Record Companies Sue Internet Archive For Preserving Old 78 Rpm Recordings (reuters.com) 73
Long-time Slashdot reader bshell shared this announcement from the Internet Archive:
Some of the world's largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old.
The project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium. The resulting preserved recordings retain the scratch and pop sounds that are present in the analog artifacts; noise that modern remastering techniques remove.
"The labels' lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings," reports Reuters, including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven."
"The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'" The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case could be as high as $412 million.
The project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium. The resulting preserved recordings retain the scratch and pop sounds that are present in the analog artifacts; noise that modern remastering techniques remove.
"The labels' lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings," reports Reuters, including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven."
"The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'" The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case could be as high as $412 million.
Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright isn't meant to keep a rights owner profiting in perpetuity - especially anyone other than the original creator. It's meant to let you profit enough to encourage creators in the first place.
Copyright that lasts longer than a normal human working lifetime is extremely ludicrous, and should be ignored wherever you can get away with doing so.
Too many ka-ching idiots to change anything (Score:2, Troll)
Do a quiet survey of the general public; they are convinced that these long term copyrights are their guarantee of a payday someday when they write a song or a book or something.
Their odds of doing so are something close to the odds of winning the Powerball, but don't try to convince them otherwise. Copyright form is impossible because of the stupids.
Re:Too many ka-ching idiots to change anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the "general public" living in your head, but no, the actual general public thinks they're just as dumb. Every copyright extension has always been a kickback to large media conglomerates, and only media conglomerates and their agents think they're beneficial.
Re:Too many ka-ching idiots to change anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Do a quiet survey of the general public; they are convinced that these long term copyrights are their guarantee of a payday someday when they write a song or a book or something.
Which is perfectly reasonable when you're thinking of profiting by your own work during your own lifetime. In your children's or great-grandchildren' lifetime, not so much.
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"Which is perfectly reasonable when you're thinking of profiting by your own work during your own lifetime. In your children's or great-grandchildren' lifetime, not so much"
Awesome plan for those artists who don't produce a successful work until their 80s or 90s... How about 50 years or the death of the artist, which ever is the longest?
Re: Too many ka-ching idiots to change anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, no. Copyright should just be long enough to produce the next couple of works.
Do you want to pay your plumber an annual royalty for unstopping your toilet? Work done is done. You wrote a book? That's great, you get a fair chance to sell it. Five years ought to be plenty. The original 14 years was very generous.
Anything beyond that is nuts, and purely the result of big companies buying corrupt politicians.
Re: Too many ka-ching idiots to change anything (Score:4, Interesting)
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That may be so in America, but in most of the world, long copyrights are either ignored, or assumed to be a public demonstration of how America is even more corrupt than the country they live in.
The general public in most of the world believe that Americans have sold their souls to the devil.
A lot of the rest believe they are t
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I would predict under that system that a LOT of kids would be getting primary credit and have a parent or guardian signing over the rights to corporations for a small fee.
Copyright needs abandonware and must sell rules (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright needs abandonware and must sell rules.
no more disney vault where they can take stuff off the market.
Re:Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that's stupid? Ponder this: "Back in the USSR" was released in 1968. If McCartney dies this year, it will enter PD in 2094.
More than a CENTURY after the USSR that song is about ceased to exist and over 125 years after it was published.
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Was the Beatles stuff on 78 's ?
I hear Paul and Ringo sang Let it Be with Dolly Parton recently.
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78s were dead by the mid 1950s. Some early Elvis songs were still released on 78s.
Re: Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:2)
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78s were dead by the mid 1950s. Some early Elvis songs were still released on 78s.
My father was definitely buying classical music on 78s in the 1970s. They were seen as having greater fidelity.
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I actually just read that some Beatles music was released on 78 in India and The Philippines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] under "Shellac Era."
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What a wild coincidence. That very recording is being played on our local community radio station as I saw your post.
I still prefer the original, but they nail it.
Re: Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:4, Interesting)
Good point. I volunteer at our library's Friends-of used bookstore and the boss limits what goes on the free cart for this very reason, which means we end up tossing books. Not the way I'd do it.
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The boss is a douche and the American Library Association should be told about this unethical practice.
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Re:Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:4, Insightful)
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Forgetting the original intent allows them to boil you like the proverbial frog.
If something different is wanted, it ought to be presented as fresh replacement legislation rather than as continual tiny 'adjustments' to existing law.
Re: Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:2)
Re: Proof the system is twisted past broken (Score:1)
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People in the past understood it was to maximize the public good [archive.org] (a long read, but well worth it, when copyright length extension was discussed in the past.)
an excerpt from some ways down -
I believe, Sir, that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with equal safety challenge my honourable friend to find out any distinction between copyright and other privileges of the same kind; any reason why a monopoly of books should produce an effect directly the reverse of that which was produced by the East India Company's monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essex's monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the case. It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.
I call them LIARS... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quote: "The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'
Those recordings are not affected by the LOUDNESS WAR that has destroyed many records making them mere noise of their original composition.
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Quote: "The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'
Those recordings are not affected by the LOUDNESS WAR that has destroyed many records making them mere noise of their original composition.
If people other than the copyright owners don't have copies all it takes is having an owner who refuses to RENT copies out and destroy the copies that they themselves retain and it is gone. So if I were rich enough to buy all copyrights of a particular performers work that is only streamed I could get the only copies and destroy them.
