By Jon Blistein
Kathleen Hanna, Tegan and Sara, and Amanda Palmer are among the 300-plus musicians who have signed an open letter supporting the Internet Archive as it faces a $621 million copyright infringement lawsuit over its efforts to preserve 78 rpm records.
The letter, spearheaded by the digital advocacy group Fight for the Future, states that the signatories “wholeheartedly oppose” the lawsuit, which they suggest benefits “shareholder profits” more than actual artists. It continues: “We don’t believe that the Internet Archive should be destroyed in our name. The biggest players of our industry clearly need better ideas for supporting us, the artists, and in this letter we are offering them.”
Palmer, in a statement shared with Rolling Stone, says, “It’s an ironic gut punch to musicians and audiences alike to see that the Internet Archive could be destroyed in the name of protecting musicians. For decades, the Internet Archive has had the backs of creators of all kinds when no one else was there to protect us, making sure that old recordings, live shows, websites like MTV News, and diverse information and culture from all over the world had a place where they’d never, ever be erased, carving out a haven where all that creativity and storytelling was recognized as a critically valuable contribution to an important historic archive.”
Other artists who signed the letter include Deerhoof, Cloud Nothings, Open Mike Eagle, Diiv, Franz Nicolay of the Hold Steady, Eve 6, Mary Lattimore, Real Estate, Julia Holter, Kimya Dawson, Caroline Rose, Merrill Garbus (Tune-Yards), the Old 97’s Rhett Miller, Real Estate, Speedy Ortiz, Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties), Spencer Tweedy, Ted Leo, Brian Aubert of Silvers Pickups, Michael Travis of the String Cheese Incident, and Anjimilie. (The full letter, and a list of signatories, is here.)
The lawsuit was brought last year by several major music rights holders, led by Universal Music Group and Sony Music. They claimed the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project — an unprecedented effort to digitize hundreds of thousands of obsolete shellac discs produced between the 1890s and early 1950s — constituted the “wholesale theft of generations of music,” with “preservation and research” used as a “smokescreen.” (The Archive has denied the claims.)
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While more than 400,000 recordings have been digitized and made available to listen to on the Great 78 Project, the lawsuit focuses on about 4,000, most by recognizable legacy acts like Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Ella Fitzgerald. With the maximum penalty for statutory damages at $150,000 per infringing incident, the lawsuit has a potential price tag of over $621 million. A broad enough judgement could end the Internet Archive.
Supporters of the suit — including the estates of many of the legacy artists whose recordings are involved — claim the Archive is doing nothing more than reproducing and distributing copyrighted works, making it a clear-cut case of infringement. The Archive, meanwhile, has always billed itself as a research library (albeit a digital one), and its supporters see the suit (as well as a similar one brought by book publishers) as an attack on preservation efforts, as well as public access to the cultural record.
Lia Holland, Fight for the Future’s Campaigns and Communications Director, said the new letter arose out of a belief that major labels “are using the money they should be paying to musicians to attack the concept of preserving art and culture for future generations.” Holland called the suit the “latest in a long stream of bullying and greed that show the incentives of the music industry are fundamentally misaligned with the interests of musicians, and it’s time for real, positive change. Musicians, archivists, digital librarians, and music fans all deserve better than betrayal.”
To that end, the letter focuses on the tension between the potential $621 million damages, the massive profits being raked in by the music industry, and the fact that many working musicians are struggling to make a living. “The music industry is not struggling anymore,” the letter states. “Only musicians are. We demand a course-correction now, focused on the legacies and futures of working musicians.“
Singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton, who signed the Fight for the Future letter, tells Rolling Stone, “Musicians are struggling, but libraries like the Internet Archive are not our problem! Corporations like Spotify, Apple, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are our problem. If labels really wanted to help musicians, they would be working to raise streaming rates. This lawsuit is just another profit-grab.”
Tommy Cappel, who co-founded the group Beats Antique, says the Archive is “hugely valued in the music community” for its preservation of everything from rare recordings to live sets. “This is important work that deserves to continue for generations to come, and we don’t want to see everything they’ve already done for musicians and our legacy erased,” he added. “Major labels could see all musicians, past and present, as partners — instead of being the bad guy in this dynamic. They should drop their suit. Archives keep us alive.”
Rather than suing the Archive, Fight for the Future’s letter calls on labels, streaming services, ticketing outlets, and venues to align on different goals. At the top of the list is boosting preservation efforts by partnering with “valuable cultural stewards like the Internet Archive.” They also call for greater investment in working musicians through more transparency in in ticketing practices, an end to venue merch cuts, and fair streaming compensation.
Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz says she’s been a longtime user of the Archive, claling it a “vital resource that keeps songs, articles, and images alive — treasures that would otherwise disappear into the digital void.” Dupuis says the Archive has allowed her to re-discover “fragments” of her own creative past (“Some yikes, some cool, all worth preserving,” she quips), as well as early works by other artists.
“The Archive has been essential to my creative life, and to musicians’ collective history, especially those of us outside the mainstream,” she says. “In a year already marked by injustice towards working artists, a lawsuit that targets this critical resource does zilch to us. There are legal interventions musicians need; this lawsuit is the furthest thing from them. I stand with the Internet Archive and the legacy it helps preserve, not the corporate forces trying to erase it.”
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