The Internet Archive claimed going into this week’s trial that the project was allowed by the fair use doctrine, which under some conditions permits the unauthorised use of works protected by copyright. According to The Verge, the Google Books Search project’s subsidiary HathiTrust successfully used a similar defence in 2014 to fend off a court lawsuit from The Authors Guild. Judge Koeltl disagreed with the Internet Archive’s position, stating that renting unauthorised copies of books does “nothing transformative.” Despite having the legal permission to do so, he stated, “[the Internet Archive] does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies of them in bulk.” The decision “underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and creative markets in a global society,” according to Maria Pallante, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers.
