Yanked "60 Minutes" episode aired in Canada; Axios, December 22, 2025

 Sara Fischer , Axios; Yanked "60 Minutes" episode aired in Canada

[Kip Currier: CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss "knows her assignment": run editorial interference for oligarch Paramount Skydance tech baron bosses Larry and David Ellison (who own CBS) and the Trump 2.0 administration.

In one of the first major tests of Weiss's censorial assignment, she has both succeeded and failed: (1) blocking the airing of a damning 60 Minutes segment set to hear on December 21, 2025 on the human rights and due process violations of the Trump 2.0 administration in deporting detainees to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison gulag, and (2) unsuccessfully stopping the blocked video from leaking to Canada and the San Francisco-based Internet Archive.]

[Excerpt]

"The "60 Minutes" segment pulled from air by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss did not include new comments from Trump administration officials, according to a copy of the segment viewed by Axios.

Why it matters: The segment, anchored by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, caused uproar internally over whether it was pulled for political reasons. 

• The package was distributed via an app owned by Global Television which airs "60 Minutes" in Canada.

Zoom in: The segment included interviews with two people who were imprisoned at CECOT, an executive from the nonprofit Human Rights Watch and the director of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center Investigations Lab.

• One college student, who was detained by U.S. customs before getting deported to CECOT, describes being tortured upon arrival. 
• 
  
• Another man told Alfonsi that he and others were taken to "a little room where there's no light, no ventilation, nothing."
• 
  
• "It's a cell for punishment where you can't see your hand in front of your face. After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour, and they pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us while we were in there."
• 
  
• "60 Minutes" also said it reviewed available ICE data to confirm Human Rights Watch's findings that suggested only eight deported men had been sentenced for violent or potentially violent crimes.
• 
  

The other side: The segment ends with Alfonsi saying the Department of Homeland Security "declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador. The government there did not respond to our request."

• The segment included previous comments made by President Trump, who said El Salvador's prison system has "very strong facilities, and they don't play games.""

CBS Frantically Tries to Stop People From Seeing Censored ‘60 Minutes’; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2025

 William Vaillancourt  , The Daily Beast; CBS Frantically Tries to Stop People From Seeing Censored ‘60 Minutes’

"The 60 Minutes story that CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss abruptly pulled from the air on Sunday has been leaked—and the network is responding with copyright takedowns.

Canadian broadcaster Global TV aired the segment, which deals with Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. whom the Trump administration deported to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador. Videos of the segment—in some instances, people recording their television screens—began circulating on Monday. But many didn’t last.

Paramount Skydance, CBS News’ parent company, began issuing a flurry of copyright notices on X, YouTube, and other platforms.

But the video was ultimately saved in the Internet Archive, among other places. 

In it, a Venezuelan college student who sought asylum in the U.S.—and says he has no criminal record—describes what happened to him at CECOT.

“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” Luis Munoz Pinto said. “Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”"

Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved; CNN, November 16, 2025

 Hadas Gold , CNN; Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved

"The Wayback Machine, a tool used by millions every day, has proven critical for academics and journalists searching for historical information on what corporations, people and governments have published online in the past, long after their websites have been updated or changed.

For many, the Wayback Machine is like a living history of the internet, and it just logged its trillionth page last month.

Archiving the web is more important and more challenging than ever before. The White House in January ordered vast amounts of government webpages to be taken down. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is blurring the line between what’s real and what’s artificially generated — in some ways replacing the need to visit websites entirely. And more of the internet is now hidden behind paywalls or tucked in conversations with AI chatbots.

It’s the Internet Archive’s job to figure out how to preserve it all."

Newsmaker: Brewster Kahle; American Libraries, June 4, 2025

 Anne Ford, American Libraries; Newsmaker: Brewster Kahle

"How has the work of the Internet Archive been affected since Trump took office?

Well, the biggest effect has been getting a lot of attention for what we do. We spend a lot of time on Democracy’s Library, which is a name for collecting all the born-digital and digitized publications of government at the federal, state, and municipal levels. There’s been so much attention about all of the [digital] takedowns that we’ve received lots and lots of volunteer help toward collecting not only web assets but also databases that are being removed from government websites. It’s all hands on deck.

And you just launched a new YouTube channel.

Yes, we unveiled our next-generation microfiche scanning as part of our Democracy’s Library project, because a lot of .gov sites are on microfiche, and people don’t want to use microfiche anymore. Fortunately, the US government in its early era was pro–access to information and made government documents public domain. So we put out a YouTube livestream of the microfiche being digitized.

