Created by Aaron Swartz,[3][4] Brewster Kahle,[5] Alexis Rossi,[6] Anand Chitipothu,[6] and Rebecca Hargrave Malamud,[6] Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization.

Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domain, out-of-print, and in-print books.

[8] Copies of the contents of tens of thousands of modern books have been made available from 150 libraries and publishers for ebook controlled digital lending.

[22][23] The Open Library has justified its ability to offer full contents of books in digital formats as part of the first-sale doctrine and fair use law.

[24][25] The Open Library owns a physical copy of each book that they have made available, and thus argue that the lending out of one digital scan of the book in a controlled manner falls within the first-sale doctrine, a practice known as controlled digital lending and in use by multiple public and academic libraries.

[25] Since its launch, the Open Library has been accused of mass copyright violation by numerous groups,[25] including the American Authors Guild,[26] the British Society of Authors,[27] the Australian Society of Authors,[28] the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America,[29] the US National Writers Union,[30] and a coalition of 37 national and international organizations of "writers, translators, photographers, and graphic artists; unions, organizations, and federations representing the creators of works included in published books; book publishers; and reproduction rights and public lending rights organizations".

[31] The UK Society of Authors threatened legal action in 2019 unless the Open Library agreed to cease distribution of copyrighted works.

[25] Though the Open Library asserted that the copies of entire books in e-book format were still encrypted and the unlimited borrowing was for educational purposes, the National Writers Union asserted that images of each page of each book could still be accessed on the Web without encryption or other controls.

[7][33] Four major publishers—Hachette, Penguin Random House, John Wiley & Sons, and HarperCollins, all members of the Association of American Publishers—filed a lawsuit in the Southern New York Federal District Court against the Internet Archive in June 2020, asserting the Open Library project violated numerous copyrights.