https://apnews.com/article/books-and...f87490e8d2027b
Quote:
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has sided with four publishers who sued an online archive over its unauthorized scanning of millions of copyrighted works and offering them for free to the public. Judge John G. Koeltl of U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled that the Internet Archive was producing “derivative” works that required permission of the copyright holder.
The Archive was not transforming the books in question into something new, but simply scanning them and lending them as ebooks from its web site. . . .
The Archive, which announced it would appeal Friday’s decision, has said its actions were protected by fair use laws and has long had a broader mission of making information widely available, a common factor in legal cases involving online copyright.
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The judge's full ruling can be read here:
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gf...netarchive.pdf
I haven't read Internet Archive books lately, but, in the past, they were a lot different from Overdrive because of having so many misscans and missing pages. Tables of contents were messed up, giving a poor reader experience right at the start. Because of that, I doubt they cost the publishers a lot of business. But as character recognition improves, the Internet Archive model -- essentially, to let a library buy the eBook for the paper book price -- would hurt authors and publishers more.