What would you like to see libraries and librarians do during this challenging time?

We need libraries to have at least as good rights in the digital world as we have in the physical world. There’s an upcoming website [from the Internet Archive and others] called the Four Digital Rights of Libraries, and that is something libraries can sign onto as institutions. [The website will launch during the Association of European Research Libraries’ LIBER 2025 Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2-4.]

People generally don’t know that libraries, in this digital era, are prevented from buying any ebooks or MP3s. They are not allowed by the publishers to have them. They spend and spend and spend, but they don’t end up owning anything. They’re not building collections. So the publishers can change or delete anything at any time, and they do. In their dream case, libraries will never own anything ever again. This is a structural attack on libraries. You don’t need to be a deep historian to know what happens to libraries. They’re actively destroyed by the powerful.

So let’s spend [our collection budgets] buying ebooks, buying music, buying material from small publishers or anybody [else] that will actually sell to us. Make it so we are building our own collections, not this licensing thing where these books disappear.

That’s a big ask. But the great thing about that will be that our libraries start buying things from small publishers, where most of the money goes back to the authors, not stopping with the big multinational publishers. Let’s build a system that works for more players than just big corporations that make a habit of suing libraries."

The Internet Archive is in danger; WBUR, January 7, 2025

 

Claire Donnelly 

Meghna Chakrabarti, WBUR; 

The Internet Archive is in danger

"More than 900 billion webpages are preserved on The Wayback Machine, a history of humanity online. Now, copyright lawsuits could wipe it out.

Guests

Brewster Kahle, founder and director of the Internet Archive. Digital librarian and computer engineer.

James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School. Studies how laws regulating software affect freedom, wealth, and power."

KATHLEEN HANNA, TEGAN AND SARA, MORE BACK INTERNET ARCHIVE IN $621 MILLION COPYRIGHT FIGHT; Rolling Stone, December 9, 2024

 JON BLISTEIN, Rolling Stone; KATHLEEN HANNA, TEGAN AND SARA, MORE BACK INTERNET ARCHIVE IN $621 MILLION COPYRIGHT FIGHT

"Kathleen Hanna, Tegan and Sara, and Amanda Palmer are among the 300-plus musicians who have signed an open letter supporting the Internet Archive as it faces a $621 million copyright infringement lawsuit over its efforts to preserve 78 rpm records...

The lawsuit was brought last year by several major music rights holders, led by Universal Music Group and Sony Music. They claimed the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project — an unprecedented effort to digitize hundreds of thousands of obsolete shellac discs produced between the 1890s and early 1950s — constituted the “wholesale theft of generations of music,” with “preservation and research” used as a “smokescreen.” (The Archive has denied the claims.)

While more than 400,000 recordings have been digitized and made available to listen to on the Great 78 Project, the lawsuit focuses on about 4,000, most by recognizable legacy acts like Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Ella Fitzgerald. With the maximum penalty for statutory damages at $150,000 per infringing incident, the lawsuit has a potential price tag of over $621 million. A broad enough judgement could end the Internet Archive.

Supporters of the suit — including the estates of many of the legacy artists whose recordings are involved — claim the Archive is doing nothing more than reproducing and distributing copyrighted works, making it a clear-cut case of infringement. The Archive, meanwhile, has always billed itself as a research library (albeit a digital one), and its supporters see the suit (as well as a similar one brought by book publishers) as an attack on preservation efforts, as well as public access to the cultural record."

Internet Archive Copyright Case Ends Without Supreme Court Review; Publishers Weekly, December 5, 2024

 Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; Internet Archive Copyright Case Ends Without Supreme Court Review

"After more than four years of litigation, a closely watched copyright case over the Internet Archive’s scanning and lending of library books is finally over after Internet Archive officials decided against exercising their last option, an appeal to the Supreme Court. The deadline to file an appeal was December 3.

With a consent judgment already entered to settle claims in the case, the official end of the litigation now triggers an undisclosed monetary payment to the plaintiff publishers, which, according to the Association of American Publishers, will “substantially” cover the publishers’ attorney fees and costs in the litigation."

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case; Wired, September 4, 2024

Kate Knibbs, Wired; The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case

"THE INTERNET ARCHIVE has lost a major legal battle—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive’s book digitization projects violated copyright law.

