[HN Gopher] Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyrigh...
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       Record labels hit Internet Archive with new copyright lawsuit
        
       Author : EMIRELADERO
       Score  : 248 points
       Date   : 2023-08-12 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
        
       | boomboomsubban wrote:
       | I don't understand, did the record labels DMCA strike the
       | recordings? The article says something about a cease and desist
       | that was ignored, but my understanding is that the IA follows
       | DMCA claims so there must be something more missing about this
       | story.
       | 
       | Sticking the IA with more legal fees as another poster suggested
       | seems plausible.
        
       | arghdos wrote:
       | > The complaint states that when the 78rpm records were converted
       | into digital files, IA reproduced copyrighted recordings without
       | permission. When IA copied those files to a server, that amounted
       | to another unauthorized reproduction
       | 
       | Am I wrong to interpret this as trying to outlaw ripping a CD and
       | uploading to a personal NAS? There's additional claims about
       | distribution to the public that (may??) seem more reasonable, but
       | that seems like some copyright maximalism trying to rewrite
       | history?
        
         | EMIRELADERO wrote:
         | Courts have ruled that _merely executing an exe file_ is itself
         | an act of copyright infringment, because the OS copies the
         | contents into RAM. That 's how deep it goes.
         | 
         | The reason no users are violating copyright when running
         | software normally is because of a special exception for
         | software in the Copyright Act.
        
           | teddyh wrote:
           | So executing software actually _isn't_ an infringement of
           | copyright, as an exception exists in the law? An explicit
           | exception is an actual exception (unlike "fair use" which
           | remains technically illegal until brought to a trial). AFAIK,
           | IANAL.
        
           | gcanyon wrote:
           | If we're going to be pedantic about it, just playing a piece
           | of music, from whatever medium it is stored in, is making a
           | (n analog and transient) copy of it.
        
           | terminous wrote:
           | > Courts have ruled that merely executing an exe file is
           | itself an act of copyright infringment, because the OS copies
           | the contents into RAM
           | 
           | You can't just drop an extraordinary claim like that without
           | a citation. When I search those terms, your comment is the
           | only one I can find that remotely resembles anything like the
           | case you're describing.
        
             | EMIRELADERO wrote:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Com
             | p....
        
               | vGPU wrote:
               | Hence, congress passed a law:
               | 
               | (a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of
               | Copy.--Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it
               | is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a
               | computer program to make or authorize the making of
               | another copy or adaptation of that computer program
               | provided:
               | 
               | (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an
               | essential step in the utilization of the computer program
               | in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no
               | other manner, or
               | 
               | (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival
               | purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed
               | in the event that continued possession of the computer
               | program should cease to be rightful.
        
               | uni_rule wrote:
               | Imagine how bad a judicial take has to be for Congress to
               | actually get up off their hands and legislate about in
               | the current year.
        
           | gumby wrote:
           | I think a lot of that has since gone away.
           | 
           | I remember the battles around '2000 when the record industry
           | tried to get paid for each instance when parts of the music
           | files were buffered (because they were "copies"). They
           | weren't laughed out of court. These days I think they would.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | IANAL, but I've written a bit about copyright and had it
             | reviewed by a very good IP lawyer. There was at one point
             | some controversy about this point--especially in the
             | context of computer software licensing. But, as I
             | understand it, current case law allows copying where it's
             | necessary to functionally make use of a copyrighted piece
             | of work.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | > _But, as I understand it, current case law allows
               | copying where it 's necessary to functionally make use of
               | a copyrighted piece of work._
               | 
               | Not just case law; it's explicit in statute too:
               | 
               | https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
               | 
               | > _(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner
               | of Copy.--Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106,
               | it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a
               | computer program to make or authorize the making of
               | another copy or adaptation of that computer program
               | provided:_
               | 
               | > _(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as
               | an essential step in the utilization of the computer
               | program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used
               | in no other manner, or_
               | 
               | > _(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival
               | purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed
               | in the event that continued possession of the computer
               | program should cease to be rightful._
        
           | cma wrote:
           | How about skip protection in portable CD players? It loads
           | bit ahead of time into a little buffer of RAM.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | t0mas88 wrote:
         | They can relocate that part to the Netherlands. Copying without
         | public distribution is explicitly legal, and all storage media
         | and smartphones carry a "tax" that's given to the rights
         | holders to compensate them for this.
         | 
         | For a long time downloading was legal (uploading wasn't), due
         | to this. But it has changed sometime in the last decade. While
         | the tax is still there and mandatory, so the copyright-
         | lobbyists won on paper.
         | 
         | In reality people are moving back from streaming to pirate
         | sites and nothing is being done about it.
        
           | bluelu wrote:
           | You are completely mistaken
           | 
           | That fee only covers general piracy. It does not give you the
           | right to copy copyrighted works. In fact, european copyright
           | is much stricter than US copyright. There is no fair use and
           | european copyright (based on the napoleon code) forbids
           | making a copy of copyrighted works except for a few
           | exceptions specifically mentioned in the law (eg a browser
           | displaying a webpage, etc...).
        
             | tokai wrote:
             | You are also completely mistaken. Making copies for
             | personal use is legal in the Netherlands and (many/most?)
             | EU countries.
             | 
             | > You are permitted to make copies of other people's texts,
             | music and photographs provided that they derive from a
             | legal source. The copies must be for your own use. It is
             | not permissible, however, to distribute or publish such
             | copies.
             | 
             | https://www.government.nl/topics/intellectual-
             | property/quest...
        
               | spookie wrote:
               | I can account that the same is true in Portugal and
               | Sweden
        
             | t0mas88 wrote:
             | It is called the "thuiskopieer heffing" which is literally
             | the "home copy tax". Making a non commercial copy of a
             | copyrighted work at home (not distribute it) is absolutely
             | legal in the Netherlands.
             | 
             | The fee is not about piracy at all, it's about legal home
             | copies that are not distributed.
        
             | lakomen wrote:
             | The new copyright act, I don't know what all changed.
             | 
             | All I can say is that analogue copies were permitted. You
             | play it back analogue and record digitally.
             | 
             | A youtube copyright claim one of my videos got, from where
             | I filmed fireworks and there was music playing in the
             | background, which was then auto-flagged by the machine, I
             | responded with that video not being about the music and
             | that I can't record fireworks without that music playing
             | and that I had no influence over the person playing that
             | music and that it was technically an analogue recording.
             | 
             | The claim was dropped.
             | 
             | That is however different from this case of the IA and Sony
             | etc
        
       | pessimizer wrote:
       | I like this case. It's about recordings that are 70 years old or
       | more, the vast majority are out of print, and the rest are often
       | precariously in print.
       | 
       | If I'm reading correctly, the silly nature of the claim that
       | 
       | > [...] of the 2,749 recordings listed in the complaint, all but
       | a "small sample" are already available to stream or download from
       | licensed online platforms so they "face no danger of being lost,
       | forgotten, or destroyed."
       | 
       | when the 2,749 recordings have been cherry-picked from
       | 
       | > [...] more than 400,000 works [...]
       | 
       | is pretty much an attack on their own claims that
       | 
       | > [...] to retain, restore and redistribute content that they
       | believe should never be lost to history [...is...] nothing but a
       | "smokescreen" to hide what amounts to IA offering "free and
       | unlimited access to music for everyone," regardless of copyright.
       | 
       | Not to mention that the IA constantly looking for copyrighted
       | works uploaded that are _not_ part of the  "Great 78 Project" and
       | reducing them to 30 second previews.
       | 
       | Prevailing on this would be a good thing. IA needs a win, even
       | though it doesn't need to be paying to defend itself against
       | another lawsuit. This is obviously vexatious. They're not really
       | concerned with 78s. They're hoping to bankrupt IA with legal
       | expenses, and/or they think that they have the fix in at a
       | particular venue that they think they can steer the case to.
        
