The claim

““The Internet Archive lost its National Emergency Library lawsuit and now has to destroy the digital copies it scanned.””

Courts ruled the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library infringed copyright and the case ended in a settlement requiring the removal of the challenged books, but “destroy” is imprecise because the remedy was to stop lending/remove access rather than physically destroy files.

In 2023, a federal judge granted summary judgment against the Internet Archive in the publishers’ lawsuit over the National Emergency Library and its “controlled digital lending” practices, finding the scanning-and-lending was not fair use. The Internet Archive appealed, but in 2024 the parties settled, and the Archive agreed to remove the books at issue from its lending program (i.e., stop providing access to those scanned copies). Viral posts often compress this into “must destroy the copies,” but court outcomes and the settlement center on ending lending/removing access to the scanned works, not a publicly documented requirement to physically delete every file. The larger legal point—that the National Emergency Library was found infringing and the Archive had to take down the contested titles—remains accurate.