Notably, the appeals court’s ruling rejects the Internet Archive’s argument that its lending practices were shielded by the fair use doctrine, which permits for copyright infringement in certain circumstances, calling it “unpersuasive.”"

The Internet Archive Is a Library; Inside Higher Ed, March 17, 2023

Dave Hansen, Deborah Jakubs, Chris Bourg, Thomas Leonard, Jeff MacKie-Mason, Joseph A. Salem Jr., MacKenzie Smith, and Winston Tabb, Inside Higher Ed; The Internet Archive Is a Library

"Why is it so important to the publishers that the Internet Archive not be identified as a library? Primarily because Congress has long recognized the valuable role that libraries play in our copyright system and has created special allowances in the law for their work. In this suit, the publishers seek to redefine the Internet Archive on their own terms and, in so doing, deny it the ability to leverage the same legal tools that thousands of other libraries use to lend and disseminate materials to our users.

The argument that the Internet Archive isn’t a library is wrong. If this argument is accepted, the results would jeopardize the future development of digital libraries nationwide. The Internet Archive is the most significant specialized library to emerge in decades. It is one of the only major memory institutions to be created from the emergence of the internet. It is, and continues to be, a modern-day cultural institution built intentionally in response to the technological revolution through which we’ve lived."

Oral Argument Set in Internet Archive Copyright Case; Publishers Weekly, February 21, 2023

Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; Oral Argument Set in Internet Archive Copyright Case

"The contentious copyright case has engaged a wide range of stakeholders, with amicus briefs filed on both sides."

The Top 10 Library Stories of 2022; Publishers Weekly, December 9, 2023

Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; The Top 10 Library Stories of 2022

PW looks back at the library stories that captivated the publishing world this year, and what they portend for 2023

"6. A Federal Judge Blocks Maryland’s Library E-book Law

It was big news in 2021 when legislators in Maryland unanimously passed a law to protect libraries in the digital marketplace. But after the Association of American Publishers sued, a federal court struck the law down in February 2022.

Introduced in January 2021, the Maryland law emerged after more than a decade of tension in the library e-book market,with librarians complaining of non-negotiated, unsustainable prices for digital licenses. More specifically, the law came as a direct response to Macmillan’s controversial (and since-abandoned) 2019 embargo on frontlist e-book titles in libraries, which librarians rejected as fundamentally inequitable.

From the outset, however, the AAP insisted that Maryland’s law was preempted by the federal Copyright Act. And on February 16, federal judge Deborah Boardman agreed. “The State’s characterization of the Act as a regulation of unfair trade practices notwithstanding, the Act frustrates the objectives and purposes of the Copyright Act,” Boardman concluded in a 28-page opinion. In a subsequent June 13 opinion and order, Boardman issued a declaratory judgment deeming the Maryland law “unconstitutional and unenforceable.”

The decision, combined with an 11th-hour veto of a similar bill in New York in December 2021, has served the AAP’s aim, all but shutting down similar legislative efforts in at least six other states. But the library e-book market remains contentious, and as 2022 draws to a close, library advocates in several states tell PW they have not given up the fight and are working on revised legislative language that won’t run afoul of federal copyright law.

7. Lawsuit over Internet Archive’s Book Scanning and Lending Advances

After more than two years of legal wrangling, a federal judge in New York City is now ready to hear arguments for summary judgment in a contentious copyright case filed by four major publishers against the Internet Archive over its program that scans and lends digital scans of library books using a method known as controlled digital lending (CDL).

In a final round of briefs filed on October 7, attorneys for the publishers reiterated their contention that the IA’s program is blatant copyright infringement on a massive scale. “In the end, the Internet Archive asks this Court to adopt a radical proposition that would turn copyright law upside down by allowing IA to convert millions of physical books into e-book formats and distribute them worldwide without paying rights holders,” the publisher brief states.

Internet Archive lawyers counter that its scanning and lending of legally acquired books is legal, and that the evidence shows no market harm to the publishers. “All CDL does, and all it can ever do, is offer a limited, digital alternative to physically handing a book to a patron,” the IA brief states. “What the publishers who have coordinated to bring this lawsuit hope to obtain from this Court is not protection from harm to their existing rights. Instead, they seek a new right foreign to American copyright law: the right to control how libraries lend books.”

With the cross-motions for summary judgment now fully briefed, a hearing before Judge John G. Koeltl is likely the next step. But barring a settlement, the case will probably not be resolved anytime soon. If neither side prevails at the summary judgment stage, the case heads to a trial. And however the summary judgment ruling goes, an appeal is almost certain."

