The digital library Internet Archive (IA) lost its appeal in a copyright infringement case against major publishing houses on Wednesday.
Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley initially filed their copyright lawsuit in 2020 to discuss whether IA’s sharing of digitised print books was considered to be copyright infringement.
As described in the appeal document, ‘Internet Archive creates digital copies of print books and posts those copies on its website where users may access them in full, for free, in a service it calls the “Free Digital Library.”’
This service has given access to books and educational materials to people around the globe who may be impeded due to financial, geographical or medical reasons.
IA is a nonprofit organization that wishes to allow universal access to literature regardless of an individual’s background or situation and considers this practice to be ‘fair use’.
On Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals affirmed the previous decision made in March 2023 that IA’s practices DO infringe copyright laws, and IA has removed 500,000 books from its archive.
So why are we making this known to Dollect?
As a fellow archival website, Internet Archive is an incredible source of information for our team and is invaluable for keeping records of websites, books, magazines and advertisements that preserve a glimpse of doll history.
This decision by the courts may allow for a future where archival websites, such as Internet Archive and Dollect, face further restrictions that prevent them from preserving knowledge and information.
To help IA continue to preserve these documents and to prevent future cases like this one, consider signing this Open Letter to ‘let readers read’. This will also help those of us at Dollect to maintain and improve our own archives so you can keep learning about the dolls you love.
Sources
internet-archive-appeal.pdf (documentcloud.org)
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine