Music labels sue Internet Archive over digitized record collection - Yiffit.net
yiffit.net
Archived version: https://archive.ph/ZGo6X [https://archive.ph/ZGo6X] Universal Music Group (UMG.AS [http://UMG.AS]), Sony Music Entertainment (6758.T) and other record labels on Friday sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for copyright infringement over its streaming collection of digitized music from vintage records. The labels’ lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive’s “Great 78 Project” functions as an “illegal record store” for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case could be as high as $412 million. Representatives for the Internet Archive did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint. The San Francisco-based Internet Archive digitally archives websites, books, audio recordings and other materials. It compares itself to a library and says its mission is to “provide universal access to all knowledge.” The Internet Archive is already facing another federal lawsuit in Manhattan from leading book publishers who said its digital-book lending program launched in the pandemic violates their copyrights. A judge ruled for the publishers in March, in a decision that the Archive plans to appeal. The Great 78 Project encourages donations of 78-rpm records – the dominant record format from the early 1900s until the 1950s – for the group to digitize to “ensure the survival of these cultural materials for future generations to study and enjoy.” Its website says the collection includes more than 400,000 recordings. The labels’ lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings, including Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” and Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”. The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and “face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.”

See linked posting. I’ve commented there with a link to a CLI tool in Python that allows downloading of IA collections. I’ve submitted a patch to enable specifying start and end points so that it’s easier to resume downloading a huge collection, or to allow multiple people to split up the work.

https://archive.org/details/georgeblood

https://archive.org/details/78rpm_bowling_green

F*ck the RIAA and absurdly long copyright.

EDIT: There is more than one collection of 78s on IA, so I updated the title.

The issue with these collections are that they’re absolutely HUGE. And yes, IA offers torrents for them, but as a separate torrent for every. single. album. And the torrents have all data in them – FLAC, fixed-rate MP3, VBR MP3, PDF liner notes, etc. etc… there may be some extremely hardcore data-hoarders out there who want everything, but IMHO as these are scratchy old 78 records, FLAC is overkill to just save the audio in a listenable format. The George Blood collection, just the VBR MP3s, is looking to be about 6TB. With ALL data it might be over 40TB! I can’t afford that many hard drives :)

So, my approach at the moment is to save just the VBR MP3s (they seem to be done at up to 320kbps VBR) and the JPEG album cover. If I have a chance and any storage left afterwards, I can make a separate pass to get the album liner PDFs…

Tool used: https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive

Patch to allow setting start and end item indices for downloads: https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive/pull/605

Example usage to grab just the VBR MP3 and record label JPG for each (note the --start-idx and --end-idx arguments):

#ia download --start-idx=4001 --end-idx=8000 -a -i --format="VBR MP3" --format="JPEG" --search collection:georgeblood

I’m going to concentrate on the George Blood collection for now… I’m starting at item 1. It would be great if others started at index 50,000, 100,000, 150,000, … and others started at the end and worked backwards in similarly-sized chunks, so that it’s assured someone gets each of them.

  • Haui@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    51·
    10 months ago

    What exactly are you trying to convey? That these „works“ made by ordinary people who have only a basic understanding of copyright law should be deleted if someone feels like it? That the law is more important than justice?

    Also, do you really think you‘re cool by implying things phrased as a question? Won‘t you just talk like a normal person and state your opinion instead of fake-calling-out others?

    • WarmSoda@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      10 months ago

      Posts you make on a forum are not “works” that are copyrightable. Deleting a post is not an injustice.

      Sentences phrased with a question mark means it’s asking a question. When someone asks a question, the normal response is to then provide an answer to that question.

      But you’re just being an asshole. You know exactly what I’m saying, and you know you’re saying ridiculous things so your only response is not answering either of the two questions and and then try to twist it.

      • ArghblargOPEnglish
        31·
        10 months ago

        Posts you make on a forum are not “works” that are copyrightable.

        That may depend on the platform – slashdot (remember that site?) once upon a time had a footer on their pages stating “All posts belong to their authors”. There were a few big debates about that being legally enforceable. Hmm. I wonder if there ever was a legal ruling on that.

        I notice today their site does not have such a disclaimer. Probably disappeared long ago, due to one of their many corporate buyouts.