Desist from disturbing the Internet Archive!

Since its establishment in 1996, the founder’s ambitious aim was to grant “universal access to all knowledge.” Kahle and his companions have achieved incredible success. Presently, the Archives possess digital duplicates of 44 million books and texts, 15 million audio recordings, 10.6 million videos, 4.8 million images, one million software programs, and a reproduction of Computerworld from 1969.

To accomplish this, he established the Internet Archive and its corresponding ventures, such as the Wayback Machine, which enables users to peruse archived versions of more than 866 billion saved web pages, and the Open Library initiative, which strives to craft a webpage for every published book.

It was the latter initiative that landed the Archives in a legal predicament. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kahle initiated free e-book lending through the Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) scheme. Publishing corporations were displeased, leading to the Internet Archive losing the subsequent court case, Hachette v. Internet Archive. The court disapproved the Archive’s fair use argument, concluding that its digital lending methods violated the copyrights of publishers.

About Author

AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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