Column: Here’s why you can’t ‘own’ your ebooks; Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2022

 MICHAEL HILTZIK, Los Angeles Times; Column: Here’s why you can’t ‘own’ your ebooks

"What’s really happening here is that everyone involved — publishers, online distributors, authors and readers — is trying to come to terms with the capacity of digital technology to overthrow the traditional models of printing, selling and buying readable content. 

Publishers and authors are predictably, and rightly, fearful that they’ll lose out financially; but it’s also quite possible that, properly managed, the technological revolution will make them more money."

PRH, Internet Archive Clash Over ‘Maus’; Publishers Weekly, February 15, 2022

Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly; PRH, Internet Archive Clash Over ‘Maus’

"However, Lisa Lucas, senior v-p and publisher of Pantheon Schocken, the PRH division which publishes Maus, denies the allegation. In response, Lucas emphatically denied the claim. “That is not true,” she said, framing the issue around copyright concerns rather than consumer demand. “Art Spiegelman has never consented to an e-book of Maus," Lucas said. "Therefore, PRH asked the Internet Archive to remove the PDF and stop pirating Maus because it violates Art Spiegelman’s copyright.”

Although best known for its collection of public domain titles, the Internet Archive also offers a lending library of more than 2 million modern titles “not in the public domain,” Freeland said. IA offers digital lending of these titles under a controversial policy called Controlled Digital Lending, or CDL, in which IA scans the book and lends out a PDF of the title, one copy per lender at a time, much like a physical book.

In June 2020, four publishers, including PRH, filed a lawsuit against the IA charging it with copyright infringement. The case is still working its way through the courts."

Internet Archive to Publishers: Drop ‘Needless’ Copyright Lawsuit and Work with Us; Publishers Weekly, July 23, 2020

Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; Internet Archive to Publishers: Drop ‘Needless’ Copyright Lawsuit and Work with Us

"During a 30-minute Zoom press conference on July 22, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle urged the four major publishers suing over the organization’s book scanning efforts to consider settling the dispute in the boardroom rather than the courtroom.

“Librarians, publishers, authors, all of us should be working together during this pandemic to help teachers, parents, and especially students,” Kahle implored. “I call on the executives of Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the challenging problems of access to knowledge during this pandemic, and to please drop this needless lawsuit.”

Kahle’s remarks came as part of a panel, which featured a range of speakers explaining and defending the practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), the legal theory under which the Internet Archive has scanned and is making available for borrowing a library of some 1.4 million mostly 20th century books."

Internet Archive ends “emergency library” early to appease publishers; Ars Technica, June 11, 2020

Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica; Internet Archive ends “emergency library” early to appease publishers

Online library asks publishers to “call off their costly assault.”

"The Internet Archive has ended its National Emergency Library programs two weeks earlier than originally scheduled, the organization announced in a Wednesday blog post. 

"We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic," the group wrote. The online library called on publishers to "call off their costly assault."

But that doesn't seem very likely. The Internet Archive isn't ending its online book lending program altogether. Instead, the group is returning to a "controlled digital lending" (CDL) model that it had followed for almost a decade prior to March. Under that model, the group allows only one patron to digitally "check out" a book for each physical copy the library has in stock. If more people want to read a book than are physically available, patrons are added to a waiting list until someone checks the book back in...

Experts have told Ars that the CDL concept has a better chance of winning approval from the courts than the "emergency library" idea with unlimited downloads. But the legality of CDL is far from clear. Some libraries have been practicing it for several years without legal problems. But publishers and authors' rights groups have never conceded its legality, and the issue hasn't been tested in court."

Publishers Sue Internet Archive Over Free E-Books; The New York Times, June 1, 2020

Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times; Publishers Sue Internet Archive Over Free E-Books

Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Wiley accused the nonprofit of piracy for making over 1 million books free online.

"A group of publishers sued Internet Archive on Monday, saying that the nonprofit group’s trove of free electronic copies of books was robbing authors and publishers of revenue at a moment when it was desperately needed.

Internet Archive has made more than 1.3 million books available free online, which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for a period of 14 days, according to the complaint. Then in March, the group said it would lift all restrictions on its book lending until the end of the public health crisis, creating what it called “a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.”

But many publishers and authors have called it something different: theft.

“There is nothing innovative or transformative about making complete copies of books to which you have no rights and giving them away for free,” said Maria A. Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, which is helping to coordinate the industry’s response. “They’ve stepped in downstream and taken the intellectual investment of authors and the financial investment of publishers, they’re interfering and giving this away.”"

