The famous Internet Archive platform is attacked in the United States, accused of copyright infringement and piracy by several publishers, including the giant Hachette.
Internet Archive is in turmoil. The digital library, known for its time machine, the famous “Wayback Machine”, is being sued across the Atlantic by four publishers, the Frenchman Hachette and the Americans Penguin Random House, Harper Collins and John Wiley & Sons. All accuse him of distributing their books on his platform, without authorization or respect for copyright. The nonprofit must answer to – and defend itself – in court.
The change to a feature during the pandemic that changed everything
On Monday, March 20, the pleadings were exchanged in a New York court in the case between the four publishers and the Internet Archive, which for more than 25 years has been striving to preserve digital and cultural heritage by taking snapshots in particular. of all the content that can be found on the Web. It also houses video games, documents, videos and copies of books.
The four companies, which filed their lawsuit in January 2020, accuse the Internet Archive of having implemented a program that does not respect copyright. The so-called “controlled digital loan” service, which existed before, was modified following the closure of physical libraries during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Before the pandemic, this service allowed Internet Archive subscribers to consult books in digital form, for a fixed period of time. Each book could only be consulted by one and the same person simultaneously. But during the health crisis, the Internet Archive had revised this rule, allowing the borrowing of the same book by several people. And that’s where the link with the publishers broke.
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What the Internet Archive did was not unprecedented. Many libraries have also offered their users digital lending services, he said. But the major publishing houses behind the complaint do not want to hear anything. They denounce, in the behavior of the organization, a ” massive hacking operation “.
The plaintiffs add that the Internet Archive acted ” without any license or payment to authors or publishers by digitizing printed books then distributed in their entirety from sites intended for the public. What is seen as pure and simple copying by the representatives of the publishers.
On Monday, the library’s lawyers recalled that the latter’s project was ” non-commercial », and that this service was to be considered as compatible with what is called the fair use (reasonable use), a very American doctrine that provides for certain exceptions to the traditional intellectual property regime, under which we could encompass the practice of digital lending, as we tolerate that of library lending. That will be up to the judge to decide. A clue all the same: during the hearing, it was recalled that the complete copy of a book was generally not covered by the aforementioned doctrine of fair use. The court will have to decide in particular on the question of the potential shortfall for the publishers. A heavy financial penalty could threaten the future of the Internet Archive.
Source : The Verge
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