5 ms·

Regardless of what happens here, one of the biggest losses in historical music archives was when what.cd got taken down. Regardless of copyright, it does feel l

by jjcm 2y ago

Regardless of what happens here, one of the biggest losses in historical music archives was when what.cd got taken down. Regardless of copyright, it does feel like there is a place for archival indexing of historical recordings. I wish there was some sort of law protecting this. What.cd was clearly offending copyright, with the historical value being a secondary effect, but the internet archive's intent here clearly isn't copyright violation. Intent should matter.

rblatz 2y ago
Isn't that supposed to be the role of The Library of Congress?
- dfxm12 2y ago
  "That" has a little wiggle room here, but the answer is still probably no regardless of what you mean. The Internet Archive's goal is to provide universal access to all knowledge. This is not the goal of the LOC.
  - mrighele 2y ago
    I think the parent refers to this [1]: "All works under copyright protection that are published in the United States are subject to the mandatory deposit provision of the copyright law (17 USC section 407). This law requires that two copies of the best edition of every copyrightable work published in the United States be sent to the Copyright Office within three months of publication. Works deposited under this law are for the use of the Library of Congress" I don't know how/if it works in practice, but if the copyright is supposed "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", I think that it is perfectly fine for the LOC to guarantee that when the copyright expires at least a copy is still around. This doesn't mean that it should provide universal access though, especially while the copyright is still valid. [1] https://www.copyright.gov/mandatory/ https://www.copyright.gov/mandatory/
    - nodamage 2y ago
      Wait, does this apply to software?
      - mrighele 2y ago
        I have no idea :-). Frankly I was under the impression that this requirement had been weakened/removed over the years, but this is what they write on the official website and I cannot find any reference about that so that's why I wrote "how/if it works in practice" (maybe the devil is in the referenced details, but alas I have not time to investigate now) But my point was more about the matter of principle: it is reasonable for the government to ask a copy of the works (for preservation reasons) in exchange for time-limited rights over it.
    - jrochkind1 2y ago
      I mean, it certainly doesn't apply to 80 year-old 78s published long before the law said that. They don't go looking for ancient stuff that predated that practice.
- azemetre 2y ago
  What.cd was more than an archive of nearly all recorded music, both analog and digital. It had some of the best collage lists and recommendations I have ever seen. None of the child sites came even close, but some are promising. It was truly one of the best ways to discover music because behind each recommendation was a human that were both enthralled you were interested and would tailor their recommendations to suit your tastes. Spotify use to have humans curate their playlists and during this time is was almost as good, but since they've moved to ML models recommendations have gone to truly awful now.
- jrochkind1 2y ago
  Supposed according to whom? Believe it or not, the official role of the Library of Congress is mostly to be a library serving Congress. Their website says "The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office." They do keep copies of things registered for copyrights, for copyright purposes. I don't believe there is any legislation or funding to give them the role of finding and preserving 80 year old 78s en masse.
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    The Copyright Office is and always has been an arm of the Library of Congress. So “supposed according to whom” is according to law and all of history.
    - jrochkind1 2y ago
      The copyright office does not try to collect and preserve, en masse, old recordings from before they started taking deposits of audio recordings for copyright registration. (1972 prob? sound recordings didn't have federal copyright protection in the USA before 1972) There is no my knowledge no legislation authorizing that or funding from the government for it. The Lib of Congress (probably not in the copyright office part of it) does have some historical audio recordings in their collection, including digitizations, but I don't think on this scale.
      - SideQuark 2y ago
        Why do you keep stating things you can’t find untrue with a moments search? Yes, the Library of Congress actively collects old audio (and even has 450,000 of those old 78s you claimed they don’t gather, and around another million unpublished ones). They have funding and mandates to do so. This entire thread is you posting opinion as fact, but these opinions are demonstrably false. Before posting things as true please do some due diligence.
dfxm12 2y ago
Yes, but it shouldn't have to. The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old. Few people even have gear to play the discs. Have the authors of these songs, the players on the recordings and the publishers of these discs not had enough of a chance to make their money? I'll take whatever judgement I can get in favor of the Internet Archive, but I think we should be aiming for a principled stance of enough copyright is enough!
- Retric 2y ago
  IMO copyright simply isn’t fine grained enough. Allowing 1:1 copies after 20 years isn’t economically meaningful to the creators in general, but when you use a work as part of a movie, commercial, political campaign, etc it’s co opting the original creator as if they where endorsing what you’re doing. Which simply isn’t appropriate while the creator is alive. On the other hand if you’re selling action figures you expect little kids to create their own stories with those characters. Culture has long mixed existing characters in new ways just look at any mythology before writing. Jokes, memes, fanfics, etc are the natural progression of a culture and giving up on that seems detrimental in ways that aren’t obvious.
  - redundantly 2y ago
    Your distinction between commercial use and things like meme culture doesn’t hold up. For example, memes can harm creators too, like Pepe the Frog being co-opted by far-right groups. If you want to protect creators, there’s no simple solution, as both can distort their intent.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Focused on “commercial” and while ignoring “political campaign, etc” misses the point. There is a difference between making up a new Chuck Norris fact and using the meme to support religion, brands, politics, or whatever. Legal systems constantly deal with intangible abstracts like intent. “Pepe the Frog being co-opted” is cashing in on the existing work rather than operating in some hypothetical framework.
jancsika 2y ago
> Regardless of copyright, it does feel like there is a place for archival indexing of historical recordings. Does anyone have a link to such an index for what.cd? Just the following: * album/track string plus minimal metadata (release date or whatever) * hash for the track that goes along with that given piece of unique metadata Such a thing is obviously on the right side of the law-- you can't reconstruct the copyrighted content from the hash or the title. And the name of an artist/track title isn't copyrightable. That would be a valuable index that shows the exact state of what.cd's database before it was taken down. And I don't think it would be that large.
- dublinben 2y ago
  This might be what you're looking for: https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release
joe463369 2y ago
They can archive things without breaching copyright. Why not digitise your 78rpm copy of White Christmas, stick it in the vault, and publish it when the copyright expires?
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  There's always the possibility that the organization falls apart, suffers catastrophic data loss, or is legally compelled to destroy their copies. The name of the game is redundancy when it comes to archival, and the best way to achieve that is to distribute copies to anyone who wants one. Many parties storing copies on many mediums in many jurisdictions for many reasons.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
I'll never forgive the copyright monopolists for the closing of what.cd. The world lost another library of alexandria that day. Don't care what the law says, how many of their "rights" were infringed, how much money it was costing them. I'll never forgive them for it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Me either, the alternatives that sprung up just aren't the same.
FactKnower69 2y ago
[flagged]

