互联网档案馆输掉了一场重大法律诉讼——这一判决可能会对互联网历史的未来产生重大影响。今天，美国第二巡回上诉法院对这家长期数字档案馆做出了不利的判决，维持了先前对阿歇特诉互联网档案馆一案的判决，该判决认定互联网档案馆的一项图书数字化项目违反了版权法。

值得注意的是，上诉法院的裁决驳回了互联网档案馆的论点，即其借阅行为受到合理使用原则的保护，该原则允许在某些情况下侵犯版权，上诉法院称其“缺乏说服力”。

2020 年 3 月，总部位于旧金山的非营利组织互联网档案馆启动了一项名为“国家紧急图书馆”（NEL）的项目。由于疫情导致图书馆关闭，学生、研究人员和读者无法阅读数百万本图书。互联网档案馆表示，他们正在响应普通民众和其他图书管理员的呼吁，帮助居家人员阅读他们需要的图书。

NEL 是正在进行的数字借阅项目“开放图书馆”的一个分支，该项目中，互联网档案馆扫描图书馆书籍的纸质副本，并允许人们借阅数字副本，就好像它们是普通的阅读材料而不是电子书一样。开放图书馆每次只将书籍借给一个人——但 NEL 取消了这一比例规则，而是允许大量人同时借阅每本扫描的书。

NEL在推出后不久就遭到了强烈反对，一些作者认为这无异于盗版。作为回应，互联网档案馆在两个月内放弃了紧急措施，并恢复了借阅上限。但损失已经造成。2020 年 6 月，包括阿歇特、哈珀柯林斯、企鹅兰登书屋和威利在内的主要出版社提起了诉讼。

2023 年 3 月，地方法院裁定出版商胜诉。法官约翰·G·科尔特尔 (John G. Koeltl)发现互联网档案馆创作了“衍生作品”，并辩称其复制和出借“没有任何变革性”。在阿歇特诉互联网档案馆一案的初步裁决之后，双方就条款进行了谈判——具体细节尚未披露——但档案馆仍提起了上诉。

康奈尔大学数字和互联网法律教授詹姆斯格里梅尔曼表示，考虑到近期法院对合理使用的解读，这一判决“并不令人意外”。

互联网档案馆在上诉中确实取得了惨胜。尽管第二巡回法院支持地区法院的初步裁决，但它澄清说，它不认为互联网档案馆是一个商业实体，而是强调它显然是一个非营利性机构。格里梅尔曼认为这是正确的决定：“我很高兴看到第二巡回法院纠正了这个错误。”（他在上诉中签署了一份法庭之友陈述，认为将这种用途归类为商业用途是错误的。）

美国出版商协会主席兼首席执行官玛丽亚·帕兰特 (Maria A. Pallante) 在一份声明中表示：“今天的上诉裁决维护了作者和出版商获得书籍和其他创意作品许可和获得报酬的权利，并明确提醒我们，侵权不仅代价高昂，而且与公众利益背道而驰。”“如果有任何疑问，法院明确表示，根据合理使用法理，未经许可将整个作品转换成新格式或挪用作为作者版权包关键部分的衍生作品的价值，并不具有变革性。”

互联网档案馆图书馆服务总监克里斯·弗里兰 (Chris Freeland) 在一份声明中表示，“对于今天有关互联网档案馆以数字方式借阅其他地方可以获取的书籍的判决，我们感到失望。我们正在审查法院的判决，并将继续捍卫图书馆拥有、借阅和保存书籍的权利。”

作者联盟 (Author's Alliance) 是一家非营利组织，经常提倡扩大图书的数字访问，该组织的执行董事戴夫·汉森 (Dave Hansen) 也反对这项裁决。“作者是研究人员。作者是读者，”他说。“IA 的数字图书馆帮助这些作者创作新作品，并支持他们希望自己的作品被阅读的利益。这项裁决可能会让最大的出版商和最杰出的作者受益，但对大多数人来说，它最终弊大于利。”

互联网档案馆的法律困境尚未结束。2023 年，包括环球音乐集团和索尼在内的多家唱片公司就一项音乐数字化项目起诉该档案馆侵犯版权。该案仍在审理中。赔偿金额可能高达 4 亿美元，这一数额可能对该非营利组织构成生存威胁。

