12 ms·

Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

406 points by leotravis10 3y ago

ollien 3y ago
Archive mirror (lol) https://web.archive.org/web/20230814235044/https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/internet-archive-responds-to-recording-industry-lawsuit-targeting-obsolete-media/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230814235044/https://blog.arch...
robgibbons 3y ago
Site returns "Error establishing a database connection" Oh, the irony of using Archive.org to read blog.archive.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20230814224105/https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/internet-archive-responds-to-recording-industry-lawsuit-targeting-obsolete-media/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230814224105/https://blog.arch...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
causality0 3y ago
If there's copyrighted material on the Archive you find valuable, download and save it now before it's the target of the next lawsuit. I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. This is exactly what we all said would happen when the IA gave a giant "Fuck You!" to copyright holders with the Emergency Library. The era of copyright holders ignoring the IA if they're not actively making money off the material is officially over.
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  Yeah, the NEL will probably go down as one of the dumbest decisions in Internet history. The IA got away with a lot of stuff and then just decided throwing out all semblance of copyright credibility was the right call, for some reason. That's a cat they can't put back in the bag either, as long as the same people are running the show there's no reason to believe the IA won't do future stunts either.
  - harshreality 3y ago
    Counterpoint: It wasn't like IA people woke up one day and decided to give publishers the middle finger because they felt like it. Trump had declared a national emergency due to COVID-19, under the guise of which Biden later tried to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars of student loans because he felt like it. Libraries were shut down and inaccessible to a lot of people during pandemic lockdowns. The NEL involved loaning people DRM'd books, not giving them out without controls. NEL also offered an email address copyright holders could contact to remove their content from the NEL; granted, visibility into that process wasn't great, but if you're a publisher or make a living as a self-published author and you aren't keeping tabs on major book-related news, isn't that on you? IA's lending library is made up of scans. No casual reader wants to read scanned digital books. I don't know what overtures were made to the publishers who ended up suing in part over the NEL (the lawsuits were more over digital lending of format-shifted works not specific to the NEL), but IA didn't try to blindside publishers in general. They had extensive dialogue with university presses, documented here: https://blog.archive.org/2020/04/27/forging-a-cooperative-path-forward-university-presses-national-emergency-library/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/04/27/forging-a-cooperative-pa...
    - causality0 3y ago
      if you're a publisher or make a living as a self-published author and you aren't keeping tabs on major book-related news, isn't that on you? Most people would think they don't have to worry about it because there are these things called laws that say you can't make unlimited copies of copyrighted material. Which is what the IA did, independent of the fact they didn't allow their users to also make unlimited copies. Don't get me wrong, I hate the very concept of intellectual property. But there are right and wrong people to engage in political activism through flagrant lawbreaking and the thirty year old forty million dollar nonprofit is the wrong frickin' person. Being morally justified doesn't make it not apocalyptically stupid and now the stupendously obvious result is happening and I don't even feel bad anymore.
      - InSteady 3y ago
        It's ok. They did the right thing, and continue to do so even without your approval or sympathy. You can move on with your life, they will continue to fight the good fight as they always have.
- ghaff 3y ago
  The IA managed for years to cruise under the radar by mostly hosting things no publisher or label cared about and removing it if someone did care. But now that the ant’s nest is kicked up it’s easy to imagine a lot of things are now seen as fair game.
  - Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
    It would seem prudent for them to partition their business into two separate entities - one which handles non-contentious archiving (the wayback machine, etc) and another one which handles the stuff which seems to attract repeated lawsuits.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. I will point out that the Internet Archive is among the foremost source of warez[1] today. Being brutally honest, what Internet Archive is doing these days isn't archiving or academic fair use anymore. They are flagrantly violating copyright, or enabling violations of copyright, and that is straight up not okay. As an aside, do not be fooled into thinking all those ISOs[1] were provided by the rightsholders. They were not, even if they seem so at first glance. I would say the way they present the information is disingenuous at best, deliberate obfuscation at worst. [1]: https://archive.org/details/cdromimages?tab=collection https://archive.org/details/cdromimages?tab=collection
  - matwood 3y ago
    Yeah, and if you read the ruling in the controlled digital lending case, it was a mess. IA wasn't making sure the print copy came off the shelf, and they were linking to their own site (BWB) to sell copies of the book. Not a well built case to take to court.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Isn't linking to a place to buy a licensed copy an argument in favor? It implies that they sincerely believe that the "free download" doesn't hurt the market for the book, given that they expect people to still be willing to pay for it. And not making sure the book is removed from the self seems kind of irrelevant when the book is on a shelf in a closed library where nobody can borrow it anyway. Are we really supposed to believe that the number of copies they lent out during COVID exceeded the number of copies locked up in libraries everywhere?
