Internet Archive fights to preserve digital libraries in Second Circuit hearing

Friday's arguments stem from a 2020 copyright suit in which four major U.S. publishers claimed that Internet Archive was illegally lending digital copies of their books.

“In TVEyes … this court characterized converting something using digital technology in a different form, taking a broadcast and turning it into a digital transmission is a form of transformativeness,” Gratz said.

But U.S. Circuit Judge Beth Robinson, a Joe Biden appointee, wasn’t convinced. She raised concerns about Gratz comparing Internet Archive to brick-and-mortar libraries, and seemed skeptical that the service wasn’t infringing on the business of selling both ebooks and hard copies.

“There is, in the real world, a little more friction in the sort of market for passing a paper book from one person to another,” Robinson said. “And I’m imagining that that’s priced into the price of the paper book … We know that there’s a distinct market for those digital books, they’re priced separately. So you’re taking something from one market and you’re inserting it into another market without ever having paid the premium in that new market.”

Gratz countered that data shows digital lending by libraries has no effect on the market for print books and ebooks.

https://www.courthousenews.com/internet-archive-fights-to-preserve-digital-libraries-in-second-circuit-hearing/