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Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit
- al2o3cr 3y agoShorter RIAA: "We stole these recordings with bullshit contracts decades ago, who are YOU to interfere with that????!!!!" You can see their point, though: obviously Frank Sinatra wouldn't have even bothered recording in the 1950s if he knew that a quarter-century after his death his record company might not make every available cent in profit. /s
- jareklupinski 3y agohe might have done it anyway, if he knew what engineers were going to do with those recordings a half century later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDOQ-y87YnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDOQ-y87YnE
- bongobingo1 3y agoWhat a rabbit hole to fall down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyfQVZHmArA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyfQVZHmArA > Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted ~ https://nitter.net/KarlreMarks/status/1658028017921261569 https://nitter.net/KarlreMarks/status/1658028017921261569 (possibly ~ An AI too...)
- realusername 3y agoI love how they always talk about the poor artists which cannot make new songs due to piracy and then they chose to enforce rights on ... Sinatra and a bunch of other long dead artists who will never make a single new song.
- staplers 3y agoThe movie and music business sure spends a lot of money fighting piracy. This fruitless endeavor draws a lot of parallels with the war on drugs.
- jimbob45 3y agoTheir wealth managers must be tearing their hair out in frustration. If they instead invested all the money, they could easily weather the coming AI-induced collapse of their industry.
- naasking 3y ago> The movie and music business sure spends a lot of money fighting piracy. If they spent it on providing a no-bullshit, reasonably priced platform that provides access to their whole catalog, then they would be making a lot more money than they would from lawsuits, and piracy would be virtually non-existent.
- wredue 3y agoMost people pirate to get stuff for free. If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar numbers. Now, I do agree that “one pirate number doesn’t necessarily equate to one lost sale”. But that’s not what you’re arguing. Pirates have been saying this for decades, and yet despite content being easier than ever, with pricing falling faster than ever (non-streaming services), piracy is as healthy as ever. If what you were saying is true, you’d expect piracy to have fallen as different people’s barriers for “cheap and easy” were broken through, but that’s not what’s observed.
- ghaff 3y agoI do think a lot of people stream music who would otherwise pirate in various ways. But I don't really disagree with your basic argument. There's a never-ending stream of rationales for not paying for things.
- absrec 3y agoMusic piracy is almost non-existent post spotify. Streaming service fragmentation and geolocking has resulted in more video piracy but it still is less compared to what it was.
- 3y ago
- vaylian 3y agoWhat is the best way to let these greedy bastards know that we disagree with their conduct? Not buying records will only lead to them wrongfully claiming that they "lost revenue due to piracy".
- karaterobot 3y agoDon't let that stop you. They'll always have complaints.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoHow? Set up your own record label and implement your wish list of better terms. If you're reading hacker news, there's a good chance you can do most of the coding for free/stock/spec. Then you can be like totally cool about piracy and drink all of the kool aid about how piracy is just a different form of promotion. My guess is that you'll come to the same conclusion as me: piracy destroys marketplaces. It forces the honest people to subsidize the free riders. If it were about something like food, I can understand a Jean-Val-Jean argument, but can anyone say with a straight face that they're stealing these fresh cuts just so their baby can listen to ccool music? I think you'll also come to a grudging recognition of just how expensive it can be to market music. I've always thought the percentages demanded by record companies were outrageous, but when I tried to duplicate their services on my own I quickly learned where the money goes. The IA is on a crash course to destroy the livlihood of artists, writers and other content creators. Don't ask me why. It doesn't make sense. They provide a nice service for society but now they're out on some crusade.
- isykt 3y ago> how expensive it can be to market music. Did you write this comment in 2001? The cost to produce and promote music has dropped to near zero. SoundCloud rappers have become millionaires. Billie Eilesh recorded her first album in her bedroom.
- raincole 3y agoRecording album is not marketing. If you think there is no marketing and PR people behinds those "grassroots superstars", you're utterly naive.
- ghastmaster 3y agoThis really scares me. The wayback machine is a treasure. I don't know what will happen to it if these cases succeed.