      - matwood 3y ago
        If I put up a copyrighted work and link from that work to my own company to buy a copy, that is not going to look very good in court. It also undermines my claimed altruistic reasons. Linking to the publisher site or even Amazon to purchase would have been better to show increasing marketshare. Ignore the covid emergency library. The entire CDL was never setup to do what was claimed. Libraries uploaded their holdings list, the books were made available digitally, and nothing was done to verify the books came off the shelf when a digital copy was checked out. The emergency library simply pushed publishers to stop looking the other way. What IA did here actually hurt possibility of CDL or an interesting court case challenging various pieces of copyright.
- userbinator 3y ago
  In other words, the archive itself needs archived --- preferably in a highly distributed and fault-tolerant fashion.
  - blooalien 3y ago
    Torrents and pinned IPFS stashes stored on machines in countries with "free-er" copyright laws would probably be an easy way to start.
    - isykt 3y ago
      There are hundreds of people on r/datahoarders that would gladly mirror it many times over.
      - userbinator 3y ago
        Do they have the space? From what I've read, the Internet Archive is huge.
        isykt 3y ago
        How big are we talking?
        piperswe 3y ago
        90 PB as of a couple years ago: https://www.protocol.com/internet-archive-preserving-future https://www.protocol.com/internet-archive-preserving-future > The web archive alone is about 45 petabytes — 4,500 terabytes — and the Internet Archive itself is about double that size (the group has other collections, like a huge database of educational films, music and even long-gone software programs).
        account42 3y ago
        How the fuck do you get that unit conversion wrong and not fixed in the 3 years the article has been published.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
While I strongly disagree with the length of copyright protection, after reading this and reading more about the case, from a purely legal perspective, I just don't see how IA has any defense. They basically just seem to be saying "these are old records, so we should be able to copy them. Also, our work is mainly for academic researchers." My guess is that they are arguing fair use, but I just don't see how that applies here when they make copyrighted works available, for free, over the Internet. Would appreciate it if folks would abstain from responding with how the record companies are greedy bastards, or how the IA is doing great work, or how copyright protection has strayed from its original goals of encouraging innovative new works to become a victim of rent-seeking behavior, or that the law itself is unjust here. All of that I wholeheartedly agree with. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm just interested in trying to understand if they have any legal defense that isn't going to get laughed out of court.
- throwayay583739 3y ago
  This is a little meta but: it's great how you predicted a possible unproductive line of discussion that might result from your question and headed it off with a clarification. Props for communications skills. I'm also a little sad that this disclaimer is even needed. I think it says something about how the character of HN has changed in the last ten years--there's no longer an assumption that the people on the other end of the wire assume curiosity and good will. There's a lot more heat here these days.
  - itsanaccount 3y ago
    Maybe because the average understanding of how our society is run, with things like morals, fairness and hope for the future, and the legal understanding of how our society is run has diverged. And maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      It's arguably always been like that. The Internet's audience (on average) has simply grown up to an age where they start to care about that more. >maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter. I know it feels cathartic, but "record company bad" is neither discourse, nor particularly good natured. It's more reflective of how forums have shifted by twitter's popularity into being "microblogs". You don't really talk "to" people on Twitter, you throw out your tweet among a sea of tweets. A shame, because I hate twitter precisely because of that.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Most record players don't even play 78's. I had to go out and buy some borderline novelty player to play a few Soviet 78's. The whole point of copyright is it's a limited time monopoly that must end at a reasonable time, at which point works fall into the public domain. The problem is sheet music, music recording, likenesses, photography, and written works all have radically different interpretations of this, or have sometimes become perpetual due to corporate $$$ lobbying. PS: Fuck the RIAA. They're risking the preservation and archival of human art for all time at the behest of a few big money corporations.
- criddell 3y ago
  The IA is risking all the work they’ve done so far. If they want to archive copyrighted material, they should do it and sit on it until the copyright expires. If the hope is that the archive is around 1000 years from now, then what’s the rush to release these 78’s right now?
  - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
    Exactly! This is entirely on the IA for refusing to recognize they don't have the inherent right to violate copyright at their leisure. The reason they will keep getting into this is because they keep insisting they aren't doing anything wrong. If preservation of unprofitable content is the goal, sit down with the lawyers and hammer out conditions under which the IA can be given permission to preserve content. A good negotiator can probably even get record labels to pay for it if they think they're getting a copyright win. The IA doesn't respect copyright to a fault and it shows and they're going to keep losing as long as they believe they're entitled to ignore it.
    - InSteady 3y ago
      Content is not necessarily preserved for the good of humanity of no one alive today is likely to access it during the productive years of their life. Who knows what the future holds legally, politically, or more broadly. Whether they are likely to win or lose, IA is fighting the good fight on behalf of humanity. They are entitled to fight that fight, regardless of whether you think they should shrink back and stay in some arbitrary lane that copyright lawyers decide is financially irrelevant.
