Internet Archive Ends Legal Battle With Record Labels Over Historic Recordings (sfchronicle.com) 41
The Internet Archive has reached a confidential settlement with Universal Music Group and other major labels, "ending a closely watched copyright battle over the nonprofit's effort to digitize and stream historic recordings," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. From the report: The case (PDF), UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Internet Archive, targeted the Archive's Great 78 Project, an initiative to digitize more than 400,000 fragile shellac records from the early 20th century. The collection includes music by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, and has been made available online for free public access. Record labels including Universal, Sony Music Entertainment and Capitol Records had sought $621 million in damages, arguing the Archive's streaming of these recordings constituted copyright infringement.
The Internet Archive, based in San Francisco's Richmond District, describes itself as a digital library dedicated to providing "universal access to all knowledge." Its director of library services, Chris Freeland, acknowledged the settlement in a brief statement. "The parties have reached a confidential resolution of all claims and will have no further public comment on this matter," he wrote.
The Internet Archive, based in San Francisco's Richmond District, describes itself as a digital library dedicated to providing "universal access to all knowledge." Its director of library services, Chris Freeland, acknowledged the settlement in a brief statement. "The parties have reached a confidential resolution of all claims and will have no further public comment on this matter," he wrote.
Either the recordings are still available or not (Score:5, Insightful)
That's all the "comment" we need
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udhr18 udhr19 udhr27
that's all folks.
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IA is in a bad place right now. Not enough staff, ancient and brittle code base that frequently breaks, very poor connectivity outside parts of the US, and of course huge legal problems due to a combination of bad decisions and apparently ignoring legal advice (if they ever took it).
It's unfortunately very difficult to build an archive like that, but it should be a priority. Located in Europe somewhere.
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RFLOL - An Internet archive in the land of criminalizing speech because it hurts feels and the right to be forgotten.
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Are you talking about the actions taken against people not showing sufficient sorrow for the death of Charlie Kirk? Very North Korean, if you ask me.
Libraries have quite good protections in some parts of Europe.
Re:Either the recordings are still available or no (Score:4, Informative)
Who has been arrested in the UK over saying there are only two sexes?
Linehan was arrested for a sustained campaign of harassment and doxing against a child.
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This page [archive.org] claims over 400,000 recordings but links to a listing of only 187,034 audio files. I'm guessing the discrepancy is the girth of the suit: IA agreed to take down the files that the plaintiffs could prove were theirs and no money changed hands.
fraidy cats (Score:4, Insightful)
Appears to me as if the record companies were afraid to litigate on this one and establish any additional precedent on fair use that would run contrary to their interests.
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Appears to me as if the record companies were afraid to litigate on this one and establish any additional precedent
Possibly, but it takes two to settle, and the terms are confidential, so we don't know whose paying who or who is conceding what if anything. You have to have the defendant's permission or leave to withdraw a case. If the Archive were so confident about winning and establishing a precendent, then they probably would not have agreed to settle. That means they probably regarded their chan
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The problem with fair use law is that it is not very settled, and every case is a bit of a wildcard for both parties. We don't know if they assessed their chances of winning at 80% but the cost of time & money to litigate as too much of a burden. We also don't know what was offered in the settlement.
Re: fraidy cats (Score:2)
There's a rule: secrecy in negotiations always benefit the few.
The reason is that if you're a negotiator representing few people (such as say a CEO or a board of directors) then secrecy won't stop you from keeping your bosses informed about what you and your fellow negotiators are doing. You can't sell out your bosses, they'll find out through the other negotiators. You're on a tight leash.
But if you represent a large group of people, such as the rank and file members of a union, or the public at large, the
Fuck our corporate overlords (Score:2)
Where is it in the public interest where corporations can sue a nonprofit organization into oblivion over the attempt to preserve a public work from a historical figure that the corporation has itself abandoned? And where in Hell on Earth do these corporations think that the damages incurred are valued at $621 million dollars? Do they think they're losing out on $621 million dollars in shellac record sales?
It's in the public interest to preserve these works. If corporations aren't doing the work, then I
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It is not. We need to ask our legislators to get stronger exceptions for libraries added to the law.
There ALREADY are exceptions, but for some dumb shit reason a lot of digital stuff, such as copying sound recordings to a digital format, or streaming a library copy digitally, is specially excluded from or not covered by the exceptions which are written into the law for libraries that would apply if the library were disseminating the work using an analog medium to someone physically present. The int
Re:Fuck our corporate overlords (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah. We just need to revert to original copyright terms. 14 years, with one 14 year renewal. No one is creating content expecting it to take more than 28 years to make it worth their while. US copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times..." Extending those Times doesn't promote, instead it works against Progress.
