Penguin
Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Wiley accused the nonprofit
of piracy for making over 1 million books free online.
"A group of publishers sued Internet
Archive on Monday, saying that the nonprofit group’s trove of free
electronic copies of books was robbing authors and publishers of revenue
at a moment when it was desperately needed.
Internet
Archive has made more than 1.3 million books available free online,
which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for a period
of 14 days, according to the complaint. Then in March, the group said it
would lift all restrictions on its book lending until the end of the public health crisis, creating what it called “a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.”
But many publishers and authors have called it something different: theft.
“There
is nothing innovative or transformative about making complete copies of
books to which you have no rights and giving them away for free,” said
Maria A. Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers,
which is helping to coordinate the industry’s response. “They’ve stepped
in downstream and taken the intellectual investment of authors and the
financial investment of publishers, they’re interfering and giving this
away.”"
