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Sony and other music labels sue Internet Archive for digitizing old records
- zirgs 3y agoCopyright law is incompatible with preservation of cultural artefacts.
- Manfred 3y agoFrom the article and the wording it seems that the distribution of the music is the biggest issue in this case. I don't think the Internet Archive would be in trouble if they archived it offline and then published it after the copyright term expired.
- zirgs 3y agoDistribution helps to preserve cultural artifacts. It's more likely for them to survive if they are backed up in different places. History has proven that copyright holders prefer cultural works to be lost than distributed without payment. Most of early movies have been lost. Tons of music has been lost. Many old video games are only available illegally. We now have technology to archive and distribute cultural artifacts for little to no cost. It's ridiculous that cultural preservation has become a legal problem not a technical problem as it was for most of human history.
- signalToNose 3y agoLook up events like the Bronze Age collapse, where a handful people disappeared and took a whole civilization with them. If knowledge and access is more distributed we can avoid similar loss in the future
- visarga 3y agoIt seems Mediterranean peoples were weakened by a severe multi-year drought. A handful people (the so called mysterious sea people) with different military strategy overrun multiple bronze age states. Trade collapse led to impossibility of making bronze weapons, which further amplified collapse. This was possible because tin mines were few and far apart. So it was a vicious cycle triggered by a weak point, on a background of hardship. The lesson is not to depend on a single failure point.
- kmlx 3y agono it’s not. you just need to preserve it privately not publicly.
- radikalerludwig 3y agoso, what's your opinion on public libraries?
- kmlx 3y agono opinion. they have what is commonly referred to as “library privilege”.
- ehnto 3y agoA library is publicly accessible, just like the Internet Archive. What's the difference?
- kmlx 3y agoactually quite a few: https://www.bl.uk/help/what-is-library-privilege https://www.bl.uk/help/what-is-library-privilege check out the section “ Your obligations when using the Library Privilege Service”
- AlecSchueler 3y agoIsn't IA officially registered as a library? Why shouldn't they have the same privilege?
- kmlx 3y agofrom what i know on this subject only “national libraries” have a special carve-out for copyrighted works. and even then the rules are very strict.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
- malermeister 3y agoI still get upset when I think about the shutdown of what.cd. It was like burning the Library of Alexandria, all in the name of profit. Copyright law is anti-culture and anti-knowledge. It's ridiculous how we're purposefully holding back human development so a few megacorps can extract even more value from artists.
- squarefoot 3y agoFull list of the plaintiffs, so that they can be appropriately awarded next time one is shopping for music. UMG Recordings, Inc. - Capitol Records, LLC - Concord Bicycle Assets, LLC - CMGI Recorded Music Assets, LLC - Sony Music Entertainment - Arista Music
- xvilka 3y agoEveryone who is working for these companies should be ashamed of their choice.
- chayesfss 3y ago[dead]
- voyagerfan5761 3y agoOoooof, at least in the genres I tend to listen to, SME (and numerous sublabels thereof) are basically impossible to avoid. I can take advantage of how low streaming payouts are, I guess? It's almost like refusing to buy their stuff.
- throwaway698585 3y agoThe big record label's negotiated their own streaming payouts, which is largely why the payout rate is now so low for everyone else.
- astrange 3y agoThere's only a few music companies in the world. Either you avoid all of them or none of them.
- simonblack 3y agoThat's easy. I just avoid all of them. Have done since about 2002. It's not as if their products are overly necessary, or even enjoyable. Sony particularly is on my boycott list, since the 90s. They've never been the nicest of companies.
- userbinator 3y agoIt seems the Internet Archive itself may be in need of archiving... in a far more distributed manner.
- kmlx 3y agoas long as they don’t open the archive to the public via the internet they should be ok :)
- jtode 3y agoYou'd think, but there are stories rattling around in my head where people have been required to destroy all copies that they themselves possess - IA really does need to have a distributed version of their whole library that is impossible to erase, like pictures of Barbara Streisand's house.
- easyThrowaway 3y agoMaybe, but first they need very good, very aggressive lawyers so they can stomp these lawsuits before they can take hold in first place. Get a judge to set a very good precedent with one of the big labels and then everyone else will think twice before trying to sue them.
- jwilk 3y agoYesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37100140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37100140 ("Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit", >200 comments)
- thread_id 3y agoThis is not the first time time that copyright law has clashed with public interest: Googles "Project Ocean" is a recent example with significant legal proceedings to serve as illustration for how this type of case is likely to proceed. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoWhen reading about everything the Internet Archive does, I feel like it is something that the Library of Congress should be doing. One of the biggest threats to the Internet Archive is legal threats. Having the Library of Congress do that archiving role would get rid of a lot of legal threats. I feel the US in recent years has gone too far in relying on private entities to fulfill services that really should be public services.
- ForHackernews 3y agoDoes anyone know why the Internet Archive seems to be deliberately picking expensive legal fights? Surely they're not really worried that White Christmas will be lost to history.
- babalulu 3y agoThey're just not digitizing hit songs, they're digitizing forgotten artists and rare recordings. The Internet Archive is extremely valuable to music historians like myself in finding and understanding artists who have never been reissued and whose recordings are difficult to find. If they're forced to pull down these recordings from public access, it will be a huge loss to cultural history.
- ForHackernews 3y agoYeah, and they'd have a much stronger leg to stand on in court (or more likely never even get dragged into court) if they were focusing only on rare, out-of-print music. My question stands: why are they deliberately picking this fight?
- westcort 3y agoYou can stream 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 These websites do not hold the data itself, but only the links to the IA data (don’t want to get sued), so donate to the Internet Archive if you use these regularly.