I can point to a lot of copyrighted material which isn't "useful", except to make a profit.
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Just about anything would be better than the present case(s).
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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No - it's not public work - it is a commercial product. There is no abandoment here. You can still buy Sinatra on Amazon.
If it were anything to do with preserve, they wouldn't be streaming it and only keeping it on file.
> $621 Million We don't know the extent of what they were distributing.
All we do know, is that the "archive" acted in a napster like pirate fashion by dl'ing copyright works - rebroadcasting them and depriving the rightful owners of those copyrights ro
Re: Fuck our corporate overlords (Score:2)
Re: Fuck our corporate overlords (Score:2)
There very much is. I don't know the percentage off the top of my head, but a large part of the 78 Project is music (especially the specific versions) that has never been digitised before, and isn't for sale anywhere, except if you can find a copy of that original shellac. That was pretty much the point.
Since the archive doesn't seem to be completely inaccessible, I suspect the deal they reached is that the labels can make entries inacce
If you're not making money on it why lock it up? (Score:2)
Everyone knows copyright is out of hand, even the record labels and publishers, but they're not going to fix it. I had the opportunity to ask an author that I liked if she could donate her oldest works, long out of print, to Gutenberg or something so that people could still read and enjoy them. She said she would love to be able to do that, but the publisher wouldn't allow it since they held the copyright.
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The legal department gets paid either way.
Obligatory... (Score:2)
Melancholy Elephants
http://www.spiderrobinson.com/... [spiderrobinson.com]
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Melancholy Elephants http://www.spiderrobinson.com/... [spiderrobinson.com]
Thank you so much for that! It's extremely on-topic, I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I learned a few things as well.
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It'll be something I treasure and recommend from here on out.
A simple fix (Score:5, Insightful)
It will probably never happen, but the sane and simple fix is to make ALL copyright ownership end after, say, 30 years. And that would be applied retroactively. The work was first copyrighted in or before, say, 1995? Public domain - no ifs, ands, or buts, and no legal remedies for the copyright owners.
This would put an end to the Internet Archive's battles, and would be a great boon to YouTubers such as Rick Beato, who - courtesy of Universal - frequently suffers copyright strikes and de-monetization in return for promoting artists' music. By extension, it also obsoletes a lot of the arguments around what constitutes 'fair use', simply because many of those arguments are over material that goes back to the 80's, 70's, 60's, and earlier.
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The problem has been continued rollbacks of the public interest in copyright law, and even should some legislator push through your agenda, future Sonny Bonos will emerge to bend the law to the will of their corporate donors.
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There's another fix needed.
If the work is distributed with protection such as DRM then that does not count as a public release and does not get copyright. The first person to release it to the public having broken the protection gets the copyright, but for half of the remaining lifetime or five years, which ever is longer. All works that want copyright should be required to be registered in an actual copyright library as was true long ago.
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Forcing a choice between copyright and DRM - what a brilliant idea!
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It will probably never happen, but the sane and simple fix is to make ALL copyright ownership end after, say, 30 years.
Never say never!
1924 to 1977, copyright protection was for 28 years, with an optional opt-in renewal.
However if you meant "never again", you're spot on.
It was on January 1st 1978 it was changed so protection has no limits, and in addition to copyright protection they added copyright ownership to ensure if a work fell out of copyright protection due to some oversight, the work would not be in the public domain by default, but instead be owned by the copyright holder past expiration.
As the constitution never
Damages (Score:2)
Show the damages Universal, Sony Music Entertainment and Capitol Records suffered due to the loss of income from their own digitized product.
[Sound of crickets]
Court finds for the plaintiffs. Defendant to pay $1.
Were these works in danger? (Score:2)
Had anyone digitized these performances already? Were they in danger of being lost once the old records became unreadable?
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That's part of the key to this. So many rights holders have no interest in preserving the works, just making sure nobody else can share them. Do you know how many old celluloid movies are decaying in film vaults? How many old shellac records are the only copies of artist's work? How many wax cylinders are crumbling to dust either from neglect or waiting for a way to preserve them?
When I was growing up there was an old cylinder phonograph and a few wax recordings in a local museum showing the origins of
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Yeah that's why I asked. If in fact the rights holders haven't already made copies of these performances, then preservation is an issue. If there are already copies made then it's not as big of a deal, especially if they're available somewhere (presumably for a price).
If you're not anti-corporate by this point... (Score:3)
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