Wired
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.” More
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
-George Orwell, “1984”
The end of History indeed. And we’ve always been at war with East Asia. And Africans invented everything.
I’ve gotten a lot of use out of the Internet Archive the last few years. They’ve pulled a lot of the more recent books, but there are still a lot of old TV programs. I hope it doesn’t go away completely, but it looks like they knew they were in trouble with copyright.