Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

Most record players don't even play 78's. I had to go out and buy some borderline novelty player to play a few Soviet 78's.

The whole point of copyright is it's a limited time monopoly that must end at a reasonable time, at which point works fall into the public domain.

The problem is sheet music, music recording, likenesses, photography, and written works all have radically different interpretations of this, or have sometimes become perpetual due to corporate $$$ lobbying.

PS: Fuck the RIAA. They're risking the preservation and archival of human art for all time at the behest of a few big money corporations.

Legal considerations are not the only considerations. What the court says is not accepted by all as the final word.

And why should we need to confine our replies to a narrow and arbitrary framework of existing case law, when there is so much more at play?

"Statement from Brewster Kahle, digital librarian of the Internet Archive: “When people want to listen to music they go to Spotify. When people want to study sound recordings as they were originally created, they go to libraries like the Internet Archive. Both are needed. There shouldn’t be conflict here.”"

From the article

I believe they are arguing that the intent behind the digitization is fair use, as you say, but what I find interesting is they seem to argue that there is no loss of profit from their work, which is a valid point to raise - if this is all hypothetical exceptions can and should be made to the law.

Even if they don't have a case, say the copyright law is very tight and clear and there's no way this can skirt around it - they still can bring it to court, fight it, and lose until they get it overturned by the Supreme Court and they get a special status or the copyright law is amended. This is standard - it's how the 19th amendement was passed I believe, I'll look for a link.

Edit: to clarify, there is no damage to the copyright holders because the medium holding their work is impossible to be used to listen to their work by anyone but experts, like the IA

Edit 1: Here's what I was remembering - it's not an amendment, but it's neat!

https://lithub.com/how-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-gloria-steine...

Why do we always defer to these copyright mongers? They're so absurd.

Ah yes, preventing the listening of "Tip Toe Thru' The Tulips With Me" by Bert Ambrose & his Orchestra is a pressing national priority.

Oh, the national economy will collapse if someone can hear "I Lift Up My Finger & I Say Tweet Tweet" by Stanley Lupino.

I found their "sacred rights" implausible when the RIAA was hauling grannies into prison 20 years ago or suing babies and dead people and I'm still not convinced today.

Why do we have to continue to put up with this crap? It's like the SCO/Linux bullshit but it never ended. I really wish things were less insane. This is so stupid.

There needs to be attorney crowd funding so the 99% can have legal representation and not continue to get trampled by these lunatic clowns

Copyright is meant to serve the public. This is done by incentivizing artists and corporations but the goal is to promote creation so that the populace ultimately benefits. If this isn't assumed, then you assume government should not work for the people.

By doing something that's technically illegal but antithetical to the spirit of public good, IA is highlighting how perverted copyright law has become.

You want people to refrain from criticizing record companies greed but there's a clear argument that highlights this as the main motivation. Artists who own their own copyrighted works sometimes buy up old media of themselves and refuse to license it for fear of impacting the image they've created for themselves (or just because they're embarrassed). Very much different from this scenario, record companies are preventing use in a way that looks like extortion.

In my view, it's not that there isn't an argument to made that this is an illegal act, it's that there's a deeper question of whether it should be. Sometimes new laws are changed by breaking them.