Internet Archive Wants To Share Books Online, But Are They Breaking the Law?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For 26 years, the Open Library of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive has been preserving millions of books and lending them out freely online. Last month, a federal judge sided with a group of book publishing giants – Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley – that sued the nonprofit archive for “mass copyright infringement.” Publishers argued, and the court agreed, that the Open Library provided a way for libraries to avoid paying ebook licensing fees that generate substantial revenue for publishers. Internet Archive, whose mission is to provide “universal access to all knowledge,” said it will appeal the ruling. We’ll talk about the dispute and explore how the lawsuit could set the stage for what book lending looks like in an increasingly digital era. Guests: Brewster Kahle, digital librarian; founder, Internet Archive Sydney Johnson, reporter, KQED News Tyler Ochoa, professor, Santa Clara University School of Law Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:58.8	From KQED.
1:00.3	From KQED.
1:15.2	From KQD in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. The Internet Archive is a Bay Area institution that serves people all over the world.
1:20.9	It's a different kind of library, one dedicated to universal access to all knowledge.
1:25.9	To that end, they've acquired and scanned millions of books, documented innumerable web pages,
1:30.6	and otherwise acted as our digital memory.
1:33.3	Of all the techno-utopian projects that arose in the 1990s, it's one that stood the test
1:37.7	at time.
1:38.7	But in a recent federal court ruling, four large publishers, and there aren't many more
1:42.4	than that these days, won a major
1:44.5	copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive.
1:48.1	And its supporters worry that the ruling may jeopardize the role libraries can play in our
1:52.7	ever more digital lives.
1:54.1	That's all coming up next after this news.
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