         | nikanj wrote:
         | Oh no, not free and unlimited access to art! Anything but that!
        
           | tux3 wrote:
           | Think of the middlemen and distributors, they need to get
           | paid, otherwise who will be making the music?
        
             | lakomen wrote:
             | Surely not those now dead people
        
             | redwall_hp wrote:
             | I like how they've even managed to shove the middleman
             | bullshit into digital distribution, where there's
             | practically no way to even justify it.
             | 
             | You can't just upload music to Spotify or Apple Music or
             | whatever as an independent artist. You need to pay rent to
             | a distributor who is allowed to interact with the streaming
             | service. (Some of them offer the convenient feature of
             | administering royalties for cover songs, but it's an
             | additional cost and not a given...) Most will probably
             | never make enough royalties to cover the fees.
             | 
             | Then you have the whole growing SubmitHub thing. (Pay for
             | consideration on playlists to get exposure.)
        
       | aquariusDue wrote:
       | As an interesting side note almost 24 hours ago (roughly) I
       | believe someone posted a thread on 4chan's /g/ urging people to
       | back up the things they cared about on Internet Archieve warning
       | about an upcoming takedown/court case, looks like they weren't
       | fooling around.
        
       | isykt wrote:
       | If IA is dismantled, and doesn't manage to survive on its
       | Canadian or other outposts, historians will look back on its
       | destruction with disdain. Cultural heritage destroyed so
       | corporate stooges can afford another yacht or whatever.
       | 
       | The only way to fight this is to pirate the fuck out of
       | everything. Seriously. Fuck DRM, fuck gatekeepers, free
       | information NOW and ALWAYS.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Or run IA like SciHub.
        
       | drewbug01 wrote:
       | > "When Defendants exploit Plaintiffs' sound recordings without
       | authorization, neither Plaintiffs nor their artists see a dime.
       | 
       | All of the artists are dead.
       | 
       | > Not only does this harm Plaintiffs and the artists or their
       | heirs by depriving them of compensation,
       | 
       | Hereditary wealth and continued rent-seeking is a very, very poor
       | argument in favor of eternal copyright protection.
       | 
       | > but it undermines the value of music," the complaint adds.
       | 
       | Music has inherent value and worth that can never be quantified
       | or monetized.
       | 
       | Honestly, screw the record labels. We can argue about the
       | technicalities of copyright law until the cows come home, but
       | this suit is morally disgusting to me.
        
         | tptacek wrote:
         | I'm sure that whatever the labels are doing here is odious, and
         | that there's no validity to the suit, but "all the artists are
         | dead" isn't a valid argument. Artists receive, during their
         | lifetimes, funds valued based on the duration of the label's
         | rights to their work. Copyrights that terminated with the life
         | of the author would drastically reduce the compensation authors
         | got in their own lifetimes.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
           | api wrote:
           | If AI destroys anyone it would be the artists, since labels
           | with distribution networks could use it to create content
           | without ever needing to pay anyone.
           | 
           | The Internet should have taught us that if there is a portal
           | the owner of that portal and the network effect around it has
           | all the power.
           | 
           | Look at Twitter. Half its users hate its new management and
           | spend much of their time there complaining about it, but they
           | are still using it. Why? Because people are still using it.
        
             | prepend wrote:
             | Copyright is no threat to artists as artists create for
             | their own drive.
             | 
             | Copyright will kill millionaire artists.
             | 
             | Currently the system has poor artists and millionaire
             | artists. The millionaire artists will be hosed. The poor
             | artists are already poor so not much changes for them.
             | 
             | Most music is produced by people at home and with friends
             | chilling. Look at guitar center and all those stores. Lots
             | of instruments sold. Same for art supplies.
             | 
             | There are only a few thousand wealthy artists.
        
           | Asooka wrote:
           | Yes it should. Property is property. It is insane that some
           | property somehow becomes unownable after an arbitrary length
           | of time. If I own land, that land will go to my heirs or, if
           | none exist, on auction. Then someone else will own it. It
           | won't become permanently public and non-property.
           | Intellectual property ought to work the same way. The great
           | part is that we can create an infinite amount of intellectual
           | property, so everybody has an equal opportunity to own as
           | much as their fingers can write. Land is finite, art is
           | infinite. If there were a lot of art available entirely for
           | free, people would never pay for any new art and we will
           | stagnate.
           | 
           | I guess patents could be forcibly taken by the government and
           | licenses minted for free, if the current holder is determined
           | to be maliciously setting the price for licensing too high
           | and holding back science.
        
             | raincole wrote:
             | > Property is property. It is insane that some property
             | somehow becomes unownable after an arbitrary length of
             | time. If I own land, that land will go to my heirs or, if
             | none exist, on auction. Then someone else will own it.
             | 
             | Yes and in almost every country properties like land are
             | taxed by their values. If copyright lasts forever, it
             | should be taxed by its value too (not by income!).
        
             | beej71 wrote:
             | I see no reason why the laws around IP need to be the same
             | as the laws for real estate.
        
           | spamizbad wrote:
           | Oh labels love AI: they can train their catalogs and produce
           | "new" works from dead artists. Contracts already have AI
           | clauses which, if an artist isn't careful, gives the label
           | rights to use their works to have AI produce new content
           | under their name.
        
           | isykt wrote:
           | Copyright should be life of the authors full stop. My dad dug
           | ditches for half his life but I don't get checks in the mail
           | every time water flows through them.
        
             | beej71 wrote:
             | I think the publish date plus 20 years not to exceed the
             | life of the author is plenty.
        
               | blackoil wrote:
               | Would you like this for all assets, basically banning
               | inheritance. Govt will seize all property, savings,
               | stocks etc on a person's death.
        
               | beej71 wrote:
               | No.
        
               | adventured wrote:
               | There are some significant edge cases that can plainly
               | make that unfair.
               | 
               | Let's say Kurt Cobain dies at 27 (or even younger)
               | without an heir other than a very young daughter. ~95% of
               | his earning capacity might be in the next 15 years,
               | rather than the prior 5 years. The daughter might be cast
               | into relying on charity while everybody else gets to
               | freely commercially exploit his music after his death.
               | 
               | ('the US social safety net needs reformed'; pre-empting
               | those responses, because one is extraordinarily difficult
               | to reform, the other isn't nearly so; that'd just be an
               | excuse to hide behind)
               | 
               | Ritchie Valens comes from a poor family, creates a
               | gigantic hit, dies at 17. His family deserves nothing
               | specifically, while everybody else gets to freely
               | commercially exploit his young talent forever.
               | 
               | A life of the author clause is inherently cruel. 20 years
               | fixed, approaches that in a far more reasonable and fair
               | manner. Families / heirs matter too. They often suffer,
               | or otherwise carry a share of weight for the artist, so
               | the artist can create, tour, publish, publicize, etc.
               | Pretending otherwise is pure fantasy, it's life in an
               | idealized vacuum.
        
               | beej71 wrote:
               | I agree that's a potential loss with a 20 year or life
               | term, but I still argue this is a net gain for the world.
               | 
               | Edit: I might be flexible on the life part. But not the
               | 20.
        
             | comprev wrote:
             | That's because the contract he signed with his employers
             | did not include an agreement where he continued to get paid
             | for when water flowed through the ditches.
             | 
             | Some artists will have a contract for a lump sum, others
             | will have agreements for every time their record is played.
        
               | isykt wrote:
               | The contracts of adhesion that perpetuate society
               | disproportionately valuing one form of labor over another
               | do not validate the exploitation of one group of laborer
               | over another.
        