fallat 3y ago
I think the RIAA's gonna lose actually. The media being archived isn't being used at large as a way to circumvent IP. I think we'll see a fairuse conclusion but not without some damage along the way - I suspect bits and pieces of IA will have to be removed.
hettygreen 3y ago
Is there a torrent or something available of this complete archive?
ghaff 3y ago
And The New York Times has a recent story of the electronic lending fiasco. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-a...
kristopolous 3y ago
Why do we always defer to these copyright mongers? They're so absurd. Ah yes, preventing the listening of "Tip Toe Thru' The Tulips With Me" by Bert Ambrose & his Orchestra is a pressing national priority. Oh, the national economy will collapse if someone can hear "I Lift Up My Finger & I Say Tweet Tweet" by Stanley Lupino. I found their "sacred rights" implausible when the RIAA was hauling grannies into prison 20 years ago or suing babies and dead people and I'm still not convinced today. Why do we have to continue to put up with this crap? It's like the SCO/Linux bullshit but it never ended. I really wish things were less insane. This is so stupid. There needs to be attorney crowd funding so the 99% can have legal representation and not continue to get trampled by these lunatic clowns
- TheCleric 3y ago
  > Oh, the national economy will collapse if someone can hear "I Lift Up My Finger & I Say Tweet Tweet" by Stanley Lupino. Elon will just sue to force them to rename it "I Lift Up My Finger & I Say X X"
  - visarga 3y ago
    By the way, can I also trademark the letter "I"? Everyone using "I" will have to get my approval first. Everyone who wants to own a letter should hurry, they are just a few left.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  I blame Metallica. Particularly Lars. I don't know if he's more or less responsible than any of the other guys in the band, but in my heart he's the source of the enshittifying evil. The derelict that brought the xenomorph. The meteor that brought the color out of space. The cow with prion disease.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tacocataco 3y ago
  "They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air – or of the money to buy it – even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it’s right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: “It’s Their Land,” “It’s Their Water,” “It’s Their Coal,” “It’s Their Iron,” so you would say “It’s Their Air,” “These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?” And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on “Christian Duty” in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of th gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you’ll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to “justice” in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.’ Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philathropists (1914) | Ch 15
zbowling 3y ago
So the conspiracy theorist in me believes they may see this archiving as a threat for their current copyrights. So often modern copyrights holders get their copyrights invalidated when trying to enforce and litigate against others by someone finding an older work that predates the more more recent one. The Happy Birthday song got invalidated by an older work of "Good Morning to All" [1]. Having this database out there, it won't take long for someone to fingerprint this music that hasn't ever been stored in a digital form to use to invalidate claims using newer music. A certain cord progression or beat or a creative lyric and rhyme long forgotten in this old music could endanger parts of their current music catalog. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/u-s-judge-rules-copyright-happy-birthday-you-invalid-n514766 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/u-s-judge-rul...
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  It's interesting because it implies that music is finite. Or possibly that commercial music is finite - there's an infinitely long tail of weird shit that we don't want to listen to, but the stuff we do want to listen to is confined to a finite segment of possible music. If so then eventually all music will be free, because it will be repeating a previous iteration of the same tune. This also implies that music is discovered, not invented.
  - cosmojg 3y ago
    These guys tried to generate every possible melody and then released them under Creative Commons Zero in an attempt to thwart industry rent seekers: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmic...
  - nottrobin 3y ago
    Do you mention the distinction between creation and discovery because it's a distinction in law? Cos it seems intuitively obvious to me that distinguishing between creation and discovery has no philosophical merit - creativity happens within many finite domains, the size of the problem domain really has little relevance to something's artistic value. The exhausting of useful chords as you describe has both already happened and will never happen. There are countless songs already based on the most common chord progressions, but new ones will also continue to be found for the foreseeable future. We're nowhere near knowing the size of this domain.
boomboomsubban 3y ago
I really want to know if the record labels tried a DMCA takedown request. Normally IA follows those, I can't determine if one was sent and the IA ignored for some reason or if the record labels purposely chose a different manner of attack. One of the stories mentioned something about an ignored cease and desist, but that seems like a separate thing.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  A PDF of the lawsuit was provided by Torrentfreak, linked below[1]. In it, Sony, et al. state on pages 13 and 14 that Internet Archive failed to take necessary actions and file required paperwork with the US Copyright Office as required under the Music Modernization Act. The DMCA is never mentioned in the suit, so I presume no DMCA takedown requests were sent. [1]: https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-23-cv-07133-UMG-et-al-v.-Internet-Archive-et-al-complaint-230811.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-23-cv-07133-UMG-et-al-v.-I...
