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

(arstechnica.com)
335 points coloneltcb | 5 comments | 15 Sep 25 22:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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badlibrarian ◴[19 Sep 25 13:57 UTC] No.45301736[source]▶
A search for "Internet Archive rumors" returns a copy of Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" on my first page of results. Playable in browser and downloadable in high-quality lossless format.

The book lawsuit was over current titles (not really archival and preservation), and the record lawsuit wasn't really about the rare 78s, it was about the modern Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney records that somehow slipped in. And their refusal to follow the modern law that they themselves celebrated that made what they're trying to do (including downloads) explicitly legal. But that law prohibited fundraising, and they couldn't resist tweeting out links to Frank Sinatra records with a big banner on top asking for money.

In both lawsuits the discovery revealed tech debt and sloppy process at the Archive that made it impossible for them to argue on behalf of the future we all want.

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1. crtasm ◴[19 Sep 25 14:58 UTC] No.45302385[source]▶
What's the URL? Curious if it's still valid and if it were uploaded by some random user or one of the archiving projects.
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2. nofriend ◴[19 Sep 25 22:40 UTC] No.45307610[source]▶
Here's one: https://archive.org/details/FleetwoodMacRumours
3. dghlsakjg ◴[19 Sep 25 23:37 UTC] No.45308095[source]▶
For extra awesome use their Winamp clone. It really whips the llama's ass.

https://archive.org/details/fleetwood_mac-1977-rumours?webam...

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4. crtasm ◴[20 Sep 25 12:11 UTC] No.45312649[source]▶
Uploaded by user "Ultra Lo Fi Experimental" who appears to be putting lots of big name releases on there, I can't understand why they would do this.
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5. badlibrarian ◴[20 Sep 25 12:24 UTC] No.45312742{3}[source]▶
The Reddit support groups are pretty enlightening. Many people think they're just adding things in to a public library and somehow this is all perfectly legal.

It's charming and reminiscent of the best old-school Wikipedia energy. People on the fringe (and probably some OCD people) finding something to do. Curation and contribution feels good, man.

But yeah, holy shit. Brewster Kahle and Jason Scott have said "upload away, we'll figure it all out later" -- then themselves uploaded hundreds of thousands of items to set an example.

"Please don't upload copyrighted material" would go a long way at the top of that PHP upload form. Better yet a checkbox: "This is copyrighted. Archive it but don't republish it." But I suppose where's the fun in that.