               | adventured wrote:
               | Not all labor is created equal, nor should it be. It's
               | not equal, it can never be equal.
               | 
               | And there's nothing that can ever be done to change that,
               | no matter how hard a state might try to force 'equal'
               | distribution of unearned money.
               | 
               | Society should value one form of labor different from
               | another, it's good that it always has and always will.
               | 
               | I've worked with plenty of very lazy bums that
               | intentionally, knowingly do 1/3 of their job while other
               | people have to work far harder because of them (or the
               | business would fail and everybody loses). People like
               | that are free riders, society should not be kind to them
               | when they're repeatedly fired from jobs. All labor isn't
               | equal, quite obviously, and treating it as though it is,
               | is unfair to the vast majority.
        
               | isykt wrote:
               | If there are people working 3x as hard, why aren't they
               | negotiating for 3x the pay? It would create an incentive
               | for the business to fire the people only doing 1/3 the
               | work, or else cut their pay by 2/3rds in accordance with
               | the value of the labor.
               | 
               | This does not happen because the workers involved don't
               | have that kind of power. The power imbalance between the
               | two parties is so vast that the laborers have no choice
               | but to accept unfair terms.
        
               | comprev wrote:
               | Management do have a method to legally fire those only
               | putting in 1/3rd of the necessary effort - Performance
               | Improvement Plans.
        
               | isykt wrote:
               | The managers have that power, not the workers. That's the
               | key.
        
             | knorker wrote:
             | Well, should be _capped_ by life of the author.
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | Copyright should be an annual fee that increases by year.
             | 
             | Year zero through five: free
             | 
             | Year six: $500
             | 
             | Year seven: $1000
             | 
             | Year eight: $2500
             | 
             | Year nine: $5000
             | 
             | Year ten: $10,000
             | 
             | Year eleven: $25,000
             | 
             | Year twelve: $50,000
             | 
             | Year thirteen: $100,000
             | 
             | Year fourteen: $250,000
             | 
             | Year fifteen: $500,000
             | 
             | Year sixteen: $1,000,000
             | 
             | Year seventeen: $2,500,000
             | 
             | Year eighteen: $5,000,000
             | 
             | Year nineteen: $10,000,000
             | 
             | Year twenty: $25,000,000
             | 
             | ...
        
               | remram wrote:
               | Some things make more money than others. A uniform
               | pricing means that Disney can afford to keep their work
               | protected for decades while my non-monetized short
               | stories/illustrations/blog posts will be protected for a
               | year.
               | 
               | How do you even price that per item? Do I pay once for
               | the blog? Once per post?
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | Big publishers would love that sort of scheme. It puts
               | copyright out of reach of basically everyone else.
        
               | echelon wrote:
               | Maybe my scale is wrong, maybe it's not.
               | 
               | In the above case, big media couldn't afford to drag
               | everything along forever. If every music track over 20
               | years old cost $25M per year to renew, they'd let tons of
               | it expire into the public domain.
               | 
               | This kind of increasing scale renewal fee forces them to
               | make more impactful works that are worth paying for. If
               | they're truly valued by society, they'll pay the tax to
               | keep them for longer.
               | 
               | It forces _everyone_ to keep creating, which is good for
               | employment and the economy. You shouldn 't stop your
               | output.
               | 
               | There's probably some optimal scale that incentivizes
               | everyone to make more, and more of the content to be
               | excellent.
        
             | codazoda wrote:
             | What about software?
             | 
             | I was thinking about this last night. Should I use a
             | license agreement that gives my proprietary software to the
             | public domain when I die? What about my open source
             | software that I can no longer maintain? In my case, the
             | software is probably not popular enough to continue without
             | me. Should it keep a GPL license or be converted to MIT or
             | to public domain?
             | 
             | What if I do have a hit someday and it provides income to
             | me? My family might rely on that income, at least for a
             | time, if I die early. I'd love to give a business to my
             | kids and them to their kids.
             | 
             | Anyway, just rambling. I agree that copyright is probably
             | too long.
        
               | beej71 wrote:
               | I have an unwritten dying wish to grant all my writing to
               | the public domain when I pass away, but still need to
               | figure out where to cram that in the will and need to set
               | it up with someone to update the licenses and copyright
               | notices for me.
        
               | hakfoo wrote:
               | I was always sort of surprised nobody invented a clear
               | declaration for that sort of thing-- a pre-packaged,
               | battle-tested paragraph you could put in your will that
               | says "On my death, all my copyrights immediately revert
               | to the public domain."
               | 
               | Market it in a cute way, like "content donor" analogous
               | to the "organ donor" tickoff on the driver's license
               | form.
        
             | lotsofpulp wrote:
             | Author's life is too long. Surely, 20 years is far
             | sufficient to incentivize creating media, although I would
             | err on the side of 10 years.
             | 
             | The copyright term is automatically too long if my anyone
             | who would benefit from it entering the public domain is
             | dead.
        
               | version_five wrote:
               | I think (but could be convinced otherwise) that the term
               | is less important than the restrictions. More liberal
               | definitions of fair use, for example, or clarity on when
               | something is a copy or a derivative (like with people
               | getting sued for vaguely similar songs) would be better.
               | The work is always the authors, I'm less concerned about
               | them retaining some kind of claim on it, especially if
               | they're still actively using it, as long as there's
               | sensible limitations on what rights they can block for
               | others.
        
               | lotsofpulp wrote:
               | I think that makes the situation more complex than needs
               | be by opening people up to more legal liability than
               | necessary.
               | 
               | As far as society is concerned, society's resources
               | (police, courts, etc) should only be given up to the
               | point that the incentive to create works of art exists.
               | 
               | At zero copyright length, we can say artists (and media
               | creating/owning businesses) have less than a desirable
               | amount of incentive to create (from society's
               | perspective).
               | 
               | At 100 years, we can easily say there is too much
               | incentive to seek rent and rest on one's laurels.
               | 
               | The most expensive works of art covered by copyright
               | right now are big budget Hollywood movies and tv shows.
               | If these businesses would continue to make them with a 20
               | year copyright term, then 20 years should be the max. And
               | I might even say they would continue to make them with a
               | 10 year term.
        
               | OfSanguineFire wrote:
               | I would be satisfied with 20 years for commercial use of
               | recordings, zero years - or simply no actual enforcement
               | of copyright - for personal filesharing. Filesharers
               | deeply passionate about music are likely to collect a
               | larger library of recordings than they could ever afford
               | to purchase, especially if they come from a relatively
               | poor country. (No, streaming services like Spotify don't
               | do it. As far as I'm concerned, if it's not a FLAC
               | securely preserved on my hard drive and backups, it
               | doesn't really exist.)
        
               | hakfoo wrote:
               | I think we need to completely revisit the ownership model
               | here. Kill copyright entirely. (I would vote for anyone--
               | up to and including Mike Pence-- who made this a major
               | plank of their campaign)
               | 
               | We have at least one corner of the universe where we've
               | defeated scarcity. We can't run out of music. Hell, we
               | can't even run out of a specific recorded performance, if
               | even the most trivial efforts of due-diligence backups
               | are performed. We should be proud-- we're at least one
               | step on the way towards Star Trek replicators and
               | universal abundance.
               | 
               | But the current system is so tied to the idea of
               | "markets" and "ownership" that only really make sense for
               | scarce physical goods, that we ended up having to force
               | everyone, under threat of law, to treat a limitless
               | resource that's part of our shared cultural experience,
               | like a rare physical widget that must be owned, sliced
               | up, and sold under restrictive covenant.
               | 
               | We should be taking all the money going into the content
               | business-- all the funds being spent on the production of
               | movies, music, novels, art, potentially even software--
               | and use it to bankroll an enormous centralized endowment
               | for the creative community.
               | 
               | This immediately silences all "but how will artists eat?"
               | strawmen. Even if you're not a live-show performer or
               | merchandising expert, you get paid by the endowment on a
               | predictable stipend basis, rather than having to hope you
               | can effectively monetize a package of "rights" while
               | dealing with an industry full of middlemen out to rip you
               | off.
               | 
               | This would ensure that many, many more artists can live
               | their passion-- how many great but unknown bands could
               | spend their lives touring, if we took the money that
               | bankrolled Taylor Swift's tour and sliced it up into
               | 50k-per-person-per-year grants? How many sculptors could
               | we keep on the books for the price of one Anish Kapoor?
               | It would also be interesting to compare efficiency of
               | funds delivery-- replacing a bunch of for-profit
               | publishers with a single cooperative or state-run entity
               | probably results in more dollars actually reaching
               | artists overall.
               | 
               | It also avoids the perverse incentives on the other
               | side-- if you make one world-breaking hit, you can't ride
               | it forever. Just because you sung White Christmas once
               | doesn't mean you get out of ever having to work again. If
               | we eliminate the opportunity to slice and subdivide
               | "rights" to a work, then there's no incentive to hold
               | back maximum utilization of it. Imagine the improved
               | utility of modern content services if they can get legal
               | access to _all the things_ -- Netflix and Hulu would have
               | to compete on the best infrastructure, UI and tooling,
               | rather than "only we have Futurama".
        
