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Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

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Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#151

Post by jachee »

sidlls wrote: post #62
kmeisthax wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you can't vote None of the Above :/ Support among the US political class for copyright and patent law runs so deep that the main argument for untangling our economy from China's is not "they undercut US labor" or "they manipulate their currency" but "they steal our IP". An interesting choice of words, because that's an exclusive 'we'[0]. US voters have little need for copyrights and patents beyond ensur…

I'm not sure if you meant "you cannot become rich without owning copyrights, patents, oil fields, or real estate" literally or not, but it's not really true in any case. There are plenty of people (doctors, dentists, lawyers, software engineers, small business owners) who become wealthy without owning any of those things. Not as wealthy as those who do, perhaps, but wealthy nonetheless. I'm one of them--a lucky IPO t…

You benefitted from that IPO likely because you owned (shares of) profitable IP which, given the company went public, were likely protected by copyright and/or patents.

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#152

Post by jancsika »

HenryBemis wrote: post #31
ghastmaster wrote: post #6

This really scares me. The wayback machine is a treasure. I don't know what will happen to it if these cases succeed.

Imagine a mixture of 1984: Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. On the specifics of the lawsuit.. well if the law us bad, then change the law. But not following the law is not nice.

> On the specifics of the lawsuit.. well if the law us bad, then change the law.

The March on Selma and Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins agree with you.

> But not following the law is not nice.

The March on Selma and Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins disagree with you.

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#153

Post by lakomen »

tux3 wrote: post #132
nikanj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, not free and unlimited access to art! Anything but that!

Think of the middlemen and distributors, they need to get paid, otherwise who will be making the music?

Surely not those now dead people

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#154

Post by jtode »

rovr138 wrote: post #45
toomuchtodo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should not be concerned.

explain?

I'm also quite interested in the source of their peace of mind.

It might be that they're already involved in that project and it's flush with space and distribution; the message here might just be "we got this".

Or it might be "don't worry, corporate feudalism is great."

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#155

Post by wtallis »

ghaff wrote: post #47
gumby wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of that has since gone away. I remember the battles around '2000 when the record industry tried to get paid for each instance when parts of the music files were buffered (because they were "copies"). They weren't laughed out of court. These days I think they would.

IANAL, but I've written a bit about copyright and had it reviewed by a very good IP lawyer. There was at one point some controversy about this point--especially in the context of computer software licensing. But, as I understand it, current case law allows copying where it's necessary to functionally make use of a copyrighted piece of work.

> But, as I understand it, current case law allows copying where it's necessary to functionally make use of a copyrighted piece of work.

Not just case law; it's explicit in statute too:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117

> (a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

> (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or

> (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#156

Post by lakomen »

bluelu wrote: post #145
t0mas88 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can relocate that part to the Netherlands. Copying without public distribution is explicitly legal, and all storage media and smartphones carry a "tax" that's given to the rights holders to compensate them for this. For a long time downloading was legal (uploading wasn't), due to this. But it has changed sometime in the last decade. While the tax is still there and mandatory, so the copyright-lobbyists won on pa…

You are completely mistaken That fee only covers general piracy. It does not give you the right to copy copyrighted works. In fact, european copyright is much stricter than US copyright. There is no fair use and european copyright (based on the napoleon code) forbids making a copy of copyrighted works except for a few exceptions specifically mentioned in the law (eg a browser displaying a webpage, etc...).

The new copyright act, I don't know what all changed.

All I can say is that analogue copies were permitted. You play it back analogue and record digitally.

A youtube copyright claim one of my videos got, from where I filmed fireworks and there was music playing in the background, which was then auto-flagged by the machine, I responded with that video not being about the music and that I can't record fireworks without that music playing and that I had no influence over the person playing that music and that it was technically an analogue recording.

The claim was dropped.

That is however different from this case of the IA and Sony etc

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#157

Post by cannabis_sam »

The ONLY reason these disgusting predators can colonize human cultural output like this is the antisocial, and tremendously stupid copyright laws enacted.

It always makes me wonder why people want a tiny cartel of companies to own humanity’s music culture, and subsequently be able to bully companies like Spotify, Youtube and others into enforcing extrajudicial policies that maintain the cartel’s dominance.

Like, seriously, what is the perceived societal value here???

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#158

Post by lakomen »

j0057 wrote: post #148

> The complaint states that when the 78rpm records were converted into digital files, IA reproduced copyrighted recordings without permission. When IA copied those files to a server, that amounted to another unauthorized reproduction, and when it transferred those copies to the public, yet another. That first step, making a digital copy of a copyrighted work, is not illegal to my knowledge of at least Dutch copyright…

I seem to very vaguely remember some shenanigans in the past 3 years that lifted the 70 years restriction, but not sure if it was the US or EU.

Re: Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit

#159

Post by bscphil »

kirksan wrote: post #44
ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet Archive (including the Wayback Machine) basically exists in a legal Gray area (to be generous) that has mostly depended on not doing things (or undoing things) that caught someone's attention who was willing to actually take some action about it. For the most part, the IA doesn't have any more special status than you or I if we were to mirror someone's website or create a comic strip museum. A lot of wha…

The IA has been skating on thin ice for a long time. They’ve archived a ton of content I generated over the years, most of it copyrighted. In my case I don’t care, I actually appreciate it since I didn’t keep archives as well as I should and occasionally use IA to find my own stuff. Also, my content is worth approximately 25¢. Others are not so forgiving. What we really need are updated copyright laws that allow for…

100% agree with this. The biggest issue seems to be that they make no visible effort to find and disable user-uploaded copyright content, so it's effectively a free-for-all file sharing site. A lot of the cases are especially egregious because the uploading user will give the content an invalid "license" like CC0 that they have no right to apply.

I picked three random pieces of recent copyright content (Adobe Lightroom, the video game Hollow Knight, the Taylor Swift album "Folklore"), and I found all of them easily and trivially on the Internet Archive. In fact I found hacked versions of the entire Adobe CC suite. The IA is at least as complete a source for pirated content as most public bittorrent trackers.

Officially, of course, the Internet Archive is subject to DMCA safe harbor protections. This is user uploaded content, and so long as IA responds quickly to takedown notices, they're in the clear. But this story represents the situation de jure, not de facto. Ever since Viacom v. YouTube, it's been abundantly clear that even the biggest online platforms can't use this excuse in practice when sharing of copyright IP becomes rampant. YouTube put in the first version of their much maligned "Content ID" system the year after the Viacom lawsuit, and the parties settled out of court after YouTube lost at the circuit court level. [1]

I don't believe that the Internet Archive, as a much smaller entity, is likely to see a significantly different outcome - that is, unless the lawsuits manage to bankrupt them entirely. This would suggest they need to be much more proactive about removing or disabling access to copyright content on the platform.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....

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