Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com SELECTstarFROMreddit @sh.itjust.works 1 yr. ago

Music labels sue Internet Archive over digitized record collection

www.reuters.com Music labels sue Internet Archive over digitized record collection

Universal Music Group , Sony Music Entertainment and other record labels on Friday sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for copyright infringement over its streaming collection of digitized music from vintage records.

52 comments

Ah Sony Music is involved.

Remember the time Sony Music installed a rootkit on peoples' computers via commercially purchased CDs because hacking paying customers' computers seemed like a good way to combat piracy?

Pepperidge Farm Remembers.
- I can't believe I hadn't heard of this.
  
  Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released an uninstaller for one of the programs that merely made the program's files invisible while also installing additional software that could not be easily removed.
  
  And then they just paid some settlements, recalled some CDs, and continued to operate as if nothing has happened. Bloody hell.
  
  I remembered there was a Part II to the story that made it even worse, but did not remember those details. Should have read my own link! Thanks for highlighting that because it truly is the icing on the cake.
- I fucking remember. Had been the last time I bought a CD from a major label!
  
  Edit: Spelling
  
  I remember, way back when, I think it was one of Natalie Imbriglia's first albums, I stuck it into my PC's CD-ROM drive and something odd happened.
  
  I could listen to a digital copy of the album via an included player and files that were in some locked weird format.
  
  My CD drive couldn't see the normal CDDA portion of the disc just this little data area with a digital copy.
  
  Wasn't impressed.
- Permanently Deleted
- I worked for a startup that had as main investor a company called InterTrust. Our office was inside their building.
  
  InterTrust was a patent portfolio that belonged to Sony and Philips. All they did was sue people. One day they were able to sue Apple on some stupid patent, and there was much rejoicing at the office.
- Why yes I did boycott Sony nearly 30 years ago.
  
  The worst part was the response from someone high up at Sony was "most of the people who [had the rootkit installed on their PC against their will] dont know what a rootkit is anyways, so why should I care?"
  
  Really was the tip of the privacy era iceberg if you ask me.
- Yup, I got rootkitted by those fuckers just installing their bullshit software for my mini-disc player.
  
  I hate when you need to install different software for whatever camera, music player, whatever that you had. Luckily that is pretty rare that proprietary software is required nowadays.
  
  mini-disc
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ofxFrwzDHM&t=41s
- That's when I stopped buying anything made by Sony.
All these lawsuits do is show me new cool stuff that Internet Archive has.
- First the Streisand effect led to her home. Now it leads to her entire discography. Poor Barbara Streisand.
- Yes, and please back up as much as possible while you're there. If they take it from us, we build our own Internet Archive, with blackjack and hookers.
  
  Notable upload: Leaked FarCry 1.34 source code (without assets)
  Some comments:
  
  yess?!!! hell yess?!!!!! lets gooo bestieeeeee
  
  What How
  
  Thanks for sharing!
  This source compiles with few modifications in Visual Studio .NET 2003 (MSVC 7.1)
  see screens:
  https://i.imgur.com/PjEAFn5.png
  https://i.imgur.com/3obty91.jpeg
  Game assets needed from version 1.33 (build 1.1.3.1395)
- Someone needs to archive the Internet Archive before we lose it
- Just took a look, they have tons of live show archives! So cool!
  
  Yeah, there aren't many Pumpkins fans left these days, but the Internet Archive still manages to have a collection that beats the Smashing Pumpkins Audio Archive from the early 2000s.
Here is how record companies have treated their own precious assets: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire

10s of thousands of original master recordings lost forever. They should fucking be paying archive.org for preserving these artists' works

*Edit: and of course Universal is one of the plaintiffs. I hate these fuckers so much
- *Edit: and of course Universal is one of the plaintiffs. I hate these fuckers so much.
  
  Yep
Permanently Deleted
- What? That's insane!
- They should've kept open mics for self written music only.
Permanently Deleted
- Exactly. Recordings of the song being available ≠ original recordings of the song being available.
  
  It's like if I demolished the Eiffel tower, and then said the Blackpool tower's still around so you can't archive any photos of it
  
  Also still got the one in Las Vegas if I'm not mistaken.
Time to donate to the Internet Archive again: for those who want to and can afford it: https://archive.org/donate/
- Just something funny: First time I donated to archive.org my bank blocked my card due to being a "suspicious payment".
  I had to physically go to the bank because due to security reasons I couldn't unblock it in internet banking.
  The high security looked like this:
  "Hello. You blocked my card due to suspicious payment."
  "OK, what's your name"
  "[name]"
  "I see. Did you make that payment?"
  "Yes."
  "OK, I'll send an e-mail to management. It should be unblocked in a few hours. Have a nice day."
  "Bye."
  
  They didn't want to see my ID card, not even the debit card. Nor sign anything. Just and only hear my name. "Security".
  
  I had my insurance company ask me for my phone number for security purposes. It was an old one I had since replaced and forgotten, so they read it out to me and asked me to confirm it.
  
  This has happened to me with my own bank sometimes, though thankfully all I have to do is call them, report the blocked payment, and answer the same useless questions that don't really prove anything security-wise, and that's it. I'm not sure why they insist on doing this song and dance, but at least I don't have to drive all the way to one of their locations to get it resolved, lol.
I mean it'd be a terrible shame if Frank Sinatra and Billy Holiday went broke and had to come out of retirement because of the internet archive's actions, maybe the labels a have a point here...
- Pretty wishful thinking to suggest any of this effort is in support of the actual artists.
  
  You missed the sarcasm. Sometimes hard to get in text. Both of those artists are long dead.
  
  However, their heirs could still be getting royalties if the artists were savvy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:

The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.

Representatives for the Internet Archive did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint.

The Internet Archive is already facing another federal lawsuit in Manhattan from leading book publishers who said its digital-book lending program launched in the pandemic violates their copyrights.

A judge ruled for the publishers in March, in a decision that the Archive plans to appeal.

The labels' lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings, including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" and Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)".

The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and "face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed."

I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is disappointing to hear
Sony Music responsible for recently threatening to take radio streaming apps to court for streaming radio stations outside the UK under some false pretence.
They also couldnt give a crap about vinyl quality for their artists and have had entire reissues that were faulty and never repressed. They're seriously starting to piss me off recently. Going to donate to Archive.
- Good on ya. Up the archive!
RIAA really likes to bite the hand that feeds them, and always gets surprised when it doesn't go well.
I feel so hopeless, so pissed, all these news and how these corporations are destroying open web. I really had hope with new generations being more tech savvy and more online would push for openness of web, instead I've come to realize that new generations are really into apps and not going beyond that, not interested in deeper look into software and tech - as long as the gadget works and no matter any subscription cost or microtransactions or surveillance.

I try to be hopeful, but damn it is hard to stay optimistic. I've been trying little by little to push friends and family in a nice way into using Firefox, alternatives to big corporate software and so on, but I understand it takes too much effort for someone who is not really interested in these things. But I will be advocate of open web forever myself.

Edit: okay unfair to expect anything from new generations, and of course there are more tech savvy people than there probably use to be, but had hoped for a huge change in that demographic.
They shall fail miserably
Oy vey shut it down
I want someone like Elon to destroy these little twits
Good, they shouldn't be stealing other people's intellectual property.

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