               | bigodbiel wrote:
               | Like the idea, but tangible arts like paintings or live
               | tours are scarce, unlike digital media. So for these
               | money should be going directly to the organizer (artist,
               | sculpture, troupe, etc). For non-tangible mediums, an
               | endowment would make sense (despite the bickering). I can
               | see an incentive for artists to then produce tangible
               | arts for the monetary rewards, but also our industry
               | already is filled with negative incentives and bickering.
               | Something new would be nice.
        
               | anigbrowl wrote:
               | Music and other media _are not fungible_. I think this is
               | a worm in the apple that dooms many market based
               | arguments. However your idea of a creative endowment is
               | intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
        
               | nick-of-time wrote:
               | I go in slightly different directions on both of your
               | proposals. I think _intellectual property in general_
               | should be eliminated, though I think copyright is a good
               | olace to start. As for the artistic endowment, I think
               | that the task of deciding _what counts as an artistic
               | endeavor_ is an intractable problem and that universal
               | basic income is much more simple and equitable.
        
             | version_five wrote:
             | Some VC will come up with a "drainage as a service" or
             | "uber for drainage" model that lets them extract more value
             | from ditches.
        
               | TheAceOfHearts wrote:
               | I know this is meant as a joke, but any sufficiently
               | advanced drainage system already includes contracts and
               | provisions for cleaning and maintenance. Drainage at-
               | scale is actually a very challenging engineering problem.
               | 
               | @PracticalEngineeringChannel on YouTube has plenty of
               | videos on engineering drainage systems.
        
             | charcircuit wrote:
             | Were the pipes that were installed leased to the city? An
             | artist could choose to release a song as public domain
             | after being paid to make it and people would use it without
             | paying them.
        
             | Wistar wrote:
             | Although, that'd be cool.
        
         | dumpsterlid wrote:
         | [dead]
        
       | staplers wrote:
       | The movie and music business sure spends a lot of money fighting
       | piracy. This fruitless endeavor draws a lot of parallels with the
       | war on drugs.
        
         | naasking wrote:
         | > The movie and music business sure spends a lot of money
         | fighting piracy.
         | 
         | If they spent it on providing a no-bullshit, reasonably priced
         | platform that provides access to their whole catalog, then they
         | would be making a lot more money than they would from lawsuits,
         | and piracy would be virtually non-existent.
        
           | wredue wrote:
           | Most people pirate to get stuff for free. If everything was
           | cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar
           | numbers.
           | 
           | Now, I do agree that "one pirate number doesn't necessarily
           | equate to one lost sale". But that's not what you're arguing.
           | 
           | Pirates have been saying this for decades, and yet despite
           | content being easier than ever, with pricing falling faster
           | than ever (non-streaming services), piracy is as healthy as
           | ever. If what you were saying is true, you'd expect piracy to
           | have fallen as different people's barriers for "cheap and
           | easy" were broken through, but that's not what's observed.
        
             | naasking wrote:
             | > If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would
             | exist at similar numbers.
             | 
             | This contradicts all the research that shows that piracy
             | went down when cheap, easy and reliable music services were
             | available that let you access content how you want, eg.
             | time shifted, different devices, not region restricted,
             | etc. And piracy went up when they tried to lock that stuff
             | down again.
             | 
             | Piracy will never fall to zero, but it's not worth fighting
             | below a certain point.
        
             | OfSanguineFire wrote:
             | > Most people pirate to get stuff for free. If everything
             | was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at
             | similar numbers.
             | 
             | As the other poster mentioned, the music piracy scene today
             | is a shadow of its old self. There has never again been a
             | private tracker as vast and ambitious as what.cd. Seed
             | numbers are down on lots of remaining trackers. I logged
             | into Soulseek recently (which used to be the obsessive
             | music anorak's filesharing network) and I can't find all
             | kinds of things that were widely shared a decade ago.
             | 
             | A lot of this is due to the rise of Spotify as a more
             | convenient means of listening. It is also due to so many
             | young people today using their phone as their sole device,
             | which is not very suitable for torrenting and other types
             | of filesharing.
        
               | wredue wrote:
               | It's actually because torrenting is harder than
               | downloading YouTube audio streams.
               | 
               | People want shit for free.
               | 
               | The number of people that openly state that they pirate
               | music has contracted a little bit, but it's nowhere near
               | "non-existent".
        
               | OfSanguineFire wrote:
               | If downloading YouTube audio streams is what music piracy
               | has become today, then I stand by my dismal remarks.
               | YouTube audio is recompressed, even the highest-quality
               | YT from yt-dlp --bestaudio is not up to the standards of
               | yore, and you miss out on things like album-art scans.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | I do think a lot of people stream music who would otherwise
             | pirate in various ways. But I don't really disagree with
             | your basic argument. There's a never-ending stream of
             | rationales for not paying for things.
        
             | absrec wrote:
             | Music piracy is almost non-existent post spotify. Streaming
             | service fragmentation and geolocking has resulted in more
             | video piracy but it still is less compared to what it was.
        
               | wredue wrote:
               | Did you actually look that up, or are you just believing
               | it cause piracy forums say it? Cause I did just look it
               | up, and you're not correct.
               | 
               | The ways that music piracy occurs has changed, for sure.
        
               | callalex wrote:
               | If you had actually looked it up you would have cited
               | sources.
        
               | wredue wrote:
               | You made the claim, so the burden of proof is on you,
               | nevertheless:
               | 
               | https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15764/prevalence-of-
               | music...
               | 
               | One thing I did find is that, for some reason, Covid saw
               | a drop in music piracy. That has nothing to do with the
               | claim that "since Spotify released (2011), music piracy
               | is non existent", though. I didn't bother to read on idea
               | of why that occurred.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | An analyst I know once argued pretty strongly that
               | Napster became popular not because it was free but
               | because it was more convenient than going to the record
               | store and buying a CD. I disagreed fairly strongly at the
               | time. But today? Times are quite different of course but
               | widespread streaming music with a near-universal (at
               | least mainstream) catalog suggests that a ton of people
               | are fine with paying $15/month to not bother seeking out
               | content through torrents.
               | 
               | While the situation is obviously messier with video, it's
               | also the case that many of us don't feel a burning need
               | to watch most specific content and are fine with having
               | access to enough stuff we want to watch without hassle.
        