- Cypher 3y agowe'll lose it like the great library of alexander
- IAmGraydon 3y agoI think you mean Alexandria.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoThere were actually two libraries. Alexandria was the better known of the two, so it always drowns out the search results, but the Library of Alexander has a long and storied history. https://www.alexander.lib.ia.us/ https://www.alexander.lib.ia.us/ Still a shadow of its former self though.
- xtracto 3y agoOr like gigapedia : https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/3/1/the-disappearing-virtual-library/ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/3/1/the-disappearing... Few people remember that. But losing it was such a shame.
- ta988 3y agoThe great library was lost by abandon not fire. That's a really strongly held belief that's hard to debunk unfortunately.
- HenryBemis 3y agoImagine a mixture of 1984: Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. On the specifics of the lawsuit.. well if the law us bad, then change the law. But not following the law is not nice.
- hunters_laptop 3y agointernet archive should move their server/business to china or russia so these greedy companies more hard to touch them
- consumer451 3y agoWould they allow permanently archiving content which is censored by their own regimes?
- pessimizer 3y agoTheir own governments.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- consumer451 3y ago“Government” implies a hint of civil respect. I have none in either case. NK needs no explanation, I hope. Here is the most recent example of why I have no respect for the system in Russia: https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/kremlin-says-russia-theoretically-doesnt-need-to-hold-elections-next-year-because-putin-will-obviously-win/articleshow/102545398.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/kremlin-s...
- hunters_laptop 3y agofunny thing business insider aint respectable source too
- consumer451 3y agoWhat would you list as respectable sources?
- hunters_laptop 3y ago
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoSo the internet archive is knowing distributing media still under copyright? Is this not a slam dunk win for the record labels? Sounds like the internet archive officially made recordings available for download.
- ghaff 3y agoThe Internet Archive (including the Wayback Machine) basically exists in a legal Gray area (to be generous) that has mostly depended on not doing things (or undoing things) that caught someone's attention who was willing to actually take some action about it. For the most part, the IA doesn't have any more special status than you or I if we were to mirror someone's website or create a comic strip museum. A lot of what they make available arguably shouldn't be protected by copyright under a rational copyright regime but that's an argument to make to Congress rather than saying the IA can do whatever feels justified to them. (Which can cut both ways once you say the law is whatever you personally think is fair.)
- kirksan 3y agoThe IA has been skating on thin ice for a long time. They’ve archived a ton of content I generated over the years, most of it copyrighted. In my case I don’t care, I actually appreciate it since I didn’t keep archives as well as I should and occasionally use IA to find my own stuff. Also, my content is worth approximately 25¢. Others are not so forgiving. What we really need are updated copyright laws that allow for research and preservation. However, people have been calling for updated laws for decades, but powerful copyright holders have stood in the way, so don’t hold your breath.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago>In my case I don’t care If you did, you could DMCA claim it. They'd still archive the stuff, but it wouldn't be publicly available until whenever it'd fall into the public domain. That part of the system seems to work fairly well, except the century it would take for it to fall into public domain.
- arghdos 3y ago> The complaint states that when the 78rpm records were converted into digital files, IA reproduced copyrighted recordings without permission. When IA copied those files to a server, that amounted to another unauthorized reproduction Am I wrong to interpret this as trying to outlaw ripping a CD and uploading to a personal NAS? There’s additional claims about distribution to the public that (may??) seem more reasonable, but that seems like some copyright maximalism trying to rewrite history?
- EMIRELADERO 3y agoCourts have ruled that merely executing an exe file is itself an act of copyright infringment, because the OS copies the contents into RAM. That's how deep it goes. The reason no users are violating copyright when running software normally is because of a special exception for software in the Copyright Act.
- gumby 3y agoI think a lot of that has since gone away. I remember the battles around '2000 when the record industry tried to get paid for each instance when parts of the music files were buffered (because they were "copies"). They weren't laughed out of court. These days I think they would.
- ghaff 3y agoIANAL, but I've written a bit about copyright and had it reviewed by a very good IP lawyer. There was at one point some controversy about this point--especially in the context of computer software licensing. But, as I understand it, current case law allows copying where it's necessary to functionally make use of a copyrighted piece of work.