by jjcm 2y ago

rblatz 2y ago

Isn't that supposed to be the role of The Library of Congress?

dfxm12 2y ago
"That" has a little wiggle room here, but the answer is still probably no regardless of what you mean. The Internet Archive's goal is to provide universal access to all knowledge. This is not the goal of the LOC.
- mrighele 2y ago
  I think the parent refers to this [1]: "All works under copyright protection that are published in the United States are subject to the mandatory deposit provision of the copyright law (17 USC section 407). This law requires that two copies of the best edition of every copyrightable work published in the United States be sent to the Copyright Office within three months of publication. Works deposited under this law are for the use of the Library of Congress" I don't know how/if it works in practice, but if the copyright is supposed "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", I think that it is perfectly fine for the LOC to guarantee that when the copyright expires at least a copy is still around. This doesn't mean that it should provide universal access though, especially while the copyright is still valid. [1] https://www.copyright.gov/mandatory/ https://www.copyright.gov/mandatory/
  - nodamage 2y ago
    Wait, does this apply to software?
    - mrighele 2y ago
      I have no idea :-). Frankly I was under the impression that this requirement had been weakened/removed over the years, but this is what they write on the official website and I cannot find any reference about that so that's why I wrote "how/if it works in practice" (maybe the devil is in the referenced details, but alas I have not time to investigate now) But my point was more about the matter of principle: it is reasonable for the government to ask a copy of the works (for preservation reasons) in exchange for time-limited rights over it.
  - jrochkind1 2y ago
    I mean, it certainly doesn't apply to 80 year-old 78s published long before the law said that. They don't go looking for ancient stuff that predated that practice.
azemetre 2y ago
What.cd was more than an archive of nearly all recorded music, both analog and digital. It had some of the best collage lists and recommendations I have ever seen. None of the child sites came even close, but some are promising. It was truly one of the best ways to discover music because behind each recommendation was a human that were both enthralled you were interested and would tailor their recommendations to suit your tastes. Spotify use to have humans curate their playlists and during this time is was almost as good, but since they've moved to ML models recommendations have gone to truly awful now.
jrochkind1 2y ago
Supposed according to whom? Believe it or not, the official role of the Library of Congress is mostly to be a library serving Congress. Their website says "The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office." They do keep copies of things registered for copyrights, for copyright purposes. I don't believe there is any legislation or funding to give them the role of finding and preserving 80 year old 78s en masse.
- SideQuark 2y ago
  The Copyright Office is and always has been an arm of the Library of Congress. So “supposed according to whom” is according to law and all of history.
  - jrochkind1 2y ago
    The copyright office does not try to collect and preserve, en masse, old recordings from before they started taking deposits of audio recordings for copyright registration. (1972 prob? sound recordings didn't have federal copyright protection in the USA before 1972) There is no my knowledge no legislation authorizing that or funding from the government for it. The Lib of Congress (probably not in the copyright office part of it) does have some historical audio recordings in their collection, including digitizations, but I don't think on this scale.
    - SideQuark 2y ago
      Why do you keep stating things you can’t find untrue with a moments search? Yes, the Library of Congress actively collects old audio (and even has 450,000 of those old 78s you claimed they don’t gather, and around another million unpublished ones). They have funding and mandates to do so. This entire thread is you posting opinion as fact, but these opinions are demonstrably false. Before posting things as true please do some due diligence.