               | giantrobot wrote:
               | > An analyst I know once argued pretty strongly that
               | Napster became popular not because it was free but
               | because it was more convenient than going to the record
               | store and buying a CD.
               | 
               | Some context for the younger HN audience: a CD used to
               | cost $15-20 new and almost no artist in the US sold
               | singles. If you wanted a song you heard on the radio you
               | needed to go to one or more record stores to find the CD
               | and pay your $15. Rarely did you get to sample anything
               | on the CD at the store. So you'd get home only to realize
               | you essentially paid $15 for one stupid song. Hopefully
               | you liked half the songs on the album so you were maybe
               | paying $3 per song you liked. Ripping that CD to MP3 was
               | also more time invested.
               | 
               | Even over a 28.8k dial-up downloading the same song of
               | Napster would only take about twenty minutes.
               | 
               | As the various online music stores showed, money wasn't
               | the main issue with Napster et al. People were fine
               | paying for music so long as it was convenient. By the
               | early 00s buying CDs was far from convenient for how
               | people actually wanted to listen to music. Music
               | streaming is just the latest convenience since everyone
               | has an Internet connected device in their pocket and
               | their "library" is just every song in the service's
               | catalog.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | >Music streaming is just the latest convenience since
               | everyone has an Internet connected device in their pocket
               | and their "library" is just every song in the service's
               | catalog.
               | 
               | Yeah, mobile probably played a role as well. Even if you
               | _have_ a few TB of music reasonably cataloged on a USB
               | drive at home, that doesn 't do you a huge amount of good
               | when you're somewhere where you only have access to your
               | phone or want to have a listen to some newly-released
               | album.
               | 
               | We're also in a situation where if you know someone with
               | vaguely similar music tastes, they could clone that few
               | TB in less than an hour but I honestly don't know how
               | much even that goes on these days. My sense is that most
               | people aren't interested in spending much time to catalog
               | their media.
        
               | OfSanguineFire wrote:
               | > Even if you have a few TB of music reasonably cataloged
               | on a USB drive at home
               | 
               | I have been pirating artists' entire discographies across
               | multiple genres, 200 CD box sets, etc. for 20 years now,
               | but I still have barely scratched 1TB -- and that's even
               | with my collection consisting entirely of FLACs, some of
               | which are large 96/24 files or 5.1 surround-sound files.
               | Audio alone just doesn't take up much space. I don't
               | think obsessive fans are going to get into a "few TB"
               | unless they are collecting for the sake of collecting,
               | not just building their own personal collection to listen
               | to. And a 1TB collection actually does fit now on your
               | phone thanks to Sandisk offering a 1TB SD card.
               | 
               | For films, sure, one is definitely looking at more than
               | "a few TB". I have a collection of about 600 films, all
               | of which are DVD images or Blu-ray remuxes, and that
               | already amounts to 6TB. With the availability of 4K
               | remuxes that can be up to 100GB each, demands on storage
               | will only grow.
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | Yes and no. Making music ubiquitous has been great for
           | stomping out piracy but terrible for revenues. This isn't
           | just a problem of underpricing. In the movies and TV space,
           | all the studios found out that exclusive licensing makes more
           | money because you can drag viewers from one subscription
           | service to another. At the most extreme you have shit like
           | the Disney Vault, which works because some creative work is
           | worth more dead than alive.
           | 
           | If you were correct we would have stuck with everything being
           | on Netflix and Spotify for $10/mo each because it keeps
           | piracy rates down. In practice, while piracy rates have gone
           | back up, they don't hurt the bottom lines of publishers as
           | much as they've claimed[0], at least relative to how much
           | they make from people buying multiple subscriptions. But the
           | law allows them to continue crying crocodile tears about how
           | much money they're losing from old sound recordings being on
           | an archive site.
           | 
           | [0] In other words, one pirate copy is not one lost sale
        
             | naasking wrote:
             | > In the movies and TV space, all the studios found out
             | that exclusive licensing makes more money because you can
             | drag viewers from one subscription service to another.
             | 
             | That's exactly the kind of shit that drives people to
             | piracy. Then they try to recoup their falling revenue with
             | litigation. It's stupid.
             | 
             | I also don't believe streaming has been that bad for
             | revenue. The financial shenanigans they go through to avoid
             | paying artists, writers and more are insane. It's part of
             | the whole impetus behind the current strikes.
        
         | jimbob45 wrote:
         | Their wealth managers must be tearing their hair out in
         | frustration. If they instead invested all the money, they could
         | easily weather the coming AI-induced collapse of their
         | industry.
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | > This fruitless endeavor draws a lot of parallels with the war
         | on drugs.
         | 
         | Neither were fruitless. The RIAA keeps the price of culture
         | high, and the war on drugs kept the price of drugs high.
        
       | vaylian wrote:
       | What is the best way to let these greedy bastards know that we
       | disagree with their conduct? Not buying records will only lead to
       | them wrongfully claiming that they "lost revenue due to piracy".
        
         | isykt wrote:
         | A brick through a window used to be a common way to make a
         | message known.
        
           | lakomen wrote:
           | They have so many windows nowadays though ;) in too many
           | cities
        
         | xhkkffbf wrote:
         | How? Set up your own record label and implement your wish list
         | of better terms. If you're reading hacker news, there's a good
         | chance you can do most of the coding for free/stock/spec. Then
         | you can be like totally cool about piracy and drink all of the
         | kool aid about how piracy is just a different form of
         | promotion.
         | 
         | My guess is that you'll come to the same conclusion as me:
         | piracy destroys marketplaces. It forces the honest people to
         | subsidize the free riders. If it were about something like
         | food, I can understand a Jean-Val-Jean argument, but can anyone
         | say with a straight face that they're stealing these fresh cuts
         | just so their baby can listen to ccool music?
         | 
         | I think you'll also come to a grudging recognition of just how
         | expensive it can be to market music. I've always thought the
         | percentages demanded by record companies were outrageous, but
         | when I tried to duplicate their services on my own I quickly
         | learned where the money goes.
         | 
         | The IA is on a crash course to destroy the livlihood of
         | artists, writers and other content creators. Don't ask me why.
         | It doesn't make sense. They provide a nice service for society
         | but now they're out on some crusade.
        
           | hirako2000 wrote:
           | A couple of fallacies in there.
           | 
           | Distributors have
           | 
           | - bended creative work property laws/precedents to maximise
           | profits.
           | 
           | - Been using marketing as barrier of entry.
           | 
           | - many times used anti competitive practices.
           | 
           | Paying consumers are not subsidising free riders. Given zero
           | or an infinity of pirates the ticket price would not change.
           | An effective anti piracy solution doesn't imply pirates would
           | convert into paying consumers, some would of course, and
           | ticket prices would most likely increase rather than
           | decrease. Dubious parallel and nobody is forced. Taxes are
           | forced subsidies. Aside those that's business models and
           | market response.
        
           | isykt wrote:
           | > how expensive it can be to market music.
           | 
           | Did you write this comment in 2001? The cost to produce and
           | promote music has dropped to near zero. SoundCloud rappers
           | have become millionaires. Billie Eilesh recorded her first
           | album in her bedroom.
        
             | raincole wrote:
             | Recording album is not marketing.
             | 
             | If you think there is no marketing and PR people behinds
             | those "grassroots superstars", you're utterly naive.
        
             | sidlls wrote:
             | I'm dating someone who has visions of fame through his
             | music. These "soundcloud rapper millionaires" and Billie
             | Eilesh have so much more marketing spent on them than you
             | might believe. It is _hard_ to make it anywhere in that
             | business without a lot of promotion, and that requires a
             | lot of money. Initially often in the form of small payments
             | that add up. A few hundred dollars here to be added to a
             | playlist, a few hundred there for gig promotion...over time
             | that turns into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
             | For one artist. To even get a tiny start that may not lead
             | anywhere.
        
               | jacquesm wrote:
               | Almost every business out there has costs associated with
               | it.
        
           | GhostWhisperer wrote:
           | i grew up downloading everything from music to games, and
           | windows xp, anything i could get my hands on
           | 
           | these days i do pay for everything, music(spotify),
           | movies(netflix, apple tv), games(steam, gog, itch.io,
           | playstation), to software(app store, gh sponsor,
           | opencollective) - i still pirate though; if netflix has an
           | anime but happens to be dubbed on the wrong language, i'll
           | hit the high seas and get me a copy dubbed in english, no
           | regrets
        
           | BoxFour wrote:
           | > The IA is on a crash course to destroy the livlihood of
           | artists, writers and other content creators
           | 
           | Every single artist mentioned by name here has long since
           | passed away, and in some cases even their children have
           | passed away.
        