- wtallis 3y ago> But, as I understand it, current case law allows copying where it's necessary to functionally make use of a copyrighted piece of work. Not just case law; it's explicit in statute too: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117 > (a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: > (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or > (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
- drewbug01 3y ago> “When Defendants exploit Plaintiffs’ sound recordings without authorization, neither Plaintiffs nor their artists see a dime. All of the artists are dead. > Not only does this harm Plaintiffs and the artists or their heirs by depriving them of compensation, Hereditary wealth and continued rent-seeking is a very, very poor argument in favor of eternal copyright protection. > but it undermines the value of music,” the complaint adds. Music has inherent value and worth that can never be quantified or monetized. Honestly, screw the record labels. We can argue about the technicalities of copyright law until the cows come home, but this suit is morally disgusting to me.
- echelon 3y ago[flagged]
- isykt 3y agoCopyright should be life of the authors full stop. My dad dug ditches for half his life but I don’t get checks in the mail every time water flows through them.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoAuthor’s life is too long. Surely, 20 years is far sufficient to incentivize creating media, although I would err on the side of 10 years. The copyright term is automatically too long if my anyone who would benefit from it entering the public domain is dead.
- version_five 3y agoI think (but could be convinced otherwise) that the term is less important than the restrictions. More liberal definitions of fair use, for example, or clarity on when something is a copy or a derivative (like with people getting sued for vaguely similar songs) would be better. The work is always the authors, I'm less concerned about them retaining some kind of claim on it, especially if they're still actively using it, as long as there's sensible limitations on what rights they can block for others.
- jtode 3y agoIs there a distributed archive project to save the content? I could donate a few TB of redundancy.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoYou should not be concerned.
- rovr138 3y agoexplain?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jtode 3y agoI'm also quite interested in the source of their peace of mind. It might be that they're already involved in that project and it's flush with space and distribution; the message here might just be "we got this". Or it might be "don't worry, corporate feudalism is great."
- toomuchtodo 3y agoThoughts and opinions my own. No affiliation with the Internet Archive. It is my belief that libraries and repositories of culture must (not may or shall, must) be built in a manner where they can’t be burned. They require durable, persistent, fault and human tolerant foundational systems (technology and otherwise) that exhibit the features of a Ulysses Pact, protecting the future from the present; from greed, from savagery, from disaster, from deterioration (regardless of source). I hope this clarifies my position on the topic.
- jtode 3y agoClear as Mississippi mud.
- beej71 3y agoAnd I'll double down on making sure I never pay the record labels another dime. Authors and artists: make sure you have a way for me to send you money online.
- prox 3y agoA few options for those looking: Bandcamp, Patreon, Twitch, Ko-Fi, CDbaby, and probably a host of others.
- gabereiser 3y agoSoundcloud, Music Gateway, Discogs, Reverb Nation, Sellfy, TuneCore...
- pessimizer 3y agoI like this case. It's about recordings that are 70 years old or more, the vast majority are out of print, and the rest are often precariously in print. If I'm reading correctly, the silly nature of the claim that > [...] of the 2,749 recordings listed in the complaint, all but a “small sample” are already available to stream or download from licensed online platforms so they “face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.” when the 2,749 recordings have been cherry-picked from > [...] more than 400,000 works [...] is pretty much an attack on their own claims that > [...] to retain, restore and redistribute content that they believe should never be lost to history [...is...] nothing but a “smokescreen” to hide what amounts to IA offering “free and unlimited access to music for everyone,” regardless of copyright. Not to mention that the IA constantly looking for copyrighted works uploaded that are not part of the "Great 78 Project" and reducing them to 30 second previews. Prevailing on this would be a good thing. IA needs a win, even though it doesn't need to be paying to defend itself against another lawsuit. This is obviously vexatious. They're not really concerned with 78s. They're hoping to bankrupt IA with legal expenses, and/or they think that they have the fix in at a particular venue that they think they can steer the case to.
- nikanj 3y agoOh no, not free and unlimited access to art! Anything but that!
- tux3 3y agoThink of the middlemen and distributors, they need to get paid, otherwise who will be making the music?
