Publishers beat Internet Archive as judge rules e-book lending violates copyright
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On Friday, a US district judge ruled in favor of book publishers suing the Internet Archive (IA) for copyright infringement. The IA's Open Library project-which partners with libraries to scan print books in their collections and offer them as lendable e-books-had no right to reproduce 127 of the publishers' books named in the suit, judge John Koeltl decided.
IA's so-called "controlled digital lending" practice "merely creates derivative e-books that, when lent to the public, compete with those [e-books] authorized by the publishers," Koeltl wrote in his opinion.
Publishers suing-Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley-had alleged that the Open Library provided a way for libraries to avoid paying e-book licensing fees that generate substantial revenue for publishers. These licensing fees are paid by aggregators like OverDrive and constitute a thriving" market that IA supplants," Koeltl wrote. Penguin's e-book licensing generates $59 million annually, for example.