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    Thanks. Then to me, this lawsuit is primarily about attacking the IA. If they were actually concerned about their songs being pirated, they would try the easy way known to work.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      Please read the linked PDF for a proper understanding of the context. You said you "want to know", so I presume knowing the circumstances of what transpired are important to you. Specifically, the suit alleges that Internet Archive failed to take the steps necessary for them to enjoy a safe harbor provided by the Music Modernization Act. In failing to take those steps, the Internet Archive failed to give the rightsholders (Sony, et al.) an opportunity to either permit or prohibit Internet Archive the digital copying and redistribution of the records in question. That, plus the indiscriminate redistribution of the digital copies and soliciting monetary donations with those copies, all together are the arguments Sony, et al. are bringing forth for their copyright being violated. Obligatory disclaimer that IANAL.
666satanhimself 3y ago
[dead]
endisneigh 3y ago
Has the IA won any suit brought against it after covid?
westcort 3y ago
I made a static page that points to the 78RPM collection, but it is more of a novelty than a real source of entertainment. Nobody would pay for these scratchy records! The content is here: https://www.locserendipity.com/PushPlay.html https://www.locserendipity.com/PushPlay.html The LPs from the Boston Public Library are a bit more interesting, but again none of this is going to even remotely compete with Spotify: https://locserendipity.com/LP.html https://locserendipity.com/LP.html I do not host any of these, but just point to the URL at archive.org. Why can’t copyright holders use DMCA requests instead?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > Why can’t copyright holders use DMCA requests instead? DMCA requests are only when you host a platform where others can upload content. As a platform owner, if you take the content down, you won't be held liable for copyright infringement. But the original uploader definitely still can be! In this case, IA is the uploader.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Regardless of the moral merit, I feel Internet Archive is taking on way too much risk with regard to these copyright fights. Internet Archive, in my mind is one of the most valuable things on the Internet mainly for their massive archive of web sites. Risking losing all that over music records and a very risky “loan” program of copyrighted books seems rather reckless.
- slim 3y ago
  what's preventing them from getting sued for the websites? it's the same copyright law being infringed on, on the same pretenses
  - guax 3y ago
    The form in which the websites were made available originally. They were public, so its more than fair to store a copy. It would be different if they were archiving content hidden behind a paywall or bypassing login, etc. Other media and books have a more restrictive implied license of access and reproduction.
    - tremon 3y ago
      It would be different if they were archiving content hidden behind a paywall or bypassing login, etc. You've never noticed HN posts under a NYT or WP (for example) article pointing to the non-paywalled version on archive.org?
dehrmann 3y ago
Isn't vinyl the most popular physical medium by sales right now? Sure, 78s aren't as supported, but the first Technics turntable I clicked on can play them, and the Wirecutter has a recommendation that plays them. "Obsolete" is a stretch.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  That gave me an idea, I have some old 78s -- could I play them at 45 and then use Audacity to speed them up by 173%?
  - 2023throwawayy 3y ago
    Yes.
    - dehrmann 3y ago
      Or play them at 33 1/3 for better resolution.
  - arthur2e5 3y ago
    Audacity wiki (which is the official documentation and not something you can request an account for IIRC) has a page for that: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recording_78_rpm_records.html https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recording_78_rpm_records... Just make sure you invert the equalizer / preemphasis before you change the speed.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  Shellac records need different replaceable needles, because fine pieces of grit are embedded in the record to harden it and wear down the needle. Needed because the tracking force was so high back in the day. Modern records use a so-called "microgroove", usually crystal needles in the cassette, and one or so grams of tracking force. You probably wouldn't pick anything up off a shellac record, if you tried playing it.
- wazoox 3y ago
  Techmoan has a video where he explains and shows that reading 78s with a microgroove head gives very bad results, low sound, high noise, and no bass. It's a workaround, not a workable solution; you need a special 78RPM head which exist but are rare and expensive. Basically the technical reason is that the 33/45 record groove is read laterally, while the 78 groove is read vertically. So both cannot be properly achieved with the same reading apparatus.
sassy_quat 3y ago
[dead]
pipes 3y ago
I'm surprised they haven't been sued for hosting ROMs for old games. They are the best place on the web to download. Does anyone know if they've had issues with publishers yet?
- neurostimulant 3y ago
  AFAIK those are users-uploaded contents and can be removed when someone sent a valid takedown request. On the other hand, the Great 78 Project is officially run by the Internet Archive themselves, which makes them the target of the legal action.
jakeogh 3y ago
The goal of IA should be to distribute full copies of the archive. Not doing so guarantees it will be deleted and replaced. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8732894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8732894
janelose 3y ago
[flagged]
zelphirkalt 3y ago
If only they could finally get their donation box working properly. Every time I try, it fails me. I do not remember what went wrong last time, but it somehow never works for me. I remember, than at some point it did not let me type in the card field or did not check the card number. I wonder how much in donations they already lost this way.
Pannoniae 3y ago
Honest question: will there ever be an end to this copyright madness?