- redwall_hp 3y agoI like how they've even managed to shove the middleman bullshit into digital distribution, where there's practically no way to even justify it. You can't just upload music to Spotify or Apple Music or whatever as an independent artist. You need to pay rent to a distributor who is allowed to interact with the streaming service. (Some of them offer the convenient feature of administering royalties for cover songs, but it's an additional cost and not a given...) Most will probably never make enough royalties to cover the fees. Then you have the whole growing SubmitHub thing. (Pay for consideration on playlists to get exposure.)
- feedsmgmt 3y agoTime to boycott the labels participating in this lawsuit.
- mschuster91 3y agoIs there any way we can get rid of these rent-seeking parasites destroying everything in their path out of their greed?
- NetOpWibby 3y agoThat's the million dollar question
- dariosalvi78 3y agoThis a fight between barbarians and civilization. Each one pick their own side. History will tell us which one was right.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoI don't understand, did the record labels DMCA strike the recordings? The article says something about a cease and desist that was ignored, but my understanding is that the IA follows DMCA claims so there must be something more missing about this story. Sticking the IA with more legal fees as another poster suggested seems plausible.
- slenk 3y agoYo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me. This does not make me want to support record labels
- aquariusDue 3y agoAs an interesting side note almost 24 hours ago (roughly) I believe someone posted a thread on 4chan's /g/ urging people to back up the things they cared about on Internet Archieve warning about an upcoming takedown/court case, looks like they weren't fooling around.
- whycome 3y agoWhenever we hit upon copyright battles in the USA, I’m reminded that the national anthem steals its tune from a well established English drinking song. A drinking song — basically understood that it “belongs to everyone and is shared for when we collectively drink and be merry together”.
- pixelatedindex 3y agoI had no idea! Would you be able to shed light on the name of the song?
- p1mrx 3y agoTo Anacreon in Heaven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eg7z0-6Nhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eg7z0-6Nhc
- whycome 3y agoWiki > Although it is often described as a "drinking song", Lichtenwanger states that "To Anacreon in Heaven" "was not a barroom ballad, a drinking ditty to be chorused with glasses swung in rhythm", but "convivial, ... in a special and stately way". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anacreontic_Song https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anacreontic_Song So the “drinking song” description is challenged. But still… Either way, the anthem is a remix. (From times when that was a part of extending our culture…) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrafactum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrafactum
- westcort 3y agoEnjoy them while they last by streaming them here: https://www.locserendipity.com/PushPlay.html https://www.locserendipity.com/PushPlay.html And LPs here: https://locserendipity.com/LP.html https://locserendipity.com/LP.html (And donate to IA)
- j0057 3y ago> The complaint states that when the 78rpm records were converted into digital files, IA reproduced copyrighted recordings without permission. When IA copied those files to a server, that amounted to another unauthorized reproduction, and when it transferred those copies to the public, yet another. That first step, making a digital copy of a copyrighted work, is not illegal to my knowledge of at least Dutch copyright law — you're allowed to make a copy "for your own studies", although it's not allowed to then give this copy away, or in general to make the copy for somebody else. I also thought that copyright lasts for 70 years, so that all pre-1953 work is in the public domain, or did Disney succeed in extending this period?
- lakomen 3y agoI seem to very vaguely remember some shenanigans in the past 3 years that lifted the 70 years restriction, but not sure if it was the US or EU.
- nukeman 3y agoIt’s 70 years after the death of the author. So if Andy Weir died tomorrow, The Martian wouldn’t enter the public domain until 2093.
- IndySun 3y ago"...70 years.." That rule does not apply globally. Depends on where you live.
- techdragon 3y agoIt’s most places, due to the international pressure from multinational organisations like the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) and WTO (World Trade Organisation) … they have longstanding campaigns to harmonies members national legislations to facilitate easier international trade and respect of intellectual property rights between countries… As a result most countries (but, yes, not all countries) have the Bern convention “life plus 70”
- cannabis_sam 3y agoThe ONLY reason these disgusting predators can colonize human cultural output like this is the antisocial, and tremendously stupid copyright laws enacted. It always makes me wonder why people want a tiny cartel of companies to own humanity’s music culture, and subsequently be able to bully companies like Spotify, Youtube and others into enforcing extrajudicial policies that maintain the cartel’s dominance. Like, seriously, what is the perceived societal value here???
