US Judge Rules Against Internet Archive's Digital Book Lending, Citing Copyright Infringement

A US judge has ruled that the nonprofit organization Internet Archive violated the copyrights of four major US publishers by lending out digitally scanned copies of their books. The San Francisco-based nonprofit has scanned millions of print books and lent out the digital copies for free, including 33,000 titles belonging to the four publishers. The nonprofit argued its practices were protected by the doctrine of "fair use," but the judge disagreed, stating that there was nothing "transformative" about Internet Archive's digital book copies that would warrant "fair use" protection. Internet Archive promised an appeal.