           | iforgotpassword wrote:
           | There's more between "being cool with piracy" and "thinking
           | copyright should hold indefinitely". This is about 78rpm
           | records ffs. All the artists are probably dead by now.
        
             | redwall_hp wrote:
             | The artists were probably paid a one-off $50 to come into
             | the studio and record, and the rentiers have profited off
             | them ever since.
        
         | satao wrote:
         | Stop voting in capitalistic assholes who value intelectual and
         | property rights over everything else.
        
           | lotsofpulp wrote:
           | The only way to start on this path is to support ranked
           | choice voting.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | Then we'll be free of copyright like Australia must be.
        
               | lotsofpulp wrote:
               | Start on this path <> guaranteed to achieve the desired
               | results in X years, especially when Australia is not a
               | big player on the global scene.
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | Australia has ranked choice voting and it has not
               | resulted in Australia making better decisions. I'd argue
               | that in muddling the level of preference between options
               | by overquantizing things, it biases elections towards the
               | status quo and a complete lack of change, and motivates
               | the two main parties to minimize (or eliminate) their
               | differences.
               | 
               | It can be better to pick the one you like most rather
               | than to sort a bunch of candidates, some of which will be
               | inauthentic and strategic, evenly along a continuum. In a
               | field of nine, that transforms the number one candidate
               | from being _preferred_ over the number nine candidate to
               | being _nine times better than the number one candidate_.
               | 
               | I think there's a reason that Australia requires that you
               | rank _all_ choices. If you don 't, it spoils your vote.
               | If you intentionally spoil your vote, that's actually a
               | crime in Australia (don't listen to people who tell you
               | that the least Australia requires is that you turn in a
               | blank ballot; Australia disagrees.) You're not even
               | allowed to ask people not to rank certain candidates. It
               | is a jailable offense:
               | 
               | > In 1986 Albert Langer wrote a conference paper entitled
               | Don't Vote, examining possible electoral strategy for the
               | left, aiming to bring down the Labor government and to
               | target ALP candidates in marginal seats. In 1987 and 1990
               | there were instances where Victorian voters were urged to
               | take advantage of section 270 of the Commonwealth
               | Electoral Act and give less preferred parties equal last
               | preferences (now known as a Langer vote), so as not to
               | express a choice for either major party.
               | 
               | > As a result of his imprisonment, Amnesty International
               | declared him the first Australian prisoner of conscience
               | for over 20 years.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Langer
               | 
               | Ranked choice (and obligatory) voting inflates the
               | support for status quo parties. It's also a way to make
               | that pesky 40% who don't vote because they hate both
               | parties disappear.
        
               | lotsofpulp wrote:
               | Thanks for the interesting context. I will have to read
               | further on mandatory voting or mandatory ranking of all
               | candidates, but as it is, first past the post in the USA
               | always leads to voting for the lesser evil.
               | 
               | I never get to vote for the person representing the
               | policies I want, but rather voting against the handful of
               | policies I do not want.
        
               | defrost wrote:
               | > If you intentionally spoil your vote, that's actually a
               | crime in Australia
               | 
               | Incorrect.
               | 
               | Spoilt votes are legal and non criminal - spoil your own
               | vote as much as you like.
               | 
               | > Albert Langer
               | 
               | wasn't convicted of spoiling his vote.
               | 
               | He advocated everybody spoil their votes, and handed out
               | "how to not vote" flyers
               | 
               | He was asked not to, there was a court case, an appeal,
               | an injunction against Langer, a deliberate violation of
               | that injunction, an arrest for violating that injunction,
               | a sentence, that sentence halved, a review of the law
               | created to mess with Langer, and then that law was tossed
               | out.
               | 
               | So ..
               | 
               |  _Never_ a crime to spoil a vote in Australia.
               | 
               |  _Briefly_ "illegal" to advocate others do so (during one
               | election).
               | 
               | That's no longer the case.
               | 
               | > I think there's a reason that Australia requires that
               | you rank all choices.
               | 
               |  _Only_ in the House of Representatives - where you order
               | a small number of choices to choose a candidate to
               | represent your local district.
               | 
               | https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_HOR.htm
               | 
               |  _Senate_ votes (the other House) only require to rank
               | six parties (out of a field of potentially many) OR rank
               | 12 individuals (out of potentially many more)
               | 
               | https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_Senate.h
               | tm
               | 
               | You really don't appear to know much about the Australian
               | Electoral system.
        
           | cscurmudgeon wrote:
           | In a true free market, there won't be govt enforcement of IP.
        
             | raincole wrote:
             | In a true free market we'll be hiring militias to protect
             | our properties. Or more likely, be hired as one.
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | Unfortunately you can't vote None of the Above :/
           | 
           | Support among the US political class for copyright and patent
           | law runs so deep that the main argument for untangling our
           | economy from China's is not "they undercut US labor" or "they
           | manipulate their currency" but "they steal our IP". An
           | interesting choice of words, because that's an exclusive
           | 'we'[0]. US voters have little need for copyrights and
           | patents beyond ensuring that creative works get made. But the
           | US political class is utterly dependent on their continued
           | existence.
           | 
           | BTW, this even extends to Trumpism. Trump was very vocal
           | about China stealing "our IP." The US economy is structured
           | such that you cannot become rich without owning copyrights,
           | patents, oil fields, or real estate. Everything else will be
           | thrown into the abyss of partial post-scarcity.
           | 
           | [0] In some languages (not English) there's an inclusive 'we'
           | and an exclusive 'we'. The latter would be used with the same
           | implication as, say, " _We 've_ won the lottery - except for
           | you."
        
             | sidlls wrote:
             | I'm not sure if you meant "you cannot become rich without
             | owning copyrights, patents, oil fields, or real estate"
             | literally or not, but it's not really true in any case.
             | There are plenty of people (doctors, dentists, lawyers,
             | software engineers, small business owners) who become
             | wealthy without owning any of those things. Not as wealthy
             | as those who do, perhaps, but wealthy nonetheless. I'm one
             | of them--a lucky IPO that occurred a few years after I
             | started working at my current employer turned me from an
             | indebted paycheck-to-paycheck engineer into someone who
             | could retire tomorrow and still live a decent middle-class
             | lifestyle on my investments. I didn't own real estate until
             | I after I got rich.
        
               | jachee wrote:
               | You benefitted from that IPO likely because you owned
               | (shares of) profitable IP which, given the company went
               | public, were likely protected by copyright and/or
               | patents.
        
         | dano wrote:
         | The answer is not palatable because it will take forever:
         | contact your representatives in the federal government and
         | lobby for copyright reform. IA might be luck they were not sued
         | for more. I believe the MP3.com lawsuit is relevant reading htt
         | ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....
        
           | Andrex wrote:
           | Man, that's just a bad precedent. Space shifting should still
           | apply to the internet and digital files.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | Build AI music tools. Make it easy for the next generation of
         | artists and create a Cambrian explosion of new music to wash
         | out the old, copyright encumbered works.
        
           | jacquesm wrote:
           | New _crappy_ music.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | Ransomware with no key provided from a jurisdiction that won't
         | extradite if discussing threat modeling around generic org
         | weaknesses. Everyone is vulnerable to a sufficiently resourced
         | attack, one simply needs to understand their adversary's
         | defense budget (incident response arrangement, cyber insurance
         | limits) and attack surface.
         | 
         | Educational purposes only, not legal advice, don't do this.
        
           | sschueller wrote:
           | So DRM...
        
         | karaterobot wrote:
         | Don't let that stop you. They'll always have complaints.
        
