I think the RIAA's gonna lose actually. The media being archived isn't being used at large as a way to circumvent IP. I think we'll see a fairuse conclusion but not without some damage along the way - I suspect bits and pieces of IA will have to be removed.
Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
21–30 of 199 posts
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#22So the conspiracy theorist in me believes they may see this archiving as a threat for their current copyrights. So often modern copyrights holders get their copyrights invalidated when trying to enforce and litigate against others by someone finding an older work that predates the more more recent one. The Happy Birthday song got invalidated by an older work of "Good Morning to All" [1]. Having this database out there, it won't take long for someone to fingerprint this music that hasn't ever been stored in a digital form to use to invalidate claims using newer music. A certain cord progression or beat or a creative lyric and rhyme long forgotten in this old music could endanger parts of their current music catalog.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/u-s-judge-rul...
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#23Most 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…
The IA is risking all the work they’ve done so far.
If they want to archive copyrighted material, they should do it and sit on it until the copyright expires. If the hope is that the archive is around 1000 years from now, then what’s the rush to release these 78’s right now?
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#24While I strongly disagree with the length of copyright protection, after reading this and reading more about the case, from a purely legal perspective, I just don't see how IA has any defense. They basically just seem to be saying "these are old records, so we should be able to copy them. Also, our work is mainly for academic researchers." My guess is that they are arguing fair use, but I just don't see how that appl…
IANAL but there’s probably some fair use defense given that some may find value in studying the material and it probably doesn’t otherwise have market value.
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#25While I strongly disagree with the length of copyright protection, after reading this and reading more about the case, from a purely legal perspective, I just don't see how IA has any defense. They basically just seem to be saying "these are old records, so we should be able to copy them. Also, our work is mainly for academic researchers." My guess is that they are arguing fair use, but I just don't see how that appl…
"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, bu…
I think there's both a legal defence (its for legitimate research) and a law-change-advocacy (we think copyright in these works is silly) component to what they're doing.
I don't think you are wrong about the risks to them in fighting the case with what looks to be such abundently clear IPR over the mechanical recording. But, I do think the wider fight about what "should" be the IPR here, is worth fighting.
That advocacy lies in the part of your comment which heads off the "RIAA is bad" fu.
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#26If there's copyrighted material on the Archive you find valuable, download and save it now before it's the target of the next lawsuit. I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. This is exactly what we all said would happen when the IA gave a giant "Fuck You!" to copyright holders with the Emergency Library. The era of copyright holders ignoring the IA if they'…
>I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material.
I will point out that the Internet Archive is among the foremost source of warez[1] today.
Being brutally honest, what Internet Archive is doing these days isn't archiving or academic fair use anymore. They are flagrantly violating copyright, or enabling violations of copyright, and that is straight up not okay.
As an aside, do not be fooled into thinking all those ISOs[1] were provided by the rightsholders. They were not, even if they seem so at first glance. I would say the way they present the information is disingenuous at best, deliberate obfuscation at worst.
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#27If there's copyrighted material on the Archive you find valuable, download and save it now before it's the target of the next lawsuit. I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. This is exactly what we all said would happen when the IA gave a giant "Fuck You!" to copyright holders with the Emergency Library. The era of copyright holders ignoring the IA if they'…
Yeah, the NEL will probably go down as one of the dumbest decisions in Internet history. The IA got away with a lot of stuff and then just decided throwing out all semblance of copyright credibility was the right call, for some reason. That's a cat they can't put back in the bag either, as long as the same people are running the show there's no reason to believe the IA won't do future stunts either.
Counterpoint:
It wasn't like IA people woke up one day and decided to give publishers the middle finger because they felt like it. Trump had declared a national emergency due to COVID-19, under the guise of which Biden later tried to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars of student loans because he felt like it. Libraries were shut down and inaccessible to a lot of people during pandemic lockdowns. The NEL involved loaning people DRM'd books, not giving them out without controls. NEL also offered an email address copyright holders could contact to remove their content from the NEL; granted, visibility into that process wasn't great, but if you're a publisher or make a living as a self-published author and you aren't keeping tabs on major book-related news, isn't that on you?
IA's lending library is made up of scans. No casual reader wants to read scanned digital books.
I don't know what overtures were made to the publishers who ended up suing in part over the NEL (the lawsuits were more over digital lending of format-shifted works not specific to the NEL), but IA didn't try to blindside publishers in general. They had extensive dialogue with university presses, documented here: https://blog.archive.org/2020/04/27/forging-a-cooperative-pa...
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#28While I strongly disagree with the length of copyright protection, after reading this and reading more about the case, from a purely legal perspective, I just don't see how IA has any defense. They basically just seem to be saying "these are old records, so we should be able to copy them. Also, our work is mainly for academic researchers." My guess is that they are arguing fair use, but I just don't see how that appl…
> My guess is that they are arguing fair use, but I just don't see how that applies here when they make copyrighted works available, for free, over the Internet.
The fourth part of the fair use test rests on whether the use of the work impacts the commercial market for the work.
Given these works are often:
- Not offered in their original form
- Would likely have little residual commercial value if so offered
- And, the article states, are only accessed by one researcher per month
Indicates that the research, educational, and cultural value from this use likely far outweighs the impact to the commercial use of these works.
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#29I really want to know if the record labels tried a DMCA takedown request. Normally IA follows those, I can't determine if one was sent and the IA ignored for some reason or if the record labels purposely chose a different manner of attack.
One of the stories mentioned something about an ignored cease and desist, but that seems like a separate thing.
Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media
#30If there's copyrighted material on the Archive you find valuable, download and save it now before it's the target of the next lawsuit. I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. This is exactly what we all said would happen when the IA gave a giant "Fuck You!" to copyright holders with the Emergency Library. The era of copyright holders ignoring the IA if they'…
>I expect it won't be long before you can't get old magazines or other nostalgic and niche material. I will point out that the Internet Archive is among the foremost source of warez[1] today. Being brutally honest, what Internet Archive is doing these days isn't archiving or academic fair use anymore. They are flagrantly violating copyright, or enabling violations of copyright, and that is straight up not okay. As an…
Yeah, and if you read the ruling in the controlled digital lending case, it was a mess. IA wasn't making sure the print copy came off the shelf, and they were linking to their own site (BWB) to sell copies of the book. Not a well built case to take to court.