Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost; Ars Technica, November 3, 2025

 ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

"This month, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine archived its trillionth webpage, and the nonprofit invited its more than 1,200 library partners and 800,000 daily users to join a celebration of the moment. To honor “three decades of safeguarding the world’s online heritage,” the city of San Francisco declared October 22 to be “Internet Archive Day.” The Archive was also recently designated a federal depository library by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who proclaimed the organization a “perfect fit” to expand “access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape.”

The Internet Archive might sound like a thriving organization, but it only recently emerged from years of bruising copyright battles that threatened to bankrupt the beloved library project. In the end, the fight led to more than 500,000 books being removed from the Archive’s “Open Library.”

“We survived,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told Ars. “But it wiped out the Library.”

An Internet Archive spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the archive currently faces no major lawsuits and no active threats to its collections. Kahle thinks “the world became stupider” when the Open Library was gutted—but he’s moving forward with new ideas."

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."

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."