       | feedsmgmt wrote:
       | Time to boycott the labels participating in this lawsuit.
        
       | hunters_laptop wrote:
       | internet archive should move their server/business to china or
       | russia so these greedy companies more hard to touch them
        
         | hilbert42 wrote:
         | This isn't a new concept. Those of us who are old enough will
         | remember the UK pirate radio station Radio Caroline. It was a
         | ship in international waters broadcasting into areas that
         | required a broadcasting license. It was so effective that it
         | eventually changed the whole broadcasting environment:
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline
        
         | izzydata wrote:
         | We need servers in space. I wonder if the latency would be good
         | or bad.
        
           | williamtrask wrote:
           | ...huh... there's an idea
           | 
           | Would just routing the data via starlink be good enough? (if
           | you could hide the original location)
        
         | consumer451 wrote:
         | Would they allow permanently archiving content which is
         | censored by their own regimes?
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | Their own _governments._
        
       | qingcharles wrote:
       | Can anyone find anywhere on the IA where they explain the process
       | they are using to archive these 78s?
       | 
       | They have a brief link to Audacity if you want to do it yourself,
       | but no-one do they explain their process for doing it themselves.
       | Very opaque :(
        
         | ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
         | I would get a 78-optimized needle for my turntable, set it for
         | 45 RPM (since it doesn't have 78), and capture it through a
         | high-quality ADC. Then I'd speed it up in post. I've done this.
         | 
         | I imagine that contributors use different methods. Old record
         | players used thorn needles (as in plant thorns). A purist might
         | do that and record from the player's horn with a mic.
         | 
         | One annoyance I encountered in capturing old mono content is
         | the lack of a filter in the audio software I've used that would
         | keep only the mono content of a stereo recording. A lot of the
         | crackles on a mono record are in stereo, being on only one side
         | of a groove.
        
       | slenk wrote:
       | Yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me.
       | 
       | This does not make me want to support record labels
        
       | livinginfear wrote:
       | I've donated multiple times to IA. I can't live without the
       | Wayback Machine. I have a question about the Wayback Machine that
       | someone here might know the answer to: Sometimes a website may be
       | imaged 10 times across the years, but hasn't changed since the
       | first time it was crawled. Is there some system in place to avoid
       | storing the redundant, duplicate data?
        
       | westcort wrote:
       | Enjoy them while they last by streaming them here:
       | https://www.locserendipity.com/PushPlay.html
       | 
       | And LPs here: https://locserendipity.com/LP.html
       | 
       | (And donate to IA)
        
       | jtode wrote:
       | Is there a distributed archive project to save the content? I
       | could donate a few TB of redundancy.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | You should not be concerned.
        
           | rovr138 wrote:
           | explain?
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | jtode wrote:
             | I'm also quite interested in the source of their peace of
             | mind.
             | 
             | It might be that they're already involved in that project
             | and it's flush with space and distribution; the message
             | here might just be "we got this".
             | 
             | Or it might be "don't worry, corporate feudalism is great."
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Thoughts and opinions my own. No affiliation with the
               | Internet Archive.
               | 
               | It is my belief that libraries and repositories of
               | culture must (not may or shall, must) be built in a
               | manner where they can't be burned. They require durable,
               | persistent, fault and human tolerant foundational systems
               | (technology and otherwise) that exhibit the features of a
               | Ulysses Pact, protecting the future from the present;
               | from greed, from savagery, from disaster, from
               | deterioration (regardless of source). I hope this
               | clarifies my position on the topic.
        
       | whycome wrote:
       | Whenever we hit upon copyright battles in the USA, I'm reminded
       | that the national anthem steals its tune from a well established
       | English drinking song. A drinking song -- basically understood
       | that it "belongs to everyone and is shared for when we
       | collectively drink and be merry together".
        
         | pixelatedindex wrote:
         | I had no idea! Would you be able to shed light on the name of
         | the song?
        
           | p1mrx wrote:
           | To Anacreon in Heaven:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eg7z0-6Nhc
        
           | whycome wrote:
           | Wiki
           | 
           | > Although it is often described as a "drinking song",
           | Lichtenwanger states that "To Anacreon in Heaven" "was not a
           | barroom ballad, a drinking ditty to be chorused with glasses
           | swung in rhythm", but "convivial, ... in a special and
           | stately way".
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anacreontic_Song
           | 
           | So the "drinking song" description is challenged. But
           | still...
           | 
           | Either way, the anthem is a remix. (From times when that was
           | a part of extending our culture...)
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrafactum
        
       | ApolloFortyNine wrote:
       | So the internet archive is knowing distributing media still under
       | copyright?
       | 
       | Is this not a slam dunk win for the record labels? Sounds like
       | the internet archive officially made recordings available for
       | download.
        
         | kevinmchugh wrote:
         | They were flaunting copyright laws with books even more
         | egregiously and lost that suit. I think the IA is a deeply
         | important project and wish they'd stop picking these fights.
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | The Internet Archive (including the Wayback Machine) basically
         | exists in a legal Gray area (to be generous) that has mostly
         | depended on not doing things (or undoing things) that caught
         | someone's attention who was willing to actually take some
         | action about it. For the most part, the IA doesn't have any
         | more special status than you or I if we were to mirror
         | someone's website or create a comic strip museum.
         | 
         | A lot of what they make available arguably _shouldn 't_ be
         | protected by copyright under a rational copyright regime but
         | that's an argument to make to Congress rather than saying the
         | IA can do whatever feels justified to them. (Which can cut both
         | ways once you say the law is whatever you personally think is
         | fair.)
        
           | kirksan wrote:
           | The IA has been skating on thin ice for a long time. They've
           | archived a ton of content I generated over the years, most of
           | it copyrighted. In my case I don't care, I actually
           | appreciate it since I didn't keep archives as well as I
           | should and occasionally use IA to find my own stuff. Also, my
           | content is worth approximately 25C/. Others are not so
           | forgiving.
           | 
           | What we really need are updated copyright laws that allow for
           | research and preservation. However, people have been calling
           | for updated laws for decades, but powerful copyright holders
           | have stood in the way, so don't hold your breath.
        
             | boomboomsubban wrote:
             | >In my case I don't care
             | 
             | If you did, you could DMCA claim it. They'd still archive
             | the stuff, but it wouldn't be publicly available until
             | whenever it'd fall into the public domain. That part of the
             | system seems to work fairly well, except the century it
             | would take for it to fall into public domain.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | You probably don't even need to make a DMCA claim.
               | Probably just ask them to take it down. That's pretty
               | much how the IA has operated in general. Mostly just act
               | as if most people don't care (which they don't) and, for
               | most other cases, take any requested actions because it's
               | easier for both sides than a lawsuit.
        
               | boomboomsubban wrote:
               | The important part of the DMCA claim is that you state
               | under threat of perjury that you either own the copyright
               | or are a representative of whomever owns the copyright.
               | That's why they'd probably want a DMCA claim or some
               | other verification you owned the copyright on what you
               | want taken down.
        
             | bscphil wrote:
             | 100% agree with this. The biggest issue seems to be that
             | they make no _visible_ effort to find and disable user-
             | uploaded copyright content, so it 's effectively a free-
             | for-all file sharing site. A lot of the cases are
             | especially egregious because the uploading user will give
             | the content an invalid "license" like CC0 that they have no
             | right to apply.
             | 
             | I picked three random pieces of recent copyright content
             | (Adobe Lightroom, the video game Hollow Knight, the Taylor
             | Swift album "Folklore"), and I found _all_ of them easily
             | and trivially on the Internet Archive. In fact I found
             | hacked versions of the entire Adobe CC suite. The IA is at
             | least as complete a source for pirated content as most
             | public bittorrent trackers.
             | 
             | Officially, of course, the Internet Archive is subject to
             | DMCA safe harbor protections. This is user uploaded
             | content, and so long as IA responds quickly to takedown
             | notices, they're in the clear. But this story represents
             | the situation _de jure,_ not _de facto_. Ever since Viacom
             | v. YouTube, it 's been abundantly clear that even the
             | biggest online platforms can't use this excuse in practice
             | when sharing of copyright IP becomes rampant. YouTube put
             | in the first version of their much maligned "Content ID"
             | system the year after the Viacom lawsuit, and the parties
             | settled out of court after YouTube lost at the circuit
             | court level. [1]
             | 
             | I don't believe that the Internet Archive, as a much
             | smaller entity, is likely to see a significantly different
             | outcome - that is, unless the lawsuits manage to bankrupt
             | them entirely. This would suggest they need to be much more
             | proactive about removing or disabling access to copyright
             | content on the platform.
             | 
             | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc.
             | _v._Y....
        