406 points by leotravis10 3y ago

Archive mirror (lol) https://web.archive.org/web/20230814235044/https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/internet-archive-responds-to-recording-industry-lawsuit-targeting-obsolete-media/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230814235044/https://blog.arch...

robgibbons 3y ago

Site returns "Error establishing a database connection" Oh, the irony of using Archive.org to read blog.archive.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20230814224105/https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/internet-archive-responds-to-recording-industry-lawsuit-targeting-obsolete-media/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230814224105/https://blog.arch...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

causality0 3y ago

If there's copyrighted material on the Archive you find valuable, download and save it now before it's the target of the next lawsuit. I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. This is exactly what we all said would happen when the IA gave a giant "Fuck You!" to copyright holders with the Emergency Library. The era of copyright holders ignoring the IA if they're not actively making money off the material is officially over.

ocdtrekkie 3y ago
Yeah, the NEL will probably go down as one of the dumbest decisions in Internet history. The IA got away with a lot of stuff and then just decided throwing out all semblance of copyright credibility was the right call, for some reason. That's a cat they can't put back in the bag either, as long as the same people are running the show there's no reason to believe the IA won't do future stunts either.
- harshreality 3y ago
  Counterpoint: It wasn't like IA people woke up one day and decided to give publishers the middle finger because they felt like it. Trump had declared a national emergency due to COVID-19, under the guise of which Biden later tried to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars of student loans because he felt like it. Libraries were shut down and inaccessible to a lot of people during pandemic lockdowns. The NEL involved loaning people DRM'd books, not giving them out without controls. NEL also offered an email address copyright holders could contact to remove their content from the NEL; granted, visibility into that process wasn't great, but if you're a publisher or make a living as a self-published author and you aren't keeping tabs on major book-related news, isn't that on you? IA's lending library is made up of scans. No casual reader wants to read scanned digital books. I don't know what overtures were made to the publishers who ended up suing in part over the NEL (the lawsuits were more over digital lending of format-shifted works not specific to the NEL), but IA didn't try to blindside publishers in general. They had extensive dialogue with university presses, documented here: https://blog.archive.org/2020/04/27/forging-a-cooperative-path-forward-university-presses-national-emergency-library/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/04/27/forging-a-cooperative-pa...
  - causality0 3y ago
    if you're a publisher or make a living as a self-published author and you aren't keeping tabs on major book-related news, isn't that on you? Most people would think they don't have to worry about it because there are these things called laws that say you can't make unlimited copies of copyrighted material. Which is what the IA did, independent of the fact they didn't allow their users to also make unlimited copies. Don't get me wrong, I hate the very concept of intellectual property. But there are right and wrong people to engage in political activism through flagrant lawbreaking and the thirty year old forty million dollar nonprofit is the wrong frickin' person. Being morally justified doesn't make it not apocalyptically stupid and now the stupendously obvious result is happening and I don't even feel bad anymore.
    - InSteady 3y ago
      It's ok. They did the right thing, and continue to do so even without your approval or sympathy. You can move on with your life, they will continue to fight the good fight as they always have.
ghaff 3y ago
The IA managed for years to cruise under the radar by mostly hosting things no publisher or label cared about and removing it if someone did care. But now that the ant’s nest is kicked up it’s easy to imagine a lot of things are now seen as fair game.
- Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
  It would seem prudent for them to partition their business into two separate entities - one which handles non-contentious archiving (the wayback machine, etc) and another one which handles the stuff which seems to attract repeated lawsuits.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. I will point out that the Internet Archive is among the foremost source of warez[1] today. Being brutally honest, what Internet Archive is doing these days isn't archiving or academic fair use anymore. They are flagrantly violating copyright, or enabling violations of copyright, and that is straight up not okay. As an aside, do not be fooled into thinking all those ISOs[1] were provided by the rightsholders. They were not, even if they seem so at first glance. I would say the way they present the information is disingenuous at best, deliberate obfuscation at worst. [1]: https://archive.org/details/cdromimages?tab=collection https://archive.org/details/cdromimages?tab=collection
- matwood 3y ago
  Yeah, and if you read the ruling in the controlled digital lending case, it was a mess. IA wasn't making sure the print copy came off the shelf, and they were linking to their own site (BWB) to sell copies of the book. Not a well built case to take to court.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Isn't linking to a place to buy a licensed copy an argument in favor? It implies that they sincerely believe that the "free download" doesn't hurt the market for the book, given that they expect people to still be willing to pay for it. And not making sure the book is removed from the self seems kind of irrelevant when the book is on a shelf in a closed library where nobody can borrow it anyway. Are we really supposed to believe that the number of copies they lent out during COVID exceeded the number of copies locked up in libraries everywhere?
    - matwood 3y ago
      If I put up a copyrighted work and link from that work to my own company to buy a copy, that is not going to look very good in court. It also undermines my claimed altruistic reasons. Linking to the publisher site or even Amazon to purchase would have been better to show increasing marketshare. Ignore the covid emergency library. The entire CDL was never setup to do what was claimed. Libraries uploaded their holdings list, the books were made available digitally, and nothing was done to verify the books came off the shelf when a digital copy was checked out. The emergency library simply pushed publishers to stop looking the other way. What IA did here actually hurt possibility of CDL or an interesting court case challenging various pieces of copyright.
userbinator 3y ago
In other words, the archive itself needs archived --- preferably in a highly distributed and fault-tolerant fashion.
- blooalien 3y ago
  Torrents and pinned IPFS stashes stored on machines in countries with "free-er" copyright laws would probably be an easy way to start.
  - isykt 3y ago
    There are hundreds of people on r/datahoarders that would gladly mirror it many times over.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      Do they have the space? From what I've read, the Internet Archive is huge.
      - isykt 3y ago
        How big are we talking?
        piperswe 3y ago
        90 PB as of a couple years ago: https://www.protocol.com/internet-archive-preserving-future https://www.protocol.com/internet-archive-preserving-future > The web archive alone is about 45 petabytes — 4,500 terabytes — and the Internet Archive itself is about double that size (the group has other collections, like a huge database of educational films, music and even long-gone software programs).
        account42 3y ago
        How the fuck do you get that unit conversion wrong and not fixed in the 3 years the article has been published.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

