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Popular website the Internet Archive provoked the wrath of labels with its ‘Great 78 Project’, which digitised old 78rpm records to make the music available for modern listeners.
Labels including Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group sued the website for copyright infringement in August 2023 over the project, which included more than 400k recordings at the time.
In October, we reported on the Internet Archive’s defence of its work – it also lost a legal battle with book publisher Hachette over its ebooks lending library – when it published a report called ‘Vanishing Culture’.
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Its latest response to the labels’ lawsuit enlists more than 600 musicians in its defence, publishing a letter signed by them on a ‘Save the Archive’ website. Tegan and Sara, Amanda Palmer, Deerhoof, Kathleen Hanna and Yacht are among the more prominent names signing the letter.
“The music industry has a moral imperative to keep its history archived, but we can’t trust it to do so. Old records are falling to pieces, and without proper digital preservation, they’ll be gone for good,” it claims.
“Artists and labels alike should partner with valuable cultural stewards like the Internet Archive – not sue them. It’s time to support nonprofit music preservation to ensure that our music and our stories aren’t lost to history.”
The letter actually goes well beyond the specific issue of the Great 78 Project. It calls for venues to let artists keep 100% of their merch sales at concerts; for transparent ticketing practices; and for “fair royalties for streams”.
In other words, it ties together “immediate and sustained action to protect artists’ futures, and the long-term preservation of their works”.
The calls for labels to drop their lawsuit against the Internet Archive may fall on deaf ears. The lawsuit slammed its “attempt to defend their wholesale theft of generations of music under the guise of ‘preservation and research,’ but this is a smokescreen” while also accusing the defendants of “a long history of opposing, fighting, and ignoring copyright law,
proclaiming that their zealotry serves the public good”.
However, artists getting involved may spark a renewed debate about how – if not through its project – these kinds of older recordings can better be preserved and made available.
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