Last year, a nonprofit internet archival organization, The Internet Archive (IA), lost the first circuit court (Hachette v. Internet Archive) against four major publishers that sued IA for its decision to act as a digital library during the pandemic, lending more than one copy of a book at a single time.
Whether it was an ethical decision and who is right in this battle—publishers, using the existing copyright law provisions to their advantage, or the IA, stating that today’s copyright law is outdated and does not meet the requirements of digital societies—remains to be answered. The IA appealed its loss in the Second Circuit Court, a decision supported by many authors themselves.
The IA case, however, indicates a broader issue: a struggle to keep open access to information on a…
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