While I strongly disagree with the length of copyright protection, after reading this and reading more about the case, from a purely legal perspective, I just don't see how IA has any defense. They basically just seem to be saying "these are old records, so we should be able to copy them. Also, our work is mainly for academic researchers." My guess is that they are arguing fair use, but I just don't see how that applies here when they make copyrighted works available, for free, over the Internet. Would appreciate it if folks would abstain from responding with how the record companies are greedy bastards, or how the IA is doing great work, or how copyright protection has strayed from its original goals of encouraging innovative new works to become a victim of rent-seeking behavior, or that the law itself is unjust here. All of that I wholeheartedly agree with. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm just interested in trying to understand if they have any legal defense that isn't going to get laughed out of court.

throwayay583739 3y ago
This is a little meta but: it's great how you predicted a possible unproductive line of discussion that might result from your question and headed it off with a clarification. Props for communications skills. I'm also a little sad that this disclaimer is even needed. I think it says something about how the character of HN has changed in the last ten years--there's no longer an assumption that the people on the other end of the wire assume curiosity and good will. There's a lot more heat here these days.
- itsanaccount 3y ago
  Maybe because the average understanding of how our society is run, with things like morals, fairness and hope for the future, and the legal understanding of how our society is run has diverged. And maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    It's arguably always been like that. The Internet's audience (on average) has simply grown up to an age where they start to care about that more. >maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter. I know it feels cathartic, but "record company bad" is neither discourse, nor particularly good natured. It's more reflective of how forums have shifted by twitter's popularity into being "microblogs". You don't really talk "to" people on Twitter, you throw out your tweet among a sea of tweets. A shame, because I hate twitter precisely because of that.

1letterunixname 3y ago

Most record players don't even play 78's. I had to go out and buy some borderline novelty player to play a few Soviet 78's. The whole point of copyright is it's a limited time monopoly that must end at a reasonable time, at which point works fall into the public domain. The problem is sheet music, music recording, likenesses, photography, and written works all have radically different interpretations of this, or have sometimes become perpetual due to corporate $$$ lobbying. PS: Fuck the RIAA. They're risking the preservation and archival of human art for all time at the behest of a few big money corporations.

criddell 3y ago
The IA is risking all the work they’ve done so far. If they want to archive copyrighted material, they should do it and sit on it until the copyright expires. If the hope is that the archive is around 1000 years from now, then what’s the rush to release these 78’s right now?
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  Exactly! This is entirely on the IA for refusing to recognize they don't have the inherent right to violate copyright at their leisure. The reason they will keep getting into this is because they keep insisting they aren't doing anything wrong. If preservation of unprofitable content is the goal, sit down with the lawyers and hammer out conditions under which the IA can be given permission to preserve content. A good negotiator can probably even get record labels to pay for it if they think they're getting a copyright win. The IA doesn't respect copyright to a fault and it shows and they're going to keep losing as long as they believe they're entitled to ignore it.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    Content is not necessarily preserved for the good of humanity of no one alive today is likely to access it during the productive years of their life. Who knows what the future holds legally, politically, or more broadly. Whether they are likely to win or lose, IA is fighting the good fight on behalf of humanity. They are entitled to fight that fight, regardless of whether you think they should shrink back and stay in some arbitrary lane that copyright lawyers decide is financially irrelevant.

