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Internet Archive responds to recording industry lawsuit targeting obsolete media

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

#141

Post by zimpenfish »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #108
ang_cire wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly because many of us recognize that the protections under GDPR are about reigning in dangerous corporate data usage, not about allowing people to curate their online image by scrubbing things they've previously made public. There is a huge gap between "you shouldn't be able to use my data for things I did not consent to in order to commodify me" and, "I should be able to force people to get rid of any info abo…

What happens when biotech enables effectively (or in practice, externally undetectable) seamless integration of artificial storage into the brain? When millions have perfect photographic memory, are they not allowed to recall the memorized account of personally acquired sensory experiences? If so, can the handful of individuals who can do so today, with no such technological enhancement, be sued for perfectly 'rememb…

> What happens when biotech enables effectively (or in practice, externally undetectable) seamless integration of artificial storage into the brain?

I would[2] put good money on "will never happen"[1].

[1] Or at least "any chance of it happening are on a timescale long enough that human civilisation will ruin itself well before we get there".

[2] But for the fact this is a long term bet and I am already old.

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

#142

Post by soco »

nottrobin wrote: post #128
mlyle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

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…

Shouldn't the plaintiffs then single out that particular popular record, and not try to take down the entire catalogue? It goes both ways - if you ask for all you get data about all and that data shows one access/month.

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

#143

Post by johnnyanmac »

throwayay583739 wrote: post #9
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

While 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…

This is a little meta but: it's great how you predicted a possible unproductive line of discussion that might result from your question and headed it off with a clarification. Props for communications skills. I'm also a little sad that this disclaimer is even needed. I think it says something about how the character of HN has changed in the last ten years--there's no longer an assumption that the people on the other…

>I think it says something about how the character of HN has changed in the last ten years--there's no longer an assumption that the people on the other end of the wire assume curiosity and good will.

The internet as a whole has diverged from assuming good faith, between polarizing politics, the rapid increase of bots, and general shift of popular sentiment over the decade. And there's also a lot more people online, so it's much harder to moderate for that even if you wanted to.

It's an inevitability since this site's moderation hasn't scaled with its user base.

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

#144

Post by shapefrog »

adventured wrote: post #18
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

While 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…

[flagged]

Yet HN almost universally gives them a pass on that epic scale privacy abuse while shrieking hysterically when LLMs scrape the exact same data from IA

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

#145

Post by stavros »

labster wrote: post #83
stavros wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, if you tell me that 120 years from now, one researcher a month will be accessing it, I'll go write a song right now!

But the hedge fund that owns the record company that will own the rights to your song won’t earn any money! How can you live with that future moral tragedy after you die?

[flagged]

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

#146

Post by HWR_14 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #66
mlyle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Couldn’t one argue that while there’s _minimal_ commercial viability of this work now, it’s still not zero? And that by making these available they could make it zero?

If there is value to them, why are the copyright owners not offering a way to pay them?

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

#147

Post by johnnyanmac »

itsanaccount wrote: post #20
throwayay583739 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a little meta but: it's great how you predicted a possible unproductive line of discussion that might result from your question and headed it off with a clarification. Props for communications skills. I'm also a little sad that this disclaimer is even needed. I think it says something about how the character of HN has changed in the last ten years--there's no longer an assumption that the people on the other…

Maybe because the average understanding of how our society is run, with things like morals, fairness and hope for the future, and the legal understanding of how our society is run has diverged. And maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter.

It's arguably always been like that. The Internet's audience (on average) has simply grown up to an age where they start to care about that more.

>maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter.

I know it feels cathartic, but "record company bad" is neither discourse, nor particularly good natured. It's more reflective of how forums have shifted by twitter's popularity into being "microblogs". You don't really talk "to" people on Twitter, you throw out your tweet among a sea of tweets.

A shame, because I hate twitter precisely because of that.

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

#148

Post by johnnyanmac »

acyou wrote: post #13
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

While 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…

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?

>And why should we need to confine our replies to a narrow and arbitrary framework of existing case law

Because the user wants responses from that narrow and arbituary framework. You are free to make or respond to another thread to look in another lens.

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

#149

Post by johnnyanmac »

realusername wrote: post #110
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

While 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…

> Would appreciate it if folks would abstain from responding with how the record companies are greedy bastards, How else would you interpret their behavior though? They are hundreds of thousands of dead artists on this archive and they specifically attack the ones which made money. The conclusion can only be that those record companies are just after the money, I don't see any other possible one from this behavior.

>How else would you interpret their behavior though

their goal isn't the analyze the company's intents. It's to understand what legal arguments IA has.The cards are dealt and the goal here isn't to change copyright law at large. At least, not at this stage.

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

#150

Post by noirscape »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

While 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…

I guess the main problem with the usual "they're a library" defense that IA usually gets to trot out is that their regular books usually are accessible under a lending system - that's to say, they manually digitize the books and don't let people read more copies than they have on file[0].

This system as I understand it doesn't apply to any of their non-book collections (not to mention it only applies to files that IA has uploaded themselves, the archive also accepts user submissions).

Fair Use is very unlikely to apply here I think. The fair use test looks in part at the question of how much of the copyrighted work is distributed (ie. A radio program promoting a song with a short jingle has a much more solid defense than others.) and "all of it" isn't a good defense. They could've put these recordings under their usual lending system, but they didn't and that probably makes them liable.[1]

For reference, I am not a lawyer, so if you think this is legal advice, go talk to an actual lawyer.

[0]: The ebook lawsuit they recently lost was because they disabled all lending restrictions for the pandemic, triggering the lawsuit. The lawsuit itself is ballooned with other crap because the usual nonsense from publishers is a thing, but the grounds for the lawsuit were unfortunately very solid.

[1]: That said, this lawsuit was probably triggered because the judge in the ebook case partially stripped IA of its library protections. The record companies probably are trying to arrange a similar removal of protections from IA, hence why this specific collection was targeted.

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