon -- appear to make it one of the largest known book pirate sites in the world. IA publicly reports millions of dollars in revenue each year, including financial schemes that support its infringement design. In willfully ignoring the Copyright Act, IA conflates the separate markets and business models made possible by the statute's incentives and protections, robbing authors and publishers of their ability to control the manner and timing of communicating their works to the public. IA not only conflates print books and eBooks, it ignores the well-established channels in which publishers do business with bookstores, e-commerce platforms, and libraries, including for print and eBook lending. As detailed in the complaint, IA makes no investment in creating the literary works it distributes and appears to give no thought to the impact of its efforts on the quality and vitality of the authorship that fuels the marketplace of ideas.

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