fallat 3y ago

I think the RIAA's gonna lose actually. The media being archived isn't being used at large as a way to circumvent IP. I think we'll see a fairuse conclusion but not without some damage along the way - I suspect bits and pieces of IA will have to be removed.

hettygreen 3y ago

Is there a torrent or something available of this complete archive?

ghaff 3y ago

And The New York Times has a recent story of the electronic lending fiasco. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-a...

kristopolous 3y ago

Why do we always defer to these copyright mongers? They're so absurd. Ah yes, preventing the listening of "Tip Toe Thru' The Tulips With Me" by Bert Ambrose & his Orchestra is a pressing national priority. Oh, the national economy will collapse if someone can hear "I Lift Up My Finger & I Say Tweet Tweet" by Stanley Lupino. I found their "sacred rights" implausible when the RIAA was hauling grannies into prison 20 years ago or suing babies and dead people and I'm still not convinced today. Why do we have to continue to put up with this crap? It's like the SCO/Linux bullshit but it never ended. I really wish things were less insane. This is so stupid. There needs to be attorney crowd funding so the 99% can have legal representation and not continue to get trampled by these lunatic clowns

TheCleric 3y ago
> Oh, the national economy will collapse if someone can hear "I Lift Up My Finger & I Say Tweet Tweet" by Stanley Lupino. Elon will just sue to force them to rename it "I Lift Up My Finger & I Say X X"
- visarga 3y ago
  By the way, can I also trademark the letter "I"? Everyone using "I" will have to get my approval first. Everyone who wants to own a letter should hurry, they are just a few left.
Tao3300 3y ago
I blame Metallica. Particularly Lars. I don't know if he's more or less responsible than any of the other guys in the band, but in my heart he's the source of the enshittifying evil. The derelict that brought the xenomorph. The meteor that brought the color out of space. The cow with prion disease.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tacocataco 3y ago
"They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air – or of the money to buy it – even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it’s right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: “It’s Their Land,” “It’s Their Water,” “It’s Their Coal,” “It’s Their Iron,” so you would say “It’s Their Air,” “These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?” And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on “Christian Duty” in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of th gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you’ll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to “justice” in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.’ Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philathropists (1914) | Ch 15

zbowling 3y ago

So the conspiracy theorist in me believes they may see this archiving as a threat for their current copyrights. So often modern copyrights holders get their copyrights invalidated when trying to enforce and litigate against others by someone finding an older work that predates the more more recent one. The Happy Birthday song got invalidated by an older work of "Good Morning to All" [1]. Having this database out there, it won't take long for someone to fingerprint this music that hasn't ever been stored in a digital form to use to invalidate claims using newer music. A certain cord progression or beat or a creative lyric and rhyme long forgotten in this old music could endanger parts of their current music catalog. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/u-s-judge-rules-copyright-happy-birthday-you-invalid-n514766 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/u-s-judge-rul...

marcus_holmes 3y ago
It's interesting because it implies that music is finite. Or possibly that commercial music is finite - there's an infinitely long tail of weird shit that we don't want to listen to, but the stuff we do want to listen to is confined to a finite segment of possible music. If so then eventually all music will be free, because it will be repeating a previous iteration of the same tune. This also implies that music is discovered, not invented.
- cosmojg 3y ago
  These guys tried to generate every possible melody and then released them under Creative Commons Zero in an attempt to thwart industry rent seekers: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmic...
- nottrobin 3y ago
  Do you mention the distinction between creation and discovery because it's a distinction in law? Cos it seems intuitively obvious to me that distinguishing between creation and discovery has no philosophical merit - creativity happens within many finite domains, the size of the problem domain really has little relevance to something's artistic value. The exhausting of useful chords as you describe has both already happened and will never happen. There are countless songs already based on the most common chord progressions, but new ones will also continue to be found for the foreseeable future. We're nowhere near knowing the size of this domain.

boomboomsubban 3y ago

I really want to know if the record labels tried a DMCA takedown request. Normally IA follows those, I can't determine if one was sent and the IA ignored for some reason or if the record labels purposely chose a different manner of attack. One of the stories mentioned something about an ignored cease and desist, but that seems like a separate thing.

Dalewyn 3y ago
A PDF of the lawsuit was provided by Torrentfreak, linked below[1]. In it, Sony, et al. state on pages 13 and 14 that Internet Archive failed to take necessary actions and file required paperwork with the US Copyright Office as required under the Music Modernization Act. The DMCA is never mentioned in the suit, so I presume no DMCA takedown requests were sent. [1]: https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-23-cv-07133-UMG-et-al-v.-Internet-Archive-et-al-complaint-230811.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-23-cv-07133-UMG-et-al-v.-I...
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  Thanks. Then to me, this lawsuit is primarily about attacking the IA. If they were actually concerned about their songs being pirated, they would try the easy way known to work.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    Please read the linked PDF for a proper understanding of the context. You said you "want to know", so I presume knowing the circumstances of what transpired are important to you. Specifically, the suit alleges that Internet Archive failed to take the steps necessary for them to enjoy a safe harbor provided by the Music Modernization Act. In failing to take those steps, the Internet Archive failed to give the rightsholders (Sony, et al.) an opportunity to either permit or prohibit Internet Archive the digital copying and redistribution of the records in question. That, plus the indiscriminate redistribution of the digital copies and soliciting monetary donations with those copies, all together are the arguments Sony, et al. are bringing forth for their copyright being violated. Obligatory disclaimer that IANAL.

