Appeals Court Rules Nonprofit Can’t Scan Books to Internet

A federal appeals court has ruled that a nonprofit violated copyright law when it made e-books, made from scans of printed books, available for free. A federal judge in 2023 ruled against the Internet Archive, finding its digital free library violated the copyrights of 127 books, including “The Bell” Jar by Sylvia Plath. The nonprofit appealed. “This appeal presents the following question,” U.S. Circuit Judge Beth Robinson wrote in the new ruling, released on Sept. 4. “Is it ‘fair use’ for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no.”...