Quite recently there was yet another decision in the case of Hachette Book Group Inc et al v. Internet Archive, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 23-1260. This case came about from Internet Archive’s unlicensed scanning and lending of copyrighted material from many major U.S. book publishers, which is questionable to begin with, but especially egregious during 2020, when Internet Archive allowed thousands of users to access any given book simultaneously. The judge in this case found that scanning and re-lending a single book does not constitute fair use. Maybe it’s my position within the book publishing industry, maybe it’s my position as an independent creator, but my thought on this decision is: good.
Look, I’m all for the continued existence of libraries and community operations like Little Free Libraries. The essence of both systems is that you can A) only borrow one book at a time, and B) someone in the chain has paid for the book. I also like Internet Archive for keeping a record of the internet, as practically no one else does. The problem is that it’s gotten increasingly difficult to see the purely “archival” reasons for some of these scans.
A copy of The Saturday Evening Post from January 4, 1936? You can find that on Internet Archive, sure. Thing is, you can also find that issue directly from The Saturday Evening Post. OK, so the official version from the Post will cost you a $17 yearly membership, or maybe your country won’t allow access to that particular US publication. But the point is that there is still a copyright holder to this material. The 1936 issues of the Post aren’t even in the US public domain yet, so to say that Internet Archive’s version is doing a service that no one else would is disingenuous.
The Post example is a pretty generous one, because as of this writing, it’s also possible to download “all issues of IDW’s Sonic the Hedgehog (2018-2024),” which is a pretty bad-faith upload. Yes, IDW has had some serious financial problems and there remains the possibility that it (or any company, really) might close on any given day, ending the chances of seeing these particular works in print. The thing is, that hasn’t happened yet — the latest issues of Sonic the Hedgehog, the latest of which were published in Q2 2024, are still on sale from IDW’s site. I know I’m writing from a US perspective about a US company’s property and the internet is a global phenomenon; but you don’t get to steal something just because someone can’t or won’t sell it to you.
It could also be that this is personal to me, as I have my own “victim of piracy” story from back in the day that pretty abruptly put me straight on the “pay artists for art” road, but you know what? Barring the flawed, skewed systems of large-scale publishing, if a creator releases a piece of art that you insist on experiencing before you die, the least you can do is compensate that creator to help them keep living.