666satanhimself 3y ago

[dead]

endisneigh 3y ago

Has the IA won any suit brought against it after covid?

westcort 3y ago

I made a static page that points to the 78RPM collection, but it is more of a novelty than a real source of entertainment. Nobody would pay for these scratchy records! The content is here: https://www.locserendipity.com/PushPlay.html https://www.locserendipity.com/PushPlay.html The LPs from the Boston Public Library are a bit more interesting, but again none of this is going to even remotely compete with Spotify: https://locserendipity.com/LP.html https://locserendipity.com/LP.html I do not host any of these, but just point to the URL at archive.org. Why can’t copyright holders use DMCA requests instead?

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Why can’t copyright holders use DMCA requests instead? DMCA requests are only when you host a platform where others can upload content. As a platform owner, if you take the content down, you won't be held liable for copyright infringement. But the original uploader definitely still can be! In this case, IA is the uploader.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Regardless of the moral merit, I feel Internet Archive is taking on way too much risk with regard to these copyright fights. Internet Archive, in my mind is one of the most valuable things on the Internet mainly for their massive archive of web sites. Risking losing all that over music records and a very risky “loan” program of copyrighted books seems rather reckless.

slim 3y ago
what's preventing them from getting sued for the websites? it's the same copyright law being infringed on, on the same pretenses
- guax 3y ago
  The form in which the websites were made available originally. They were public, so its more than fair to store a copy. It would be different if they were archiving content hidden behind a paywall or bypassing login, etc. Other media and books have a more restrictive implied license of access and reproduction.
  - tremon 3y ago
    It would be different if they were archiving content hidden behind a paywall or bypassing login, etc. You've never noticed HN posts under a NYT or WP (for example) article pointing to the non-paywalled version on archive.org?

dehrmann 3y ago

Isn't vinyl the most popular physical medium by sales right now? Sure, 78s aren't as supported, but the first Technics turntable I clicked on can play them, and the Wirecutter has a recommendation that plays them. "Obsolete" is a stretch.

SoftTalker 3y ago
That gave me an idea, I have some old 78s -- could I play them at 45 and then use Audacity to speed them up by 173%?
- 2023throwawayy 3y ago
  Yes.
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    Or play them at 33 1/3 for better resolution.
- arthur2e5 3y ago
  Audacity wiki (which is the official documentation and not something you can request an account for IIRC) has a page for that: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recording_78_rpm_records.html https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recording_78_rpm_records... Just make sure you invert the equalizer / preemphasis before you change the speed.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
Shellac records need different replaceable needles, because fine pieces of grit are embedded in the record to harden it and wear down the needle. Needed because the tracking force was so high back in the day. Modern records use a so-called "microgroove", usually crystal needles in the cassette, and one or so grams of tracking force. You probably wouldn't pick anything up off a shellac record, if you tried playing it.
wazoox 3y ago
Techmoan has a video where he explains and shows that reading 78s with a microgroove head gives very bad results, low sound, high noise, and no bass. It's a workaround, not a workable solution; you need a special 78RPM head which exist but are rare and expensive. Basically the technical reason is that the 33/45 record groove is read laterally, while the 78 groove is read vertically. So both cannot be properly achieved with the same reading apparatus.

sassy_quat 3y ago

[dead]

pipes 3y ago

I'm surprised they haven't been sued for hosting ROMs for old games. They are the best place on the web to download. Does anyone know if they've had issues with publishers yet?

neurostimulant 3y ago
AFAIK those are users-uploaded contents and can be removed when someone sent a valid takedown request. On the other hand, the Great 78 Project is officially run by the Internet Archive themselves, which makes them the target of the legal action.

jakeogh 3y ago

The goal of IA should be to distribute full copies of the archive. Not doing so guarantees it will be deleted and replaced. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8732894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8732894

janelose 3y ago

[flagged]

zelphirkalt 3y ago

If only they could finally get their donation box working properly. Every time I try, it fails me. I do not remember what went wrong last time, but it somehow never works for me. I remember, than at some point it did not let me type in the card field or did not check the card number. I wonder how much in donations they already lost this way.

Pannoniae 3y ago

Honest question: will there ever be an end to this copyright madness?