Internet Archive's big battle with music publishers ends in settlement

> He suggested that perhaps labels just "don't like the Internet Archive's way of pushing the envelope on copyright and fair use."

This seems to be the whole ballgame.

They're (UMG, specifically) doing the same to YouTuber Rick Beato. His music theory/analysis/reaction videos are very careful to abide by the rules of _fair use_ and, yet, UMG is still drowning him in copyright violation claims. He's had to hire representation to deal with the backlog of claims that are (extremely likely) all bogus and _hope_ to keep his videos and channel online.

On one hand, their behavior is baffling, as I've streamed and purchased music from these companies I would not have otherwise because of Beato's channel. On the other, it's completely unsurprising, as they stand to _have their cake and eat it too_ by introducing chokepoints for _all_ access to their music (in theory, anyways) and suing anyone in the hopes of inking these bullshit settlements with anyone who dares get within a few miles of their moat.

it's not really the same as putting snippets of media in a youtube video... the internet archive has, loosely, three categories of stuff:

* out of copyright (totally legal)

* copyright but abandoned (not legal but nobody cares and is good for society)

* copyright and actively being sold right now (not legal and huge exposure to lawsuits)

modern pop media movies, books, audio are not uploaded to the internet archive in their entirety under any kind of fair use unless you're a copyright abolitionist taking a very expansive view on the term

The people at these companies probably do realise that literally nobody has ever tried to watch a video like Rick Beato's to simply listen to a piece of music. Anyone who is watching a Rick Beato video is watching it because of the theory, discussion, and commentary surrounding the music.

A record label has never lost a sale because somebody discovered they could "get music for free" by watching YouTube critique videos.

Realistically, what's probably happening is the labels have decided it's too (i.e. would cost too much money) to apply a nuanced approach to copyright striking and so are knowingly flagging everything containing snippets of their music whether it's fair use or not. They've simply decided to not care.

> The people at these companies probably do realise that literally nobody has ever tried to watch a video like Rick Beato's to simply listen to a piece of music.

Do not anthropomorphize copyright lawyers

There appears to be no cost or downside to falsely flagging, so it's unsurprising that they just spam flag everything on the off chance that they are able to do some damage to someone.

When you're a hammer, every problem is solved by whacking something. When your business is run by lawyers, every problem is solved with legal action.

Absolutely, and especially obvious when you realize that he only plays a few seconds of the song typically before interrupting it or talking over it. It's not in any way even close to a replacement. Their behavior only makes sense in the context of absolute and utter greed

That's why exactly it tho - normal ppl that are not the non-profit with very limited resources and staff, upload the infringing content - it's not even the IA fault that they are hosting it and placing such a responsibility on the IA to polofe the.archive - isn't what that is.

The recording companies should have gone after the individual uploaders or this one as always bullshit - the record labels themselves can just upload a bunch music and screw the IA - it's supposed to be a copy of the whole internet.

This was just to essentially own the IA, which they effectively do now - bc it was easier for them to take over the IA, than to actually protect their content creators by going after the actual distributors, the uploaders. Obviously, they broke tho

Yeah... nothing done against those companies is actually "wrong" - thats a grey area when corpos suck as bad as they do.

> A record label has never lost a sale because somebody discovered they could "get music for free" by watching YouTube critique videos.

I'd imagine it's even the opposite, it's probably inspired people to listen to music they wouldn't otherwise. The record labels have spent a lot of time and money to shut down someone doing free advertising for their product!

> * copyright but abandoned (not legal but nobody cares and is good for society)

This is where they should be "pushing the envelope on copyright", but for some reason they keep exposing themselves to big lawsuits.

That's a shame because Rick has some fantastic videos, especially his "What Makes This Song Great" series. He's showcasing some amazingly talented musicians and their work, which probably leads to some music sales. BS indeed!

I've noticed similar false economy in some sports, where the holder of the rights is so strict that even famous pundits can't use footage (even a few seconds) or risk consequences. It seems highly detrimental to the sport itself, and perhaps even the rights holder due to the reduction in free advertising.

I wonder if this quirk is caused by the concentrated interests of rights holders' internal legal departments, where, in eagerness to keep their jobs or demand higher salaries, they pursue breaches of broadcast rights hyper aggressively, well past the point of optimal benefit to the rights holder.

They're the digital equivalent of a library. My local library lends out in-copyright music and films.

The real problem here however is copyright. There should be a balance between creators, publishers, readers, libraries, fair use, and remixers. But the balance is all out of whack with the publishers making most of the money and everyone else including most creators getting stiffed.

Digital equivalents to libraries typically have a fixed number of copies of a digital book paired with DRM such that the user can only read them while checked out. That is very different from how the internet archive works.

I know with trademarks, the law puts a perverse incentive on businesses to ruthlessly attack uses of their trademark. If they allow even innocuous uses of it, then they risk the trademark becoming generic and losing all rights over it [1].

