[HN Gopher] The $621M Legal Battle by Record Labels Against Inte...
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The $621M Legal Battle by Record Labels Against Internet Archive
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 112 points
Date : 2024-10-01 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rollingstone.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rollingstone.com)
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's interesting that out of the 400k+ recordings they digitized,
| only 4142 are claimed as infringements. And it makes sense if
| everything they digitized is in an old format that went out of
| favor by the 50s. I think you could argue that NO recording this
| old should still be under copyright, it should all be in the
| public domain, or at least subject to archival even if you can't
| stream it online in one or two clicks.
| freejazz wrote:
| > I think you could argue that NO recording this old should
| still be under copyright
|
| In a court of law? Not seriously nor credibly. The term of a
| copyright is provided for by statute.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Pretty sure he's talking about the way things should be, not
| the way things are. The way things should be: None of this
| would be a problem. The way things are: Brewster Kahle is
| jeopardizing the archive's mission with his cavalier attitude
| towards copyright that is causing the archive to lose lawsuit
| after lawsuit. While fighting bad law is certainly a good
| thing, maybe imperiling the archive in the process is not.
| Unfortunately, such nuanced takes seem to be lost on people
| who treat these issues as a form of team sports and demand
| you either be simply pro- or anti-.
| mmooss wrote:
| > While fighting bad law is certainly a good thing ...
|
| ... you still require a winning strategy and winning
| execution, or you've only done harm.
| EarlKing wrote:
| ...which is precisely the point of the other half of the
| sentence you snipped:
|
| > maybe imperiling the archive in the process is not.
| freejazz wrote:
| > Pretty sure he's talking about the way things should be,
| not the way things are.
|
| Well, I made my distinction, which you clearly read and
| were aware of but made this post anyway.
| oneplane wrote:
| On the other hand, we constructed the court of law to help
| society, not the other way around. Same goes for statutes.
| axus wrote:
| An American would have to argue this while running for
| office, and then argue it in Congress. Alternatively, get a
| position to exploit the "copyright exception" provisions.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It's illustrative of the fact that the RIAA would rather throw
| away 99% of its history than give up whatever little bit of
| juice is left today in the remaining 1%. It's not like they
| care to archive this stuff themselves; like the article says,
| they already needed to rely on collectors to give them
| recordings for a Robert Johnson re-release, and that was in the
| 1961.
|
| Maybe it's their legal prerogative, but I'm of the mindset that
| if they are doing no good, at least do no harm.
| tyrrvk wrote:
| My favorite comment from the article was from the
| Hollywood/media exec lamenting that what IA was doing was
| 'theft'. Didn't Hollywood come about from people trying to
| outrun Edison and his patents? The hubris is astounding.
| 8338550bff96 wrote:
| Time to lay RIAA to rest. A message needs to be sent: orgs
| that go after archival efforts like this get smote to
| death.
| wormius wrote:
| RICO statutes! Sic em boys!
| rwmj wrote:
| https://archive.ph/85JPm
| jjcm wrote:
| Regardless of what happens here, one of the biggest losses in
| historical music archives was when what.cd got taken down.
| Regardless of copyright, it does feel like there is a place for
| archival indexing of historical recordings. I wish there was some
| sort of law protecting this. What.cd was clearly offending
| copyright, with the historical value being a secondary effect,
| but the internet archive's intent here clearly isn't copyright
| violation.
|
| Intent should matter.
| rblatz wrote:
| Isn't that supposed to be the role of The Library of Congress?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| "That" has a little wiggle room here, but the answer is still
| probably no regardless of what you mean. The Internet
| Archive's goal is to provide universal access to all
| knowledge. This is not the goal of the LOC.
| mrighele wrote:
| I think the parent refers to this [1]:
|
| "All works under copyright protection that are published in
| the United States are subject to the mandatory deposit
| provision of the copyright law (17 USC section 407).
|
| This law requires that two copies of the best edition of
| every copyrightable work published in the United States be
| sent to the Copyright Office within three months of
| publication. Works deposited under this law are for the use
| of the Library of Congress"
|
| I don't know how/if it works in practice, but if the
| copyright is supposed "To promote the Progress of Science
| and useful Arts", I think that it is perfectly fine for the
| LOC to guarantee that when the copyright expires at least a
| copy is still around.
|
| This doesn't mean that it should provide universal access
| though, especially while the copyright is still valid.
|
| [1] https://www.copyright.gov/mandatory/
| nodamage wrote:
| Wait, does this apply to software?
| mrighele wrote:
| I have no idea :-). Frankly I was under the impression
| that this requirement had been weakened/removed over the
| years, but this is what they write on the official
| website and I cannot find any reference about that so
| that's why I wrote "how/if it works in practice"
|
| (maybe the devil is in the referenced details, but alas I
| have not time to investigate now)
|
| But my point was more about the matter of principle: it
| is reasonable for the government to ask a copy of the
| works (for preservation reasons) in exchange for time-
| limited rights over it.
| azemetre wrote:
| What.cd was more than an archive of nearly all recorded
| music, both analog and digital. It had some of the best
| collage lists and recommendations I have ever seen. None of
| the child sites came even close, but some are promising.
|
| It was truly one of the best ways to discover music because
| behind each recommendation was a human that were both
| enthralled you were interested and would tailor their
| recommendations to suit your tastes.