新判决的公布正值版权法特别动荡的时期。在过去两年中，有数十起针对提供生成式人工智能工具的大型人工智能公司的版权侵权案件，这些案件中的许多被告辩称，合理使用原则保护了他们在人工智能训练中使用受版权保护的数据。因此，任何法官驳斥合理使用主张的重大诉讼都受到密切关注。

它也出现在人们强烈感受到互联网档案馆在数字保存方面的巨大重要性的时刻。档案馆的 Wayback Machine 可以对网站副本进行分类，已成为记者、研究人员、律师以及任何对互联网历史感兴趣的人的重要工具。虽然还有其他数字保存项目，包括美国国会图书馆的国家努力，但没有一个像它一样向公众开放。

THE INTERNET ARCHIVE has lost a major legal battle—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive’s book digitization projects violated copyright law.

Notably, the appeals court’s ruling rejects the Internet Archive’s argument that its lending practices were shielded by the fair use doctrine, which permits for copyright infringement in certain circumstances, calling it “unpersuasive.”

In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a program called the National Emergency Library, or NEL. Library closures caused by the pandemic had left students, researchers, and readers unable to access millions of books, and the Internet Archive has said it was responding to calls from regular people and other librarians to help those at home get access to the books they needed.

The NEL was an offshoot of an ongoing digital lending project called the Open Library, in which the Internet Archive scans physical copies of library books and lets people check out the digital copies as though they’re regular reading material instead of ebooks. The Open Library lent the books to one person at a time—but the NEL removed this ratio rule, instead letting large numbers of people borrow each scanned book at once.

The NEL was the subject of backlash soon after its launch, with some authors arguing that it was tantamount to piracy. In response, the Internet Archive within two months scuttled its emergency approach and reinstated the lending caps. But the damage was done. In June 2020, major publishing houses, including Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley, filed the lawsuit.

In March 2023, the district court ruled in favor of the publishers. Judge John G. Koeltl foundthat the Internet Archive had created “derivative works,” arguing that there was “nothing transformative” about its copying and lending. After the initial ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the parties negotiated terms—the details of which have not been disclosed—though the archive still filed an appeal.

James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and internet law at Cornell University, says the verdict is “not terribly surprising” in the context of how courts have recently interpreted fair use.

The Internet Archive did eke out a Pyrrhic victory in the appeal. Although the Second Circuit sided with the district court’s initial ruling, it clarified that it did not view the Internet Archive as a commercial entity, instead emphasizing that it was clearly a nonprofit operation. Grimmelmann sees this as the right call: “I’m glad to see that the Second Circuit fixed that mistake.” (He signed an amicus brief in the appeal arguing that it was wrong to classify the use as commercial.)

“Today’s appellate decision upholds the rights of authors and publishers to license and be compensated for their books and other creative works and reminds us in no uncertain terms that infringement is both costly and antithetical to the public interest,” Association of American Publishers president and CEO Maria A. Pallante said in a statement. “If there was any doubt, the Court makes clear that under fair use jurisprudence there is nothing transformative about converting entire works into new formats without permission or appropriating the value of derivative works that are a key part of the author’s copyright bundle.”

In a statement, Internet Archive director of library services Chris Freeland expressed disappointment “in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.”

Dave Hansen, executive director of the Author’s Alliance, a nonprofit that often advocates for expanded digital access to books, also came out against the ruling. “Authors are researchers. Authors are readers,” he says. “IA’s digital library helps those authors create new works and supports their interests in seeing their works be read. This ruling may benefit the bottom line of the largest publishers and most prominent authors, but for most it will end up harming more than it will help.”

The Internet Archive’s legal woes are not over. In 2023, a group of music labels, including Universal Music Group and Sony, sued the archive in a copyright infringement case over a music digitization project. That case is still making its way through the courts. The damages could be up to $400 million, an amount that could pose an existential threat to the nonprofit.

The new verdict arrives at an especially tumultuous time for copyright law. In the past two years there have been dozens of copyright infringement cases filed against major AI companies that offer generative AI tools, and many of the defendants in these cases argue that the fair use doctrine shields their usage of copyrighted data in AI training. Any major lawsuit in which judges refute fair use claims are thus closely watched.

It also arrives at a moment when the Internet Archive’s outsize importance in digital preservation is keenly felt. The archive’s Wayback Machine, which catalogs copies of websites, has become a vital tool for journalists, researchers, lawyers, and anyone with an interest in internet history. While there are other digital preservation projects, including national efforts from the US Library of Congress, there’s nothing like it available to the public.