It works just the same if the only copies are in the same location for the streaming operation and the building is totally destroyed. All copies are gone.
The Internet Archiv
Easy Solution, RIAA Submit your paperwork. (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's an unreasonable ask - which, of course, is your point. "Easy solution" is sarcasm - you aren't interested in any solution at all. And it's trivial to level such a demand against anything you don't particularly like that has a history measured in decades.
How will a lawsuit preserve songs? (Score:2)
But then Paul McCartney wonâ(TM)t make any mo (Score:5, Funny)
How are the Beatles going to continue making more albums if we donâ(TM)t respect copyright?
See Movies on Celluloid Nitrate Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
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Something like 90% of the silent era has been lost.
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There was a fan group with an agreement with the studio who owns the old Jack Benny TV show to let the fans digitize the series. When the Studio (which has no plans to EVER release it again or make new copies) found out that these digitized copies would have NEW copyrights owned by the fans they backed out on the deal. The show will now be totally lost if it isn't already. Dog in the manger, if it won't be mine it won't be any ones.
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They REALLY that stupid? (Score:3)
"The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'"
You're telling me no one representing this idiotic stance has ever logged on to their 'authorized streaming service' and suddenly found someone else decided a recording was no longer available?
The streaming services themselves being a business, face the danger of being lost, forgotten, and/or destroyed. You'd have to be some kind of special idiot to believe otherwise.
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All my music is protected by Microsoft's "Plays for Sure" DRM, so I'll never lose access.
Public Domain (Score:3)
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Public Domain is the natural end of all copywrited works. It's spelled out right there in the laws that authorize it.
Money subverts any interpretation of Reality that you try to uphold. We are all a bunch of 3 year olds holding our fingers in our ears and screaming 'nu-uh!, can't hear you!'.
Universal Music Group (Score:1)
Universal Music Group the company that lost 120,000 to 175,000 master recordings in a big fire 15 years a go should shut the f up
The sad thing (Score:2)
face no danger (Score:5, Insightful)
"The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'"
Baby, it's cold outside...
Opinion (Score:2)
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Okay, neutral tone engaged... (Score:2)
So these recordings are still available and for sale, right? Which means they are generating revenue in some form. The intellectual property is not idle. So they are forced into the position of either defending their copyright, or relinquishing it. They own the performance, and that performance is the same in all media.
No matter where you sit on the "morality" side of this debate, the act of defending the copyright is not unreasonable. What the rules "should be" is a different question. Of course the curren
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That's true. I think my wires are indeed crossed.
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They could also enforce the copyright by agreeing to and assigning limited use rights that support the people preserving these old recordings for posterity, at reasonable rates. Like 1 cent per 100 million downloads per song.
Torrent link? (Score:2)
Anyone have any tips on how I can download the entire collection, preferably as a torrent?
copyright lasts far too long (Score:2)
Copyright law (Score:2)
Copyright should not be forever (Score:2)
Old 78s is a perfect argument for why copyright needs to expire. The record companies aren't preserving this old recordings but they are using the copyright hammer to prevent others from doing it for no damn good reason.
The longest a copyright should last is life of the artist plus 10 years. And there are solid arguments for it being much less than that. If a corporation registers a copyright, they must name a single principle artist for this benchmark.
This is a good fight.. for somebody else (Score:2)
I'm glad that somebody is fighting this fight, but I wish the people running archive.org would stop looking for new battles to chase and just focus on their original task of preserving the web. Let somebody else do this kind of thing and deal with the liability issues. It's stupid for them to risk everything they've already accomplished because they keep getting interested in new ideas. Focus.
Are these recordings not in the public domain now? (Score:2)
dishonest and misguided "reforms" (Score:2)
Every time some jerk proposes to "reform" something our founders gave us, it's a change for the worse. Oh, and don't bring up slavery as a distraction - that's THE example always used to support all the fake garbage "reforms" and I'll address it below.
To the subject at hand: Our founders wanted a vibrant economy with lots of innovation and creativity, unleashed from the traditional bad actions of societies with royal families. Traditionally, an artist, a composer, a writer, or an inventor would do something
They were supposed to wait until 2067 (Score:2)
(Obligatory IANAL)
Technically, the record labels have a point.
The US Copyright office has assigned [copyright.gov] a 95-year copyright to anything published prior to February 15, 1972, with the possibility of 120 years if it had not been published before that date.
So recordings at least 95 years old (1928 and prior) at this point may be allowed to be published.
The last recording covered under this rule will enter the public domain February 15, 2067. If it is readable at that point is anyone's guess.
Distributing vs. preserving, politics vs. law (Score:2)
Copyright laws set limits on what is allowed. The U.S. Copyright Office [copyright.gov] FAQ has info on works published from 1978, and before that it seems things get more murky. But ... if the record companies actually hold copyright (which my hunch is they do, based on how U.S. copyright law seems to be about sc***ing the consumer whenever possible), then it would seem reasonable others are not entitled to distribute the copyrighted works.
We may not appreciate that. I think it is perfectly unreasonable. Don't like it? En
Fuck you, record companies! (Score:2)
The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.
Yeah, musicians that are all DEAD. They do not benefit one dime from those records. It's all for the benefit of the rights holders, which are not the artists but most often the record companies. Fucking assholes at record companies taking culture hostage. They should be burned over a big flaming heap of cocaine.