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.
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!
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.
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.
> 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.
This might be what you're looking for: https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release
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?
Isn't that supposed to be the role of The Library of Congress?
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
One step closer to me listening to public domain-only music if I could help it.
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.
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.
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.
Time to lay RIAA to rest. A message needs to be sent: orgs that go after archival efforts like this get smote to death.
RICO statutes! Sic em boys!
> 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.
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-.
> While fighting bad law is certainly a good thing ...
... you still require a winning strategy and winning execution, or you've only done harm.
...which is precisely the point of the other half of the sentence you snipped:
> maybe imperiling the archive in the process is not.
> 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.
On the other hand, we constructed the court of law to help society, not the other way around. Same goes for statutes.
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.
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.
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).
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.