The nonprofit group Internet Archive is ending its National Emergency Library program, which provided free e-books to readers, the New York Times reports.
The ending of the program, which Internet Archive started in late March, was spurred by a lawsuit against the group by several publishers, including Hachette, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House. The publishers claimed that Internet Archive was engaging in copyright infringement by scanning books without licensing them.
“This lawsuit is not just about the temporary National Emergency Library,” Internet Archive wrote in a blog post. “The complaint attacks the concept of any library owning and lending digital books, challenging the very idea of what a library is in the digital world.”
At Gizmodo, Victoria Song wrote that the lawsuit “has the ability to tank the organization…for good. Publishers could claim up to $150,000 in damages per title. When you multiply that by the 1.4 million works Internet Archive put up for free, the final number could be astronomical, and well beyond the nonprofit’s ability to pay.”
On its blog, Internet Archive urged publishers and writers to collaborate with the group to provide access to books.
“We are now all Internet-bound and flooded with misinformation and disinformation—to fight these we all need access to books more than ever,” the group wrote. “To get there we need collaboration between libraries, authors, booksellers, and publishers. Let’s build a digital system that works.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
