An Anonymous reader quoted from a Reuters report that a group of major book publishers has reached a settlement with the Internet Archive, allowing them to lend out books digitally. If accepted, the consent judgement would settle any questions about potential money damages and the extent of the ban on the Archive’s lending. U.S. District Judge John Koeltl ruled that the copyrights of the publishers were infringed.
The proposed order will require that the Internet Archive pay Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s Penguin Random House an undisclosed amount if they lose the appeal. The order would also permanently stop the Archive from lending out the publisher’s books, regardless of the outcome of the appeal.
The Internet Archive blog said that the fight was a misunderstanding and that their founder Brewster Kahle stated that, “we must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision.” Maria Pallante, the CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement that the plaintiffs are “extremely pleased” with the proposed injunction which will “extend not only to the Plaintiffs’ 127 works in suit but also to thousands of other literary works in their catalogs.”