https://blog.archive.org/2025/04/17/take-action-defend-the-internet-archive/ Internet Archive Blogs A blog from the team at archive.org Menu Skip to content * Blog * Announcements * archive.org * About * Events * Developers * Donate Take Action: Defend the Internet Archive Posted on April 17, 2025 by Chris Freeland [16_9-logo-white-letters-on-black-1024x575] The Internet Archive needs your help. A coalition of major record labels has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive--demanding $700 million for our work preserving and providing access to historical 78rpm records. These fragile, obsolete discs hold some of the earliest recordings of a vanishing American culture. But this lawsuit goes far beyond old records. It's an attack on the Internet Archive itself. This lawsuit is an existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything we preserve--including the Wayback Machine, a cornerstone of memory and preservation on the internet. At a time when digital information is disappearing, being rewritten, or erased entirely, the tools to preserve history must be defended--not dismantled. This isn't just about music. It's about whether future generations will have access to knowledge, history, and culture. Sign our open letter and tell the record labels to drop their lawsuit. Posted in 78rpm, Audio Archive, News, Wayback Machine - Web Archive | Tagged 78s, lawsuit | 25 Replies [b091be61] About Chris Freeland Chris Freeland is the Director of Library Services at Internet Archive. View all posts by Chris Freeland - Post navigation - Community Webs Digitization Grant Reveals Stories of San Francisco's Immigrant Communities New Digital Collection Preserves Key Books on Drug Use and Policy - 25 thoughts on "Take Action: Defend the Internet Archive" 1. [dfc3b]XYZ April 18, 2025 at 3:29 am Would they have sued if you had only digitized and documented the albums, offering them for private access, without also offering public access on the site itself? Reply | 1. [87a8b]gabriel. April 18, 2025 at 3:54 pm But... that's not the point of the Archive. The point of the Archive is to make things publicly available. Reply | 2. [17864]Vincent Giannell April 20, 2025 at 8:12 am Sadly, they would. Reply | 2. [a86d7]Keri April 18, 2025 at 9:09 am It may not be about music per se; corporations are willingly or unwillingly acting towards current authoritarian power structure's goals. The orange-faced Adolf wannabe and his lackeys would be happy to see IA taken off the picture, an equivalent of burning books from Institut der Sexwissenschaft in 1930s Germany, erasing preserved knowledge and records about anyone the current administration doesn't like, pre-censorship US government materials, scientific papers and many others. Reply | 3. [93e53]ABC April 18, 2025 at 1:18 pm To: XYZ That is like asking an R victim "if you wern't wearing that shirt would he have R'd you?" Reply | 4. [e402b]J April 18, 2025 at 1:39 pm It would be great to see who the coalition of record labels is so people can make efforts to boycott their artists. Reply | 5. [7de70]JE April 18, 2025 at 2:31 pm Yeah so I signed the petition, but I didn't "chip in". I would have chipped in for legal fees, but the change.org petition chip-in is just for them to put the petition on their front page? and send an email? Reply | 6. [bac8f]M April 18, 2025 at 3:10 pm Internet Archive is just doing a great job in preserving media that would otherwise have been lost. The difference here is preserving not profiting from. Reply | 1. [17864]Vincent Giannell April 22, 2025 at 1:50 am Too bad those greedy corporations don't see it that way. They never did. Reply | 7. [52401]Alexander Farlie April 18, 2025 at 4:52 pm Until 'old' (but copyright material) has laws to protect good faith archival by collections, museums and archives, then copyright holders (however wrong it seems) have every incentive to aggresively "protect" their interests. I personally think that if the contested material is apparently claimed as copyright it should be removed from the archive immediately, but with the catlog entries being updated to indicate why. It SHOULD ideally have been removed when the Music Modernisation Act passed, but the Internet Archive may have had reasons to do otherwise. I will be very annoyed and dissapointed , if I loose access to clearly open resources on the site (or the entire site), such as the high quality scans of the Catalog of Copyright Entries, resources I have used for numerous researches to determine the status of old material, precisely to avoid using in copyright material in specific situations. The Internet Archive did not ask to be sued over clearly good faith efforts, but sometimes a better strategy is to admit that due to changes in circumstances a curtailing and termination of certain projects is the better option. Reply | 1. [17864]Vincent Giannell April 22, 2025 at 1:56 am The TIA would've been sued either way. Reply | 8. [d76ca]James Rogers April 18, 2025 at 7:24 pm Is there any back up plan in case the worst does happen? Reply | 1. [17864]Vincent Giannell April 22, 2025 at 1:48 am Probably not. Even if there are, it wouldn't help. Reply | 9. [da63f]John Doe April 18, 2025 at 7:34 pm Fighting against big corporate money is pointless. They