Sorry, no, you can’t just digitize, share copyrighted books without permission. //

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive has been scanning printed books and distributing them online – without the consent of copyright holders – through a process called Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). The idea is that the Internet Archive can lend readers one digital copy as a proxy for each physical book in its control without violating the law.

That idea has been rejected by US courts, first by Judge John Koeltl from the Southern District of New York in March 2023, and now by Second Circuit Judges Steven J. Menashi, Beth Robinson, and Maria Araújo Kahn.

The appeals court decision [PDF] states, "This appeal presents the following question: Is it 'fair use' for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors?"

The answer from the US justice system so far is no, it's not fair use.