- lotsoweiners 3y agoBecause normal people don’t care about “human cultural output” or “societal value” and think people who use those kinds of terms sound like blowhards. The rest of us just want reasonably cheap, convenient entertainment. Artists and others in the music biz want to get paid. Nothing here that is very hard to understand.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoNormal people do like free stuff it turns out. And typically not going to pay when it's ancient anyway. Instead of going without, they could give it a try. They'd like that too—if they knew it was possible and even encouraged.
- IndySun 3y agoCan you please add a link to your free art, movie, album, musical, and/or poem. Or do you only supply links to other peoples said art?
- tux3 3y agoSome people like creating enough that they'll even do it for free, as a hobby, sometimes in addition to doing in professionally and getting paid good money for it. Sometimes it's drawings, sometimes it's music, sometimes it's software on www.github.com. But I'm not sure the point of asking people to link their own free work in context, how would that change the discussion? Is the proposal to gatekeep who can access the Internet Archive and share links to other people's art on whether they're enough of an artist themselves? If you think it's wrong for people to archive old art that's not sold anymore, it seems to me that should hold regardless of whether the archivist has a Devianart and a Bandcamp account of their own
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoHere is the complaint https://ia802701.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.604258/gov.uscourts.nysd.604258.1.0.pdf https://ia802701.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.60... And here is Exhibit A: Sound Recordings at Issue https://ia802701.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.604258/gov.uscourts.nysd.604258.1.1.pdf https://ia802701.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.60...
- qingcharles 3y agoCan anyone find anywhere on the IA where they explain the process they are using to archive these 78s? They have a brief link to Audacity if you want to do it yourself, but no-one do they explain their process for doing it themselves. Very opaque :(
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoI would get a 78-optimized needle for my turntable, set it for 45 RPM (since it doesn’t have 78), and capture it through a high-quality ADC. Then I’d speed it up in post. I’ve done this. I imagine that contributors use different methods. Old record players used thorn needles (as in plant thorns). A purist might do that and record from the player’s horn with a mic. One annoyance I encountered in capturing old mono content is the lack of a filter in the audio software I’ve used that would keep only the mono content of a stereo recording. A lot of the crackles on a mono record are in stereo, being on only one side of a groove.
- jazzyjackson 3y agohttps://great78.archive.org/preservation/ https://great78.archive.org/preservation/
- qingcharles 3y agoThank you!
- isykt 3y agoIf IA is dismantled, and doesn’t manage to survive on its Canadian or other outposts, historians will look back on its destruction with disdain. Cultural heritage destroyed so corporate stooges can afford another yacht or whatever. The only way to fight this is to pirate the fuck out of everything. Seriously. Fuck DRM, fuck gatekeepers, free information NOW and ALWAYS.
- amelius 3y agoOr run IA like SciHub.
- pyuser583 3y agoHistorians are very, very used to siloed and proprietary knowledge.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LocalH 3y agoPiracy is preservation. Always has been. Always will be.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoEnforcers of copywrite on materials that currently isn't being sold are Book Burners
- isykt 3y agoAgreed. There should be an active sale clause for all copyrighted material, including video games. If you want to make money from the work you “own,” then fucking do it. Emulators exists for most systems. For books, the marginal cost of epub distribution is essentially zero and any high school kid can make one for you on a Sunday afternoon.
- avidiax 3y ago
- livinginfear 3y agoI've donated multiple times to IA. I can't live without the Wayback Machine. I have a question about the Wayback Machine that someone here might know the answer to: Sometimes a website may be imaged 10 times across the years, but hasn't changed since the first time it was crawled. Is there some system in place to avoid storing the redundant, duplicate data?
- kragen 3y agogovernments burn libraries
- zugi 3y agoIf copyright laws were still reasonable, like the original term of 14 years - renewable once for 14 more if the author is still alive - none of these 70+-year-old recordings would still be under copyright. The U.S. Constitution authorizes copyright as a limited monopoly granted to authors and inventors, for a limited time, in order to promote progress in science and the useful arts. A system that allows lawyers to bury old works 70+ years after they were created, by authors who are long since dead, is clearly out of control.
- helpfulmandrill 3y agoDoes IA have some sort of legal fund one can donate to? Edit: answered my own question: https://archive.org/donate https://archive.org/donate