<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/14/riaa-piles-on-in-the-effort-to-kill-the-worlds-greatest-library-sues-internet-archive-for-making-it-possible-to-hear-old-78s/>
"On Friday, the Internet Archive put up a blog post noting that its digital
book lending program was likely to change as it continues to fight the book
publishers’ efforts to kill the Internet Archive. As you’ll recall, all the big
book publishers teamed up to sue the Internet Archive over its Open Library
project, which was created based on a detailed approach, backed by librarians
and copyright lawyers, to recreate an online digital library that matches a
physical library. Unfortunately, back in March, the judge decided (just days
after oral arguments) that everything about the Open Library infringes on
copyrights. There were many, many problems with this ruling, and the Archive is
appealing.
However, in the meantime, the judge in the district court needed to sort out
the details of the injunction in terms of what activities the Archive would
change during the appeal. The Internet Archive and the publishers negotiated
over the terms of such an injunction and asked the court to weigh in on whether
or not it also covers books for which there are no ebooks available at all. The
Archive said it should only cover books where the publishers make an ebook
available, while the publishers said it should cover all books, because of
course they did. Given Judge Koeltl’s original ruling, I expected him to side
with the publishers, and effectively shut down the Open Library. However, this
morning he surprised me and sided with the Internet Archive, saying only books
that are already available in electronic form need to be removed. That’s still
a lot, but at least it means people can still access those other works
electronically. The judge rightly noted that the injunction should be narrowly
targeted towards the issues at play in the case, and thus it made sense to only
block works available as ebooks.
But, also on Friday, the RIAA decided to step in and to try to kick the
Internet Archive while it’s down. For years now, the Archive has offered up its
Great 78 Project, in which the Archive, in coordination with some other
library/archival projects (including the Archive of Contemporary Music and
George Blood LP), has been digitizing whatever 78rpm records they could find.
78rpm records were some of the earliest musical recordings, and were produced
from 1898 through the 1950s when they were replaced by 33 1/3rpm and 45rpm
vinyl records. I remember that when I was growing up my grandparents had a
record player that could still play 78s, and there were a few of those old 78s
in a cabinet. Most of the 78s were not on vinyl, but shellac, and were fairly
brittle, meaning that many old 78s are gone forever. As such there is
tremendous value in preserving and protecting old 78s, which is also why many
libraries have collections of them. It’s also why those various archival
libraries decided to digitize and preserve them. Without such an effort, many
of those 78s would disappear."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
