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Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

blog.archive.org

131–140 of 199 posts

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#131
If only they could finally get their donation box working properly. Every time I try, it fails me. I do not remember what went wrong last time, but it somehow never works for me. I remember, than at some point it did not let me type in the card field or did not check the card number. I wonder how much in donations they already lost this way.

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#132

So 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 ther…

It's interesting because it implies that music is finite. Or possibly that commercial music is finite - there's an infinitely long tail of weird shit that we don't want to listen to, but the stuff we do want to listen to is confined to a finite segment of possible music. If so then eventually all music will be free, because it will be repeating a previous iteration of the same tune. This also implies that music is di…

Do you mention the distinction between creation and discovery because it's a distinction in law? Cos it seems intuitively obvious to me that distinguishing between creation and discovery has no philosophical merit - creativity happens within many finite domains, the size of the problem domain really has little relevance to something's artistic value.

The exhausting of useful chords as you describe has both already happened and will never happen. There are countless songs already based on the most common chord progressions, but new ones will also continue to be found for the foreseeable future. We're nowhere near knowing the size of this domain.

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are obviously saying "DMCA takedown request" when they mean "generic takedown request" and arguing about whether the DMCA is the kind of takedown request to make in this case is missing the point. If they don't want it there, did they ask to have it removed before going to court, or did they do the thing vexatious jerks do?

As stated in the lawsuit, Sony, et al. filed their side of the required paperwork under the Music Modernization Act with the US Copyright Office. Internet Archive meanwhile failed to do so, and in failing to do so did not give Sony, et al. an opportunity to give or withhold permissions as the rightsholders. So this lawsuit, to me, seems like a fair thing to do. Sony, et al. were never given an opportunity to respond…

The Internet Archive seems to be operating under this theory:

https://blog.archive.org/2018/10/15/the-music-modernization-...

But none of that really addresses the point, it's just another example of a law they couldn't use for some reason. You don't need any specific law to try negotiating with someone before you file a lawsuit.

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#134
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am completely on the IA's side here, and I hope they win the case. Down with copyright. However, "on average, each recording in the collection is only accessed by one researcher per month" seems to me like a dishonest way to present the data. Surely surely there are one or a few recordings in the project that are vastly more popular than others. That's always how it goes. So "on average" completely obscures how pop…

I disagree. A median value might be really misleading (you could have very high usage for 49% of the collection, and nothing for the rest). But assuming average means "mean..." You might have a few hotspots, but there's a very tight upper bound on how many downloads of each item. Further, it argues that the overall collection has a very high research and preservation value compared to the total number of downloads.

I don't agree. The size of the set is of paramount importance to that point. They can always bring the mean down by just adding more recordings to the set, to further obscure how popular the most popular recordings are. In a set of 10 billion, of course people aren't listening to most of them.

Quite clearly what the plaintiffs are afraid of is that there are a few very popular works in there that they could be making real money from. There's no way to know this from the mean alone.

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-profits essentially have to be the ones to push the limits of laws like this, because it's not profitable, so for-profit entities aren't going to do it. But someone has to do it or you can never get a precedent saying that something good is actually allowed. The problem is the RIAA knows this, because they have expensive lawyers, and they try to avoid proceeding with a suit unless they think their victim has made…

Although he actually had a profit motive, god bless Larry Flynt.

And this is why public companies are worse than private ones. A public company exists to make the shareholders money. A private company exists to do whatever the owners want. And then, once in a while, one of them wants to do something good.

But sadly most major companies are public anymore.

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shellac 78s are old but equipment to play them is commercially available and they can be played on turntables that support 78 rpm with the right cartridge. I misplaced the 78 belt for my Pro-ject turntable during a move a few years ago and in the mean time found a copy of New World Symphony that I’ve been wanting to listen to.

I have a collection of several dozen 78 rpm shellac records that I inherited from my father, who inherited them from his father. I have a turntable but it won't play 78s. Been wanting to check with my local university to see if they could digitize them and maybe take the originals as a donation. I have also thought about looking for an old Victrola at an antique market and keeping them to play as a novelty, but it wo…

If a local university doesn't take them, the IA will - they accept donations of physical materials and will digitize and index them: https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#137
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Congratulations, I think you hit every tired cliche that the OP requested explicitly not to descend into > Copyright expires after certain amount of years, depending on the country and the law? Yes. In case you didn’t notice, this is specifically about a case in one country, for things that are still under copyright. > it looks to me like you are an afforded troll by the company to spread out the company propaganda o…

> you hit every tired cliche that the OP requested explicitly not to descend into

Op asked us to not tell him they are "greedy bastards", and he asks that because he knows they are. Op knows he is wrong for the obvious reasons and asks us to not see him as "wrong" and to close eyes and pretend those reasons just do not exist. It is just stupid.

> You are egregiously wrong.

Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am not. I have drawn my conclusion after reading all of the comments and seen all of his replies and link he posted, that is how I perceive them.

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#138
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Shellac 78s are old but equipment to play them is commercially available and they can be played on turntables that support 78 rpm with the right cartridge. I misplaced the 78 belt for my Pro-ject turntable during a move a few years ago and in the mean time found a copy of New World Symphony that I’ve been wanting to listen to.

Do you know what are current sales figures for 78s? If I release on 78 rpm, how much can I expect to sell?

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#139
post #118
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's not unreasonable to ask for a better understanding of the applicable law(s) in a post about a lawsuit.

> It's not unreasonable to ask for a better understanding of the applicable law(s) in a post about a lawsuit.

Of course, I completely agree with that :-).

Re: Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

#140

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…

> Most record players don't even play 78's Really? I don't know turntables, but I feel like every DJ wants a Technics one. The first several I looked at on their website play 33 1/3s, 45s, and 78s.

DJ turntables like Technics have selectable speeds but are also insanely expensive. Lots of modern belt-driven players marketed towards audiophile hipsters don't even spin at 45 RPM (which is fine because the 7" records being pressed now mostly are often 33RPM anyways)
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