I wonder if a similar perverse incentive and emergent behavior is in play here where record labels worry that any encroachment on fair use could set a precedent that will come back to bite them.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

Except for the DRM, that is exactly how the internet archive works for content that is still under copyright. However, for libraries, they often have a limited number of borrows per book (enforced with the DRM), and they are effectively renting the book, not owning it. Which gets back to the imbalance of copyright law and enforcement.

It's really a quite different set of law because the whole point of a trademark is that it uniquely identifies a particular seller so that buyers can distinguish it from others in the market. If that identification weakens then your trademark becomes meaningless and can no longer be enforced. But that logic doesn't apply to copyright.

I think it's bold to think it's conscious planning that's behind this behavior from UMG. Most of us work or have worked with large companies, we've seen for ourselves how dysfunctional they can be.

I've worked in a large government bureaucracy before, and I've repeatedly encountered a particular breed of bureaucrat that has no idea of what the organization is trying to accomplish (or, actively doesn't care) and has taken it upon themselves to enforce policies in their role as strictly as possible, sometimes even to the point of delighting in the power that they wield to stop people from trying to do their jobs and do good things.

More than likely it is a subcontracted law firm that specializes in YT notices with automation. I seriously doubt that their in-house legal team do it at all. They might receive an email from the subcontractors with updates to their progress each day/week/month that rarely if ever gets reviewed by in-house legal.

In my opinion something similar should apply to orphaned and abandoned works. Especially, considering how long copyright lasts.

Digital is fundamentally different because everything can be copied infinitely. Any model that doesn't accept this basic fact is broken. Luckily there are plenty of other models that could be used, such as compulsory licensing or flat fees that are divided amongst creators. The publishers of course are not interested in that.

The mindset that someone will buy a album because he have no idea about WTF it is and can not listen to it on the internet is really interesting to me.

Like, why would you even buy a album and add it to your collection if you have no idea what it is?

They have no idea who Rick even is it's all automated. It's the biggest issue with the paper thin protection of Fair Use and the DMCA system where fair use is a proactive defense required to be adjudicated in court and the companies are not even required to review their claims for the possibility that it falls under fair use. It's exacerbated by the fact the Google's system isn't even properly DMCA, it's their own system with no legal consequences for false reports all based on minute audio matches.

Trademark is completely unrelated to copyright. You do not have an obligation to pursue every copyright infringement the same way you do for trademarks.

Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”

>On one hand, their behavior is baffling

If you look at this situation from the context of culture war(s), plural, its not so baffling.

This is basically an attempt to influence the future by controlling what it knows about the past.

I think the creator of a work should be allowed to unpublish it but only if they own it entirely.

If other parties own it they should be required to make the work available without interruption or barriers and at a reasonable price.

If a recording was left to rot in some archive to the point others have a noticably better copy you've failed the obligation.

Anything that broadly looks like buying rights for the purpose of destroying the work should be stopped.

Objections should be written down and burned in a special ceremony.

They're stuck in the 90s mindset where they're worried about people taping songs off the radio.

> someone will buy a album because he have no idea about WTF it is

Based on the advertising I see in Nashville's Music Row, I'm pretty sure that actually is their strategy. The signs they put out usually have only the artist name as meaningful information, which is only helpful if you're already a fan (I guess it does get their name into your brain otherwise), and a QR code. I have no idea who scans the QR codes.

Some people have told me it's really meant for other people in the music industry, but it feels odd that they'd have to find out about music by random signs on the side of the road.

There are essentially two schools of thought when it comes to rules.

The first is "rule of law" where it's important what the rules are. You need good people with knowledge of what's actually happening on the ground to be the ones who make the rules, and then the rules are strictly enforced and if that leads to a bad outcome it means the rules are deficient and there is a meaningful process for addressing that, which results in a change to the rules to prevent the bad outcome from happening in the future.

The second is "CYA" where the purpose of rules is to make prohibitions as many and broad as possible so that if anything bad happens or you have a dispute with someone you can pin a violation on them, and then the rules are ignored whenever that isn't the objective.

The best organizations use only the first system, but this is rare. If you make rules according to the first system and the way you enforce them is according to the second system, you have a minor problem with under-enforcement. If you use the second system entirely, you're going to have major problems with office politics and morale. But the worst is when the people at the top are making the rules in expectation of using the second system without noticing that someone in the middle is actually enforcing them.

i'm sure they have lost sales though from bad reviews.

Not only it's 2025, so anyone still using YouTube(/Google/Alphabet) to make money is complicit with totalitarian extremists,

but this ContentID nonsense has been going on since at least 2009,

and we have had easy alternatives like PeerTube for several years now,

where they would have to actually go after him directly,

(and depending on jurisdiction, DMCA (screw that totalitarian extremist nonsense BTW) is more or less enforced),

rather than having YouTube do their censorship for them.