Copyright Alliance blasts Internet Archive’s Emergency Library launch as “vile”; ZDNet, March 31, 2020

Charlie Osborne, ZDNet; Copyright Alliance blasts Internet Archive’s Emergency Library launch as “vile”

The National Emergency Library opened to help learners “displaced” by COVID-19.

"The Authors Guild said that COVID-19 has been used "as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges" which, in turn, is causing authors that are already struggling to pay the bills additional harm...

"Acting as a piracy site -- of which there already are too many -- the Internet Archive tramples on authors' rights by giving away their books to the world," the group says.  

More criticism has come in the form of comments made by the Copyright Alliance, an organization that represents the rights of those in creative industries including authors and artists. CEO Keith Kupferschmid noted that creators are among the hardest hit at present, and while projects have been set up to help those in these industries, the executive said IA's project is making "things much worse for those that need our help.""

Internet Archive offers 1.4 million copyrighted books for free online; Ars Technica, March 28, 2020

Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica; Internet Archive offers 1.4 million copyrighted books for free online

Massive online library project is venturing into uncharted legal waters.

""The Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners," the Internet Archive wrote in a Tuesday post. "This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later."

The Tuesday announcement generated significant public interest, with almost 20,000 new users signing up on Tuesday and Wednesday. In recent days, the Open Library has been "lending" 15,000 to 20,000 books per day.

“The library system, because of our national emergency, is coming to aid those that are forced to learn at home,” said Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. The Internet Archive says the program will ensure students are able to get access to books they need to continue their studies from home during the coronavirus lockdown."

Video and audio from my closing keynote at Friday's Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain; BoingBoing, January 27, 2019

Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing; Video and audio from my closing keynote at Friday's Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain

"On Friday, hundreds of us gathered at the Internet Archive, at the invitation of Creative Commons, to celebrate the Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain, just weeks after the first works entered the American public domain in twenty years.
 
I had the honor of delivering the closing keynote, after a roster of astounding speakers. It was a big challenge and I was pretty nervous, but on reviewing the saved livestream, I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

Proud enough that I've ripped the audio and posted it to my podcast feed; the video for the keynote is on the Archive and mirrored to Youtube.

The whole event's livestream is also online, and boy do I recommend it."

A Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain by Internet Archive and Creative Commons: January 25, 2019

A Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain

by Internet Archive and Creative Commons

 

 

"Description 

Please join us on Friday, January 25, 2019 for a grand day celebrating the public domain!
Co-hosted by the Internet Archive and Creative Commons, this celebration will feature a keynote addresses by Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow, lightning talks, demos, multimedia displays and more to mark the “re-opening” of the public domain in the United States. The event will take place at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.

Schedule of Events:

10am: Doors & Registration
10-11:45: Interactive public domain demos and project stations with organizations including Creative Commons, Internet Archive, Wikipedia, Authors Alliance, Electronic Frontier Foundation, California Digital Library, Center for the Study of the Public Domain, LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Cleveland Art Museum, and many more!
11:45-1pm: Lunch on your own in the Richmond District
1pm-6pm: Program of keynote speakers, lightning talks and panels highlighting the value and importance of the public domain
6pm-7:30pm: Reception

Speakers/Panelists Include:

Lawrence Lessig - Harvard Law Professor
Cory Doctorow - Author & Co-editor, Boing-Boing
Pam Samuelson - Berkeley Law Professor
Paul Soulellis - Artist & Rhode Island School of Design Professor
Jamie Boyle - Duke Law Professor & Founder, Center for the Study of the Public Domain
Brewster Kahle - Founder & Digital Librarian, Internet Archive
Corynne McSherry - Legal Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Ryan Merkley - CEO, Creative Commons
Jennifer Urban - Berkeley Law Professor
Joseph C. Gratz - Partner, Durie Tangri
Jane Park - Director of Product and Research, Creative Commons
Cheyenne Hohman - Director, Free Music Archive
Ben Vershbow - Director, Community Programs, Wikimedia
Jennifer Jenkins - Director, Center for the Study of the Public Domain
Rick Prelinger - Founder, Prelinger Archives
Amy Mason - LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Paul Keller - Communia Association
Michael Wolfe - Duke Lecturing Fellow, Center for the Study of the Public Domain
Daniel Schacht - Co-chair of the Intellectual Property Practice Group, Donahue Fitzgerald LLP"