Adverse Internet Archive Appellate Decision

From time to time, this blog has reported on the Internet Archive and the litigation against it regarding lending of books and records. (Note that we use the Internet Archive to preserve Regents meetings and other items for this blog.)

Inside Higher Ed notes that a recent appellate decision adverse to the Internet Archive could affect practices at UC and other universities:

Pandemic-era library programs that helped students access books online could be potentially threatened by an appeals court ruling last week. Libraries across the country, from Carnegie Mellon University to the University of California system, turned to what’s known as a digital or controlled lending program in 2020, which gave students a way to borrow books that weren’t otherwise available. Those programs are small in scale and largely experimental but part of a broader shift in modernizing the university library.

But the appeals court ruling could upend those programs. Federal judges ruled that the Internet Archive’s pandemic-era online library violated federal copyright law. The Internet Archive, a nonprofit that also runs the popular Wayback Machine that archives websites, digitized thousands of books and loaned them out for free. The specific implications are still unclear. College libraries typically deal with research or out-of-print materials and adhere to different practices.

Still, librarians at colleges and elsewhere, along with other experts, feared that the long-running legal fight between the Internet Archive and leading publishers could imperil the ability of libraries to own and preserve books, among other ramifications. The appeals court ruling comes more than a year and a half after a federal district judge also ruled against the Internet Archive—a decision the organization said was tantamount to “book burning.”

The lawsuit created divides beyond those directly involved, with other publishers, authors and academic groups weighing in. Those in favor of the Internet Archive, including hundreds of authors and several academics, viewed the lawsuit as an attack on libraries in a digital age, and they worry about the future of the organization. Those against the Internet Archive’s practices viewed its activity as piracy...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/libraries/2024/09/09/internet-archives-court-loss-leaves-higher-ed-gray-area.