# Internet Archive has been sued and lost the their case about "lending" ebooks for free download

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-archive-has-been-sued-and-lost-the-their-case-about-lending-ebooks-for-free-download/981655>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 25, 2023, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-archive-has-been-sued-and-lost-the-their-case-about-lending-ebooks-for-free-download/981655 "2023-03-25T20:13:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Didi44](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47c2d/32.png) [@Didi44](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Didi44)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2023, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-archive-has-been-sued-and-lost-the-their-case-about-lending-ebooks-for-free-download/981655/1 "2023-03-25T20:13:39Z")

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Not Mundane or Pointless.

The first round of lawsuits and inevitable appeals has gone the four publishers who filed a lawsuit in 2020 against Internet Archive. A non-profit organization whose site, [archive.org](https://archive.org)  
is home to millions of books (both ebooks and scanned to digital), video, audio, images and more.

_A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hachette v. Internet Archive, [a lawsuit brought against it](https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/20/23641457/internet-archive-hachette-lawsuit-court-copyright-fair-use) by four book publishers, deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library._

_Judge John G. Koeltl decided that the Internet Archive had done nothing more than create “derivative works,” and so would have needed authorization from the books’ copyright holders — the publishers — before lending them out through its National Emergency Library program._

More articles

> **[The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend e-books like a...](https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23655804/internet-archive-hatchette-publisher-ebook-library-lawsuit)**
>
> Publishers win in federal court.

The first decision in the Internet Archive lawsuit has been reached  
[https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+archive&oq=internet+archive&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l4j69i60j69i61j69i60.2824j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8](https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+archive&oq=internet+archive&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l4j69i60j69i61j69i60.2824j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

Internet Archive is a repository for more than ebooks, fully digital or scanned to digital. It also house numerous other types of data, including videos and audio.

Edit: I’ve purposely left out many details to be as non-partisan about this as possible.

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**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-archive-has-been-sued-and-lost-the-their-case-about-lending-ebooks-for-free-download/981655/2 "2023-03-26T17:23:50Z")

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Thanks for the link. I don’t know why I didn’t notice this yesterday.

Given the current state of the law, I was completely expecting this verdict. Now to see what happens with the proposals for judgment in two weeks.