“This week, a federal judge issued this scheduling order, laying out the road map that may lead to a jury trial in the copyright lawsuit brought by four of the world’s largest publishers against the Internet Archive. Judge John G. Koeltl has ordered all parties to be ready for trial by November 12, 2021. He set a deadline of December 1, 2020, to notify the court if the parties are willing to enter settlement talks with a magistrate judge. 

Attorneys for the Internet Archive have met with representatives for the publishers, but were unable to reach an agreement. “We had hoped to settle this needless lawsuit,” said Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive’s founder and Digital Librarian. “Right now the publishers are diverting attention and resources from where they should be focused: on helping students during this pandemic.” 

The scheduling order lays out this timeline:

Discovery must be completed by September 20, 2021;
Dispositive motions must be submitted by October 8, 2021;
Pretrial orders/motions must be submitted by October 29, 2021;
Parties must be ready for trial on 48 hours notice by November 12, 2021…..

Publishers Weekly Senior Writer Andrew Albanese has been covering the story from the beginning. In a July 31st Beyond the Book podcast for the Copyright Clearance Center, Albanese shared his candid opinions about the lawsuit. “If this was to be a blow out, open-and-shut case for the publishers, what do the publishers and authors get?” Albanese asked. “I’d say nothing.”

“Honestly, a win in court on this issue will not mean more sales for books for publishers. Nor will it protect any authors or publisher from the vagaries of the Internet,” the Publishers Weekly journalist continued. “Here we are in the streaming age, 13 years after the ebook market took off, and we’re having a copyright battle, a court battle over crappy PDFs of mostly out-of-print books? I just don’t think it’s a good look for the industry.” …”

“The trial is set for next year in federal court, with initial disclosures for discovery scheduled to take place next week. The publishers’ “prayer for relief” seeks to destroy the Open Library’s existing books, and to soak the Internet Archive for a lot of money; in their response, the Archive is looking to have its opponents’ claims denied in full, its legal costs paid, and “such other and further relief as the Court deems just and equitable.” But what’s really at stake in this lawsuit is the idea of ownership itself—what it means not only for a library but for anyone to own a book….

The Internet Archive is a tech partner to hundreds of libraries, including the Library of Congress, for whom it develops techniques for the stewardship of digital content. It helps them build their own Web-based collections with tools such as Archive-It, which is currently used by more than 600 organizations including universities, museums, and government agencies, as well as libraries, to create their own searchable public archives. The Internet Archive repairs broken links on Wikipedia—by the million. It has collected thousands of early computer games, and developed online emulators so they can be played on modern computers. It hosts collections of live music performances, 78s and cylinder recordings, radio shows, films and video. I am leaving a lot out about its groundbreaking work in making scholarly materials more accessible, its projects to expand books to the print-disabled—too many undertakings and achievements to count….

For-profit publishers like HarperCollins or Hachette don’t perform the kind of work required to preserve a cultural posterity. Publishers are not archivists. They obey the dictates of the market. They keep books in print based on market considerations, not cultural ones. …

publishers would like to see libraries obliged to license, not to own, books—that is, continue to pay for the same book again and again. That’s what this lawsuit is really about. It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that publishers took advantage of the pandemic to achieve what they had not been able to achieve previously: to turn the library system into a “reading as a service” operation from which they can squeeze profits forever….”

“In a joint filing last week, attorneys for the Internet Archive and four publishers suing for copyright infringement proposed a discovery plan for the case that would extend for more than a year. The filing, known as a rule 26(f) report, lays out a potential road map for the case that would begin with the first proposed deadline for initial fact disclosures on September 11, 2020, and would conclude with expert depositions due by September 20, 2021.

The filing notes that the parties “did not agree to any limitations on the number of interrogatories, requests for production, or requests for admission that may be served.” The Plaintiff publishers told the court they do not anticipate taking more than 10 depositions, but lawyers for the Internet Archive note that because there are “four unaffiliated Plaintiffs” they will likely require more than 10 depositions. And while the Internet Archive has demanded a jury trial, both parties indicated in the filing that they expect to move for summary judgment in this case….”

“While the demand for digital access to books skyrockets during the global pandemic, the Internet Archive maintains that its practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) is more vital than ever.

On July 28, the San Francisco-based nonprofit filed a response to the lawsuit brought by four commercial publishers to end the widespread practice of CDL. Scanning a copy of a print book and lending it one digital copy at a time to one reader at a time is how Internet Archives lending has worked for nearly nine years, writes its founder Brewster Kahle in a blog about the issue….”

“While the demand for digital access to books skyrockets during the global pandemic, the Internet Archive maintains that its practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) is more vital than ever.

On July 28, the San Francisco-based nonprofit filed a response to the lawsuit brought by four commercial publishers to end the widespread practice of CDL. Scanning a copy of a print book and lending it one digital copy at a time to one reader at a time is how Internet Archives lending has worked for nearly nine years, writes its founder Brewster Kahle in a blog about the issue….”

“The Internet Archive has responded to a copyright lawsuit filed by a group of commercial publishers which takes aim at the Controlled Digital Lending (“CDL”) model and the Internet Archive’s (now closed) National Emergency Library. The Internet Archive’s answer to the publishers’ complaint highlights the fair use arguments underpinning the digitize-and-lend model, which has been in operation since 2011 with the support and participation of hundreds of other libraries.

Under the CDL digitize-and-lend model, libraries make digital copies of scanned books from their collections available to patrons (the hard copy is not available for lending while the digital copy is checked out, and vice versa). A library can only circulate the same number of copies that it owned before digitization. Like physical books, the scanned copies are loaned to one person at a time and are subject to limited check-out periods. The Internet Archive launched National Emergency Library in March in response to the COVID-19 outbreak which left the physical collections in libraries inaccessible to patrons; books available through the National Emergency Library were not subject to the “owned-to-loaned” ratio. The National Emergency Library closed on June 16.

The Internet Archive’s answer to the publishers’ complaint explains that the digitize-and-lend model serves the public interest in preservation, access, and research—all classic fair use purposes. Every book in the collection has already been bought and paid for by the libraries that own them, and most of the volumes are out of print….”