Ebook Lending Library Infringes Publishers' Copyrights

In a decision that could have wide reverberations on the internet, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District Court of New York granted summary judgment in favor of book publishers and against Internet Archive ("IA") in a copyright infringement action involving ebooks brought by the four leading book publishers in the United States, Hachette Book Group, Inc., HarperCollins Publishers LLC, John Wiley & Sons., Inc., and Penguin Random House LLC (together, the "Publishers"). As explained by the Court, copies of ebooks are typically licensed to libraries from the Publishers for the Publishers' profit. Here, however, IA scanned print copies of the Publishers' copyrighted works without authorization and loaned those scanned digital copies to IA users for free without the Publisher's consent. In response, the Publishers sued IA for copyright infringement.