|
| Spotify use to have humans curate their playlists and during
| this time is was almost as good, but since they've moved to
| ML models recommendations have gone to truly awful now.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Yes, but it shouldn't have to. The youngest recordings we're
| talking about are ~65 years old. Few people even have gear to
| play the discs. Have the authors of these songs, the players on
| the recordings and the publishers of these discs not had enough
| of a chance to make their money? I'll take whatever judgement I
| can get in favor of the Internet Archive, but I think we should
| be aiming for a principled stance of enough copyright is
| enough!
| Retric wrote:
| IMO copyright simply isn't fine grained enough. Allowing 1:1
| copies after 20 years isn't economically meaningful to the
| creators in general, but when you use a work as part of a
| movie, commercial, political campaign, etc it's co opting the
| original creator as if they where endorsing what you're
| doing. Which simply isn't appropriate while the creator is
| alive.
|
| On the other hand if you're selling action figures you expect
| little kids to create their own stories with those
| characters. Culture has long mixed existing characters in new
| ways just look at any mythology before writing. Jokes, memes,
| fanfics, etc are the natural progression of a culture and
| giving up on that seems detrimental in ways that aren't
| obvious.
| redundantly wrote:
| Your distinction between commercial use and things like
| meme culture doesn't hold up. For example, memes can harm
| creators too, like Pepe the Frog being co-opted by far-
| right groups. If you want to protect creators, there's no
| simple solution, as both can distort their intent.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Regardless of copyright, it does feel like there is a place
| for archival indexing of historical recordings.
|
| Does anyone have a link to such an index for what.cd? Just the
| following:
|
| * album/track string plus minimal metadata (release date or
| whatever)
|
| * hash for the track that goes along with that given piece of
| unique metadata
|
| Such a thing is obviously on the right side of the law-- you
| can't reconstruct the copyrighted content from the hash or the
| title. And the name of an artist/track title isn't
| copyrightable.
|
| That would be a valuable index that shows the exact state of
| what.cd's database before it was taken down. And I don't think
| it would be that large.
| dublinben wrote:
| This might be what you're looking for:
| https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release
| joe463369 wrote:
| They can archive things without breaching copyright. Why not
| digitise your 78rpm copy of White Christmas, stick it in the
| vault, and publish it when the copyright expires?
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Work for hire copyright duration of 95 years (from publishing) or
| 120 years from creation is outrageous.
|
| I just donated money to the Internet Archive.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Should the government ever enforce copyright violations? That's
| kind of the status quo for the vast vast majority of
| infractions. Even though enforcement could be trivial.
| wormius wrote:
| The irony that copyright is meant to induce "creativity" now
| spurs on less and less by tightly controlling the flow of
| information/inspiration. It locks people into less and less
| creative avenues, doing the exact opposite. Limited to lifetime
| of author. Publishers and contracted "rights holders" should
| not be allowed to continue to pursue/extort profits after the
| death of the author. I am being simplistic here and recognize
| there's room for nuance, but it's so damn obvious we have a
| situation far unlike what "the founders" intended (even though
| I'm not a fan of a lot of said founders for many reasons - this
| is one I can understand and relate to).
| molave wrote:
| One step closer to me listening to public domain-only music if I
| could help it.
| altruios wrote:
| If I amass any kind of political power: I'd set copyright for a
| maximum of 5 years, patents for 10 years, trademarks for 20.
|
| It would kickstart innovation, settle fair use of training data,
| and protect the internet archive.
|
| On the downside: companies (not artists) would make a bit less
| rent-style income.
|
| So even the downside is a win, in my book.
| fragmede wrote:
| Why should trademarks expire? If I'm doing business as Bob's
| Company, and I spend 15 years building up my good name and it's
| known for doing quality work, why should someone be able to
| come in and claim that they're also Bob's Company, just because
| some time has passed?
| altruios wrote:
| Why should companies live forever? If they have 'personhood'
| then they need to die at some point... otherwise we have
| cancerous monstrosities we see currently. That is what
| happens when any component of something larger (society)
| lives too long, hogging resources while killing the host.
|
| 20 years for trademark is negotiable. That there needs to be
| an expiration date is not.
| mrob wrote:
| As somebody who buys products, perpetual trademarks are
| useful to me. I want to know who I'm buying from.
|
| The problem I have is with trademarks being used as nouns
| but somehow not becoming generic. I searched "Velcro" on
| Amazon.co.uk. The best selling item is Velcro branded
| "Stick On". What even is a "stick on"? No reasonable
| consumer would identify that as a hook and loop fastener
| without context. "Hook and loop" isn't even written on the
| front of the packaging. The "Velcro" trademark is clearly
| functioning as a noun, which means from an ethical point of
| view it should be generic.
| bityard wrote:
| It sounds like the only companies you are familiar with are
| ones large enough to capture markets, bribe politicians,
| and write regulations in their favor.
|
| Well, small and mid-size businesses are easy to miss if you
| work from home or live in a big city. They don't wield
| anything like the kind of power you describe. But they
| account for most of the US GDP and private sector jobs. You
| may want to stop and consider the value of multi-
| generational family-owned businesses.
| pkaye wrote:
| The US had to much looser copyright terms until it tried to
| align with the Berne Convention. So there are minimum copyright
| terms that the US must comply by. US only joined the Berne
| Convention in 1989.
|
| https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2021/05/13/why-did-the-unite...
| altruios wrote:
| Excellent point. To which I point out: we have exited various
| agreements before.
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