Universal Music Group , Sony Music Entertainment and other record labels on Friday sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for copyright infringement over its streaming collection of digitized music from vintage records.

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.”

  • nolannice@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1211·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • coheedcollapse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      Yep. If the Internet Archive goes down, piracy is going to be the last bastion of preservation for the masses. It’s incredibly fucked up. The whole copyright system is incredibly fucked up.

      I suspect after the book loss, copyright lawyers for huge media industries all over the place are drooling over potential earnings.

      Makes me feel angry and helpless, honestly. The people in that industry know damn well a rip of an old record isn’t the same as a sanitized digital file, but they don’t care about preserving shit as much as squeezing a few extra bucks from the super fans and history buffs who may enjoy those files.

      • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        These companies will just push their blood money to there then. It’ll just turn into the whole PirateBay incident where lobbying got the original site shut down.

        Best way to stop this would be to get some heads rolling. Otherwise there will be nothing we can do.

    • Spambox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      The copyright lobby is crazy powerful and pretty scary.

      The whole Kim dotcom raid comes to mind. At the request them, the USA strong armed authorities to storm the guys mansion in new Zealand using helicopters and raid teams, punching and kicking him while he was on the floor, holding him for a month without a bail hearing, seized his assets and trying to extradite him because people were using his storage platform to store copyrighted material - which wasn’t even against new Zealand laws at the time.

      He later brought a legal suit against them for it and it was settled under wraps and sealed

      https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-wins-settlement-military-style-police-raid-171103/

      Rights holders are also why your streaming platform prices keep getting more expensive because they just can’t control their greed. People keep complaining Netflix pricing keeps going higher for example but a big part of it is because they are being squeezed for more and more money by rights holders to have their content in their catalog

  • MrSilkworm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    681·
    1 year ago

    Internet Archive makes me feel like a visit to an old section of a library that noone visited for a while every time I go there.

    It’s a shame that the US have at the same time people who treasure the need for preservation of culture and Civilization, and people who would sell their own mothers for the shareholder’s profit.

    If they don’t move to a country with more logical copyright laws, I’m afraid we ll lose the too.

    Dammit, 2023 is a year the Internet is gone to hell by the corpos faster than I can remember

    edit: formating

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    631·
    1 year ago

    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?

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
      201·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Zeron@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • howlongisleft@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
    431·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.worldEnglish
    272·
    1 year ago

    The only thing more grotesque than a music industry attorney is a conservative music industry attorney. Vile, sub-humans… All of them.

  • cyd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    252·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • medborgare@lemmy.worldEnglish
      191·
      1 year ago

      Could they still keep the content but not have it available to the public until it enters public domain or copyright laws are improved?

      • cyd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        142·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • Defectus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      The offshore platform where piratebay existed a while ago would be a nice place for them to operate from.

      • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        You’re referring to the so-called Principality of Sealand.

        The Pirate Bay began an attempt to buy Sealand in 2007, but it never went through with it and the website was never actually located there. Also, due to updated territorial claims by the UK over the years, Sealand is now firmly within British waters and has zero chance of ever being recognized as an actual sovereign state; although the owners still play it off like it’s a micronation for the lulz and merch sales the place would be considered pretty firmly subject to UK law in the case of things ever being important.

        Aside from all that though, Sealand tried for a time to market themselves as a “data haven” and due to a pile-up of failures and misunderstandings of reality that did not end well for anyone.

  • silvercove@lemdro.idEnglish
    257·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • c0c0c0@lemmy.worldEnglish
      311·
      1 year ago

      That’s an interesting principled stance. How should musicians provide for their familes?

      • natanael@lemmy.mlEnglish
        271·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
        122·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • c0c0c0@lemmy.worldEnglish
          28·
          1 year ago

          So, because they don’t pay artists enough, you shouldn’t pay them at all?

          I’ve got the karma to spare so I’ll be clear about it. I’m not going to say you have to pay for music. That’s between you and the people you want to keep making music for you. You can fly the black flag all you want, and it does make you something of a rebel, but it does not make you any kind of hero.

      • mark@programming.devEnglish
        61·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • c0c0c0@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          1 year ago

          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.

      • totallynotfbi@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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

  • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago

    It would suck to see the Internet Archive disappear over a bunch of music labels suing them. How am I supposed to see what jcctv.net looked like back in 2011?

    (Yes, jcctv.net is a real website. However it doesn’t do much today.)