As Americans coped with lockdowns and isolation in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive—a platform devoted to preserving digital history—hit on a novel way to help people stay sane. The company temporarily lent out free digital copies of books, calling the service the National Emergency Library. The service operated from March 24 through mid-June 2020.
The four biggest U.S. publishers—Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House—sued, calling this "mass copyright infringement." The companies pointed to 127 books digitized and loaned out as part of the National Emergency Library, declaring that they owned the rights to them and had not granted the Internet Archive permission to lend them.
