Yet again the Internet Archiving is suffering big this time, a coalition of major record labels filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive demanding $700 million for the extensive catalog of 78 rpm records. 78s are sometimes more than a century old at this point and i bet a lot of them are out of copyright, but i suppose for the few that still are majors are hitting it big towards the IA
This lawsuit is pretty much another existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything it preserves, including the Wayback Machine, and we’re fucked if we ever lose access to the Wayback Machine.
the original article asked to sign a petition, but i think a more logical way to support is to donate them directly so that they have more money to better defend themselves in court in this and other cases they’ll undoubtedly face in the future
Because I’m not facing a $700m legal claim with a change.org petition as my best defence.
Archive.org has been operating for 30 years. You think your shitty little sarcasm is equivalent to an institution thats been around nearly as long as the internet, and yet has entirely resisted and avoided any of the enshittification thats infected literally everything else thats come after it? The internet archive is one of the last fundamentally good and public serving institutions and somehow you’re licking the boots of record companies trying to capitalize on expired copyright claims. Reexamine your priorities and fuck off while youre at it, since your ‘better idea’ is clearly to just do nothing at all.
Lets back up the truck a little.
This sarcastic little witticism required a sarcastic and witty response, which I provided.
Obviously I’m not going to set it up because, as I said in my earlier comments it’s a dreamy idea. I could go on to say, in the absence of such a technological solution, archive.org should still refrain from copyright infringement because they quite obviously aren’t viable with their current stance.
You’ll have to help me understand how this is so. In my comments I laid out a plan to maintain archive.org’s data for no (or very little) cost or effort, while ensuring that those record company’s receive nothing.
For users, the value of archive.org is the data. However, that data has no value to litigators nor anyone else. You can literally let the existing organisation collapse, and take the data to form a new organisation.
If you want to interpret this plan as doing “nothing at all” then you’re free to do so.
However, and forgive me this final sarcasm, doing nothing at all would be more productive than a change.org petition.