dfxm12 2y ago

Yes, but it shouldn't have to. The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old. Few people even have gear to play the discs. Have the authors of these songs, the players on the recordings and the publishers of these discs not had enough of a chance to make their money? I'll take whatever judgement I can get in favor of the Internet Archive, but I think we should be aiming for a principled stance of enough copyright is enough!

Retric 2y ago
IMO copyright simply isn’t fine grained enough. Allowing 1:1 copies after 20 years isn’t economically meaningful to the creators in general, but when you use a work as part of a movie, commercial, political campaign, etc it’s co opting the original creator as if they where endorsing what you’re doing. Which simply isn’t appropriate while the creator is alive. On the other hand if you’re selling action figures you expect little kids to create their own stories with those characters. Culture has long mixed existing characters in new ways just look at any mythology before writing. Jokes, memes, fanfics, etc are the natural progression of a culture and giving up on that seems detrimental in ways that aren’t obvious.
- redundantly 2y ago
  Your distinction between commercial use and things like meme culture doesn’t hold up. For example, memes can harm creators too, like Pepe the Frog being co-opted by far-right groups. If you want to protect creators, there’s no simple solution, as both can distort their intent.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Focused on “commercial” and while ignoring “political campaign, etc” misses the point. There is a difference between making up a new Chuck Norris fact and using the meme to support religion, brands, politics, or whatever. Legal systems constantly deal with intangible abstracts like intent. “Pepe the Frog being co-opted” is cashing in on the existing work rather than operating in some hypothetical framework.

jancsika 2y ago

> Regardless of copyright, it does feel like there is a place for archival indexing of historical recordings. Does anyone have a link to such an index for what.cd? Just the following: * album/track string plus minimal metadata (release date or whatever) * hash for the track that goes along with that given piece of unique metadata Such a thing is obviously on the right side of the law-- you can't reconstruct the copyrighted content from the hash or the title. And the name of an artist/track title isn't copyrightable. That would be a valuable index that shows the exact state of what.cd's database before it was taken down. And I don't think it would be that large.

dublinben 2y ago
This might be what you're looking for: https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release

joe463369 2y ago

They can archive things without breaching copyright. Why not digitise your 78rpm copy of White Christmas, stick it in the vault, and publish it when the copyright expires?

idle_zealot 2y ago
There's always the possibility that the organization falls apart, suffers catastrophic data loss, or is legally compelled to destroy their copies. The name of the game is redundancy when it comes to archival, and the best way to achieve that is to distribute copies to anyone who wants one. Many parties storing copies on many mediums in many jurisdictions for many reasons.

matheusmoreira 2y ago

I'll never forgive the copyright monopolists for the closing of what.cd. The world lost another library of alexandria that day. Don't care what the law says, how many of their "rights" were infringed, how much money it was costing them. I'll never forgive them for it.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Me either, the alternatives that sprung up just aren't the same.

FactKnower69 2y ago

[flagged]