A federal court found library ebook scanning was not fair use

The Hachette v. Internet Archive opinion records why one-to-one scanning and lending failed fair use, and what the later appeal addressed.

Historical event

March 24, 2023

First source published

March 24, 2023

Site publication

September 18, 2026

The record

On 24 March 2023, Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an opinion and order in Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive, granting summary judgment to four publishers, Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House, and denying it to the Internet Archive. The publishers had sued over the Archive's practice of scanning print books it owned and lending the digital files to one borrower at a time, a method it called controlled digital lending. The court held that scanning and lending the 127 books named in suit was not a fair use under Section 107, finding the copying not transformative because it added no commentary, criticism, or new meaning. The Internet Archive called the ruling a blow to all libraries the next day and said it intended to appeal.

What the documents show

The opinion addressed each of the four fair-use factors, concluded the Archive's copying served the same purpose as the publishers' own licensed ebooks, and found the practice could harm a growing library ebook licensing market. The Archive's own statement adds what the opinion does not: its intent to appeal, and its emphasis that other services, including access for print-disabled readers, remained unaffected. What the record does not settle is the fate of controlled digital lending generally, since the ruling addressed only the 127 works and lending method before the court. That distinction mattered again in September 2024, when the Second Circuit affirmed the district court, and the Archive said the panel had examined market harm in both print and ebook formats, again confined to the works in suit.

Why it stays interesting

The case sits at a hinge point for anyone weighing what a library may do with a book it owns once that book exists as a file. The opinion distinguishes scanning-to-lend from the transformative uses, search indexes, text-mining corpora, that earlier rulings had protected; a reader tracking the doctrine needs both kinds of case to see the line the courts have drawn. This is an editorial note: the ruling does not resolve whether a differently designed lending method might fare differently, since the reasoning was tied closely to the substitution found on this record.

What to read next

The 2018 position statement on controlled digital lending sets out the library-sector theory the court weighed here. The Second Circuit's 2015 fair-use ruling in Authors Guild v. Google, cited repeatedly in Judge Koeltl's opinion, shows the transformative-use reasoning this case was measured against.

• Which specific facts in the opinion, rather than the case's outcome alone, turned on the 127 works actually in suit?
• How does the court's reading of transformative use here compare with its use in the Google Books ruling it cites?
• What would change in the analysis if a library scanned a book with no licensed ebook edition available at all?

Read together, the opinion and the Archive's own statements describe a single, bounded ruling rather than a verdict on digital lending as such, a distinction the record preserves even where public argument about the case does not.

Sources & reading trail

The court's full reasoning that scanning and lending the 127 works in suit was not a fair use.

Source published: 24 March 2023 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

Internet Archive's own statement calling the ruling a blow to libraries and announcing its intent to appeal.

Source published: 25 March 2023 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

Internet Archive's account of the Second Circuit's September 2024 affirmance and its scope.

Source published: 4 September 2024 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

Reports, filings, records and studies establish the entry; the reading of why it stays interesting is Chapter Ledger editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.

Continue reading

• Libraries built their lending case on owning, not licensing
• A nonprofit set out to build one web page for every book
• An appeals court called Google's book scanning a search tool
• Browse the complete the ledger archive

Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.