On September 4, 2024, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the Internet Archive (IA) in the copyright infringement case, Hachette v. Internet Archive, upholding a March 2023 district court ruling that AI’s lending practices violated copyright law.

IA had argued that its digital lending practices were fair use, but the district court ruled in favor of the publishers, which included Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley, who filed the initial suit in June 2020. Here’s a detailed look at the decision by Wired, “The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case.”

Reactions to the decision were mixed.

On the Association of American Publishers website, its President and CEO, Maria A. Pallante made the following statement:

“Today’s appellate decision upholds the rights of authors and publishers to license and be compensated for their books and other creative works and reminds us in no uncertain terms that infringement is both costly and antithetical to the public interest. Critically, the Court frontally rejects the defendant’s self-crafted theory of “controlled digital lending,” irrespective of whether the actor is commercial or noncommercial, noting that the ecosystem that makes books possible in fact depends on an enforceable Copyright Act. If there was any doubt, the Court makes clear that under fair use jurisprudence there is nothing transformative about converting entire works into new formats without permission or appropriating the value of derivative works that are a key part of the author’s copyright bundle.”

However, the decision is being criticized from other corners: in an article posted on its blog, The Authors Alliance, whose mission is to “serve the public good by sharing their creations broadly,” called the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the Hachette v. Internet Archive (AI) copyright lawsuit “a disappointing decision.” According to the Alliance, “We think this decision will result in a meaningful reduction in access to knowledge. This is sad news for many authors who have relied on IA’s Open Library for research and discovery, and for readers who have used Open Library to find authors’ works.” Since the Court’s decision was focused mainly on IA’s practice of lending digitized copies of books that publishers already had available in ebook form, said the Alliance, it “leaves room to make fair use arguments regarding programs to digitize and make available other books, such as print books for which there is no licensed ebook available, out-of-print books, or orphan works.”