2023), was a case in which the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York determined that the Internet Archive, a registered library, committed copyright infringement by scanning and lending complete copies of certain books through controlled digital lending mechanisms.

[2] In August 2023, the parties reached a negotiated judgment, including a permanent injunction barring the Internet Archive from lending complete copies through CDL of some of the plaintiffs' books.

[3] The decision was upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2024, and the Internet Archive announced in December 2024 it would not challenge further.

On June 1, 2020, Hachette Book Group and other publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive for the National Emergency Library.

[11] Furthermore, they argued that the Internet Archive was not abiding by CDL, as it had acknowledged that its partner libraries were not always withdrawing their physical copies from their shelves.

[14] Over the course of the hearing, Koeltl appeared unmoved by the IA's fair use claims and unconvinced that the publishers' market for library e-books was not impacted by their practice.

[19] In a 2021 preprint article, Argyri Panezi argued that the case "presents two important, but separate questions related to the electronic access to library works; first, it raises questions around the legal practice of digital lending, and second, it asks whether emergency use of copyrighted material might be fair use" and argued that libraries have a public service role to enable "future generations to keep having equal access—or opportunities to access—a plurality of original sources".

[20] Shortly before oral arguments, the Internet Archive held a press conference with comments from several people who implied that the issues in this case were much broader than the 127 books specifically named in the suit.

[21] All presenters agreed that book publishers need to make money to pay their expenses including authors.

Lila Bailey, Senior Policy Counsel for the Internet Archive,[22] noted that: In the past, publishers stood against microfilm and photocopiers, crying harm.

"[28] On the other side, University of Chicago computer science professor Ian Foster reported that the Internet Archive's actual CDL practices sometimes violated their claims, lending out more copies than they physically had.

[31] He further stated that "Even full enforcement of a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio, however, would not excuse IA's reproduction of the Works in Suit".

The court stated "On the one hand, eBook licensing fees may impose a burden on libraries and reduce access to creative work.

[4][5] The Association of American Publishers released a press statement that said, "In celebrating the opinion, we also thank the thousands of public libraries across the country that serve their communities everyday [sic] through lawful eBook licenses.

We hope the opinion will prove educational to the defendant and anyone else who finds public laws inconvenient to their own interests.