       | ghastmaster wrote:
       | This really scares me. The wayback machine is a treasure. I don't
       | know what will happen to it if these cases succeed.
        
         | Cypher wrote:
         | we'll lose it like the great library of alexander
        
           | ta988 wrote:
           | The great library was lost by abandon not fire. That's a
           | really strongly held belief that's hard to debunk
           | unfortunately.
        
           | IAmGraydon wrote:
           | I think you mean Alexandria.
        
             | sillysaurusx wrote:
             | There were actually two libraries. Alexandria was the
             | better known of the two, so it always drowns out the search
             | results, but the Library of Alexander has a long and
             | storied history. https://www.alexander.lib.ia.us/
             | 
             | Still a shadow of its former self though.
        
           | xtracto wrote:
           | Or like gigapedia :
           | https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/3/1/the-
           | disappearing...
           | 
           | Few people remember that. But losing it was such a shame.
        
         | ohgodplsno wrote:
         | It'll move to a different country, or its authors will be
         | hounded down by the United States and gigantic corporations.
         | 
         | Working for Sony, UMG, Netflix, any media distribution group,
         | is, as far as I'm concerned, evil. You actively work to make
         | human existence worse. I'd have a word for their lawyers, but
         | I'm sure they're busy being paid hundred of thousands to be
         | sacks of shit.
        
         | HenryBemis wrote:
         | Imagine a mixture of 1984: Who controls the past, controls the
         | future: who controls the present controls the past.
         | 
         | On the specifics of the lawsuit.. well if the law us bad, then
         | change the law. But not following the law is not nice.
        
           | rvba wrote:
           | Tbh that's how cliques on wikipedia work.
           | 
           | There are cases when 2 admins "guard" an article and no user
           | can change them. Worst is that wikimedia foundation takes
           | tens of millions and doesnt even bother to spend anything to
           | defend wikipedia from that.
        
           | jancsika wrote:
           | > On the specifics of the lawsuit.. well if the law us bad,
           | then change the law.
           | 
           | The March on Selma and Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins agree
           | with you.
           | 
           | > But not following the law is not nice.
           | 
           | The March on Selma and Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins
           | disagree with you.
        
           | praptak wrote:
           | In principle, not following an unjust law is a moral
           | obligation. Yes, you can argue the edge cases. I also agree
           | that there's some good in obeying a particular law even if it
           | is _a little_ bad (to uphold respect for law in general).
           | 
           | This doesn't refute the general principle though - unjust
           | laws should be broken. Historically enough repulsive stuff
           | was mandated by law.
        
       | j0057 wrote:
       | > The complaint states that when the 78rpm records were converted
       | into digital files, IA reproduced copyrighted recordings without
       | permission. When IA copied those files to a server, that amounted
       | to another unauthorized reproduction, and when it transferred
       | those copies to the public, yet another.
       | 
       | That first step, making a digital copy of a copyrighted work, is
       | not illegal to my knowledge of at least Dutch copyright law --
       | you're allowed to make a copy "for your own studies", although
       | it's not allowed to then give this copy away, or in general to
       | make the copy for somebody else.
       | 
       | I also thought that copyright lasts for 70 years, so that all
       | pre-1953 work is in the public domain, or did Disney succeed in
       | extending this period?
        
         | nukeman wrote:
         | It's 70 years after the death of the author. So if Andy Weir
         | died tomorrow, The Martian wouldn't enter the public domain
         | until 2093.
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | Copyright in music is a nightmare. I used to work in this area,
         | setting up one of the very first legal streaming services.
         | There are about five different rights attached to each piece of
         | music:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_licensing
         | 
         | (See also Taylor Swift re-recording all her own music)
        
         | lakomen wrote:
         | I seem to very vaguely remember some shenanigans in the past 3
         | years that lifted the 70 years restriction, but not sure if it
         | was the US or EU.
        
       | cannabis_sam wrote:
       | The ONLY reason these disgusting predators can colonize human
       | cultural output like this is the antisocial, and tremendously
       | stupid copyright laws enacted.
       | 
       | It always makes me wonder why people want a tiny cartel of
       | companies to own humanity's music culture, and subsequently be
       | able to bully companies like Spotify, Youtube and others into
       | enforcing extrajudicial policies that maintain the cartel's
       | dominance.
       | 
       | Like, seriously, what is the perceived societal value here???
        
         | lotsoweiners wrote:
         | Because normal people don't care about "human cultural output"
         | or "societal value" and think people who use those kinds of
         | terms sound like blowhards. The rest of us just want reasonably
         | cheap, convenient entertainment. Artists and others in the
         | music biz want to get paid. Nothing here that is very hard to
         | understand.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | Normal people do like free stuff it turns out. And typically
           | not going to pay when it's ancient anyway. Instead of going
           | without, they could give it a try. They'd like that too--if
           | they knew it was possible and even encouraged.
        
           | b59831 wrote:
           | [dead]
        
           | uni_rule wrote:
           | This point would work better if the vast majority of artists
           | actually were paid well.
        
       | dariosalvi78 wrote:
       | This a fight between barbarians and civilization. Each one pick
       | their own side. History will tell us which one was right.
        
       | beej71 wrote:
       | And I'll double down on making sure I never pay the record labels
       | another dime.
       | 
       | Authors and artists: make sure you have a way for me to send you
       | money online.
        
         | prox wrote:
         | A few options for those looking:
         | 
         | Bandcamp, Patreon, Twitch, Ko-Fi, CDbaby, and probably a host
         | of others.
        
           | gabereiser wrote:
           | Soundcloud, Music Gateway, Discogs, Reverb Nation, Sellfy,
           | TuneCore...
        
       | mschuster91 wrote:
       | Is there any way we can get rid of these rent-seeking parasites
       | destroying everything in their path out of their greed?
        
         | NetOpWibby wrote:
         | That's the million dollar question
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | Here is the complaint
       | 
       | https://ia802701.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.60...
       | 
       | And here is Exhibit A: Sound Recordings at Issue
       | 
       | https://ia802701.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.60...
        
       | al2o3cr wrote:
       | Shorter RIAA: "We stole these recordings with bullshit contracts
       | decades ago, who are YOU to interfere with that????!!!!"
       | 
       | You can see their point, though: obviously Frank Sinatra wouldn't
       | have even bothered recording in the 1950s if he knew that a
       | quarter-century after his death his record company might not make
       | every available cent in profit. /s
        
         | realusername wrote:
         | I love how they always talk about the poor artists which cannot
         | make new songs due to piracy and then they chose to enforce
         | rights on ... Sinatra and a bunch of other long dead artists
         | who will never make a single new song.
        
         | jareklupinski wrote:
         | he might have done it anyway, if he knew what engineers were
         | going to do with those recordings a half century later:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDOQ-y87YnE
        
           | bongobingo1 wrote:
           | What a rabbit hole to fall down.
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyfQVZHmArA
           | 
           | > Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots
           | write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted
           | 
           | ~ https://nitter.net/KarlreMarks/status/1658028017921261569
           | (possibly ~ An AI too...)
        
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