Archived version: https://archive.ph/ZGo6X
Universal Music Group (UMG.AS), Sony Music Entertainment (6758.T) and other record labels on Friday sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for copyright infringement over its streaming collection of digitized music from vintage records.
The labels’ lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive’s “Great 78 Project” functions as an “illegal record store” for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.
They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case could be as high as $412 million.
Representatives for the Internet Archive did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint.
The San Francisco-based Internet Archive digitally archives websites, books, audio recordings and other materials. It compares itself to a library and says its mission is to “provide universal access to all knowledge.”
The Internet Archive is already facing another federal lawsuit in Manhattan from leading book publishers who said its digital-book lending program launched in the pandemic violates their copyrights. A judge ruled for the publishers in March, in a decision that the Archive plans to appeal.
The Great 78 Project encourages donations of 78-rpm records – the dominant record format from the early 1900s until the 1950s – for the group to digitize to “ensure the survival of these cultural materials for future generations to study and enjoy.” Its website says the collection includes more than 400,000 recordings.
The labels’ lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings, including Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” and Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”.
The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and “face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.”
Didn’t they lobby government to extend copyright to ridiculous lengths, thereby denying the US public a robust body of public-domain works?
Where the fuck are our rights?
The only way we are getting them rights back is when we hold the rich and government hostage like they do with us. When their heads start rolling they might think twice about fucking with our rights.
Unfortunately, that’s just what we’re down to for options. We’ve tried reasoning with them, we got laughed at. We tried negotiating with them, we got cold shouldered and hard balled. We tried proposing more reasonable and logical systems, they just tripled down on their bullshit.
So yeah I’m up for seeing some pricks from the entertainment industry strung off and beheaded at this point.
Yeah like some 95 or so years even after the artist died. That’s 95 years of profiting for greedy executives off of the death of musicians after they’re gone.
More egregiously, corporations can and routinely do hire artists to make works, fire them, and keep ownership and profits for around a literal century beyond that.
And they won’t stop there either. You bet your ass it’ll be extended again once more corporations start hitting those public domain limitations on works they care about.
Well you have the right to remain silent. So there’s that.
Beyond that though I’m not really sure. I thought it was fairly clear in the US for a persons rights, but you guys are all over the place these days.Removed by mod
Then let me crack open ur head then
Removed by mod
You should have opened with that.
Do libraries also violate copyright laws? 🤔
The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and “face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.”
Until, that is, they succeed in having the archives destroyed. Then they can continue making shit artificially scarce to drive up the cost/demand.
This is why I never pay for music as a matter of principle.
I don’t care if it is cheap, or if the software is easy to use. I don’t pay for music. Period.
Even if it’s an independent label or unsigned artist?
Paying artists ≠ paying for music. If I want to support them, I will.
This unless it’s bandcamp Friday or it can be found secondhand.
Poor take
That’s an interesting principled stance. How should musicians provide for their familes?
Almost no musician makes any substantial money from music sales. Like at all, it’s genuinely extremely rare. Most makes more money from touring and merch.
Buy tickets for their shows at the venue. Buy their merchandise directly from the band. Never go through a middle man. Deal with the musicians directly. They don’t really make shit off record sales; they make up the bulk of their money from touring and self-selling merch.
Ask that question to Spotify’s CEO. Ask that question to YouTube. Ask that question to Sony Music Execs. Ask that question to Warner Music Execs. Ask that question to RIAA.
Come back to us with their responses, I’m sure you won’t get any.
So, because they don’t pay artists enough, you shouldn’t pay them at all?
Oh, so you didn’t ask them? Pitiful…
This isn’t Reddit, bruh, so stop worrying about your little karma count.
They’re (record companies) the ones with all of the money, dude. How am I going to pay for the musician’s living, huh? No, because it’s not my business, that’s the business between the musicians and their record companies. I have no say in what goes on in those negotiations, but you seem to think that I and pirates do, for some reason…
I remember back when music (or any artistic expression really) was done by people out of passion.
They used their talent to help people enjoy life more and did other things like picking up a trade for money.
These days, people feel like they can’t do anything to help other people without being paid for it.
When was this? When did people who need to devote their life to a craft long enough to get good at not want, even need, to be paid for it? There have always been hobbyists, and maybe that’s all you want, but there has never been a time when musicians would not have preferred to be supported by their passion, rather than the job they had to do in order to keep eating.
Musicians don’t make money either way.
I don’t think that 10% cut (or 0% if the artist still has debt) will amount to much for the majority of artists on a major label
Dmca and walked gardens of ways to consume media can fuck right off. Because anyone should have to pay to listen to music that’s 50 plus years old.
I feel like the Internet Archive is current day’s library of Alexandria and it’s going to get burned down for nothing.
Copyright in the US is an absolute joke.
Internet archive should move to somewhere like Switzerland
Legally speaking, I don’t see how the Internet Archive wins this case. Problem is, what happens then? It would be pretty unfortunate to lose the Internet Archive as a resource, over a risky foray into streaming.
Could they still keep the content but not have it available to the public until it enters public domain or copyright laws are improved?
That would have been the legally defensible move. But if this case goes through, they’ll be liable for past damages, which would bankrupt them.
IMO, this project of digitising/streaming old records should have been done under a totally separate organization from the get go, because of how risky it is.
