Worthless leeches. Preservation of media is so important, otherwise so much of our history will be lost to these greedy corporations.
Write your reps folks! I wrote my senators and congressional rep; if enough reps hear about this and realize how important the internet archive is they can help (even having a senator/representative getting in the middle with the threat of changes to the law to protect the internet archive could result in a much more favorable outcome).
None of these corporations want history recorded at all, without a record they can never be painted in a light they don’t fully control
What the Archive did may as well be illegal, but the fact that the record labels did not even bother to send them a Cease & desist letter, instead suing directly for 400$M, tells you everything you need to know about the record industry
These record labels are scum, and their lawyers are scum for attempting this.
Record labels going after this is so classless. Are they going to sue libraries for loaning out cs's?
I mean they probably would if that didn’t mean suing the government, although they might win in todays climate
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Major record labels are suing the Internet Archive, accusing the nonprofit of "massive" and "blatant" copyright infringement "of works by some of the greatest artists of the Twentieth Century."
"Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists, and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium," Kahle said.
From their perspective, the Great 78 Project undercuts the industry's profits from selling licenses to stream some of the world's most popular recordings of all time on services like Spotify or Apple Music.
Lawyers for record labels did not respond to Ars' request to comment but wrote in the complaint that the Internet Archive attempts "to defend their wholesale theft of generations of music under the guise of 'preservation and research,' but this is a smokescreen: their activities far exceed those limited purposes."
Because record labels' lawsuit quickly followed on the heels of a challenge from book publishers who successfully sued the Internet Archive over copyright claims earlier this year, Kahle has questioned the motives of lawyers behind this latest complaint.
“Now the Washington lawyers want to destroy a digital collection of scratchy 78 RPM records, 70 to 120 years old, built by dedicated preservationists in 2006,” Kahle told The New York Times.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good bot
70-120 years old? Wouldn’t some of this be public domain now?
One would think, but no.
According to Wikipedia specifically about music
recordings published before 1923 expired on January 1, 2022; recordings published between 1923 and 1946 will be protected for 100 years after release; recordings published between 1947 and 1956 will be protected for 110 years; and all recordings published after 1956 that were fixed prior to February 15, 1972, will have their protection terminate on February 15, 2067.
Mickey would like a word
It is a sad day
Sad
Honestly, I love me some internet archive but they should probably lose virtually any given case against them.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