will crush you, whatever it takes, it's just the cost of operation for them. Petitions and public outcry may only delay the inevitable. The only solution is to gain the government support, but you lack the resources to lobby for it. Instead you should focus on securing the data long-term. Move it somewhere outside the reach of their hands and lawyers. Maybe to a faraway island, or p2p network. Reply | 1. [17864]Vincent Giannell April 22, 2025 at 1:51 am Moving it far away won't be enough. They'll find it eventually. Reply | 10. [e6968]Orion Blastar April 19, 2025 at 12:08 am I fully support TIA (The Internet Archive) as a library for abandoned works. I am disabled, and if I had the money, I'd donate some. All I can offer is moral support. Reply | 11. [9094e]John da Nukah April 19, 2025 at 1:13 am TIA has saved the retro community with access to abandoned projects... Why dont they just sue the internet and www? Let us know who it is so we can convince them to change their mind.. Reply | 1. [17864]Vincent Giannell April 22, 2025 at 1:55 am These guy will NEVER change their mines with money involved. Reply | 12. [09868]Michael April 19, 2025 at 2:24 pm If I was POTUS, I would just withdraw from the Berne Convention and reverse all those stupid copyright laws, to get the Internet Archive out of this mess. Reply | 1. [17864]Vincent Giannell April 22, 2025 at 1:53 am Unless you're bribe by an offer you couldn't refuse. Reply | 13. [0514f]Jay Crenshaw April 19, 2025 at 6:27 pm I love internet archive, but I would just delete those record recordings instead of paying the record industry's ridiculous fine and ruining everything else that's good about the site. Not worth it just to please a handful of vinyl loving purists out there Reply | 14. [22c55]golem April 20, 2025 at 3:24 pm I want to donate money,but im Chinese,and i do not have us dolars Reply | 15. [c81e1]IMSLP April 21, 2025 at 4:05 am Unfortunately, Internet archive elected to both digitize and host the old recordings in the country with the world's most ridiculous copyright law, especially with respect to sound recordings. The so-called "Music Modernization Act" technically left any actual copyright in pre-1972 recordings under the laws of the fifty states while creating a federal performance right for such recordings ex nihilo. The net effect of this - from the finest congress money can buy - is that all sound recordings from 1925 through 1971 are subject to the newly minted performance right, a de-facto copyright - even for a recording of public domain music by composers like Bach, Mozart and Joplin. Other countries are less insane. Sound recordings published before 1963 are public domain in the EU, to give one example. So are composers and other authors dead over 70 years. In light of the court record in the United States regarding the fair use provisions in the copyright law - which is basically the entire basis of archive.org's defense - things look very grim indeed. A better argument could be made that sound recordings lack even a modicum of originality under the high threshold set by the supreme court decision in Feist v. Rural. Even if one accepts that a sound recording (versus a performance) has enough original content to qualify they are at best derivative works and should not be eligible for a performance right. Hopefully the valuable preservation work done can be rescued by donating it to an independent entity in another country with more reasonable copyright laws where it can be stored and curated for eventual release. What a sad mess this is. Reply | 16. [ad55c]Jonathan Hasford April 21, 2025 at 5:47 am [quote] including the Wayback Machine, a cornerstone of memory and preservation on the internet. [/quote] It may, just possibly, also be a source of annoyance, embarrassment, and outright humiliation for the sorts of governments and corporations who spend their time lying their arses off (which seems to be most of them these days). So much so it would not surprise me at all to learn that corporate types moaning about old 78 recordings is merely the ostensible reason for this lawsuit, whilst wanting to see the Wayback Machine disappear is the actual one. Consider how inconvenient it is for these governments and corporations to have a tool online that allows anyone to go back, take a screenshot of the exact thing the government/corporation are swearing up and down they never, ever said (honest!) and ask, "What about this, then, eh?" 700 million is quite a sum of money, but ask yourself: how much would that lot be willing to club together and pay to make the WM go away for good and save them all of the embarrassment they are subjected to year-in, year-out as a result of it being online and accessible to everyone? (Just a thought.) Reply | 17. [52401]Alexander Farlie April 22, 2025 at 6:33 pm I will note that back in 2020, certain indviduals within the Wikimedia community, made some efforts to ensure public domain resources (such as scanned public domain books and US Federal documents) did not vanish. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:IA_books Not that IA would make formal donations of course. Reply | Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. 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