jjcm
9 hours ago
Regardless of what happens here, one of the biggest losses in historical music archives was when what.cd got taken down. Regardless of copyright, it does feel like there is a place for archival indexing of historical recordings. I wish there was some sort of law protecting this. What.cd was clearly offending copyright, with the historical value being a secondary effect, but the internet archive's intent here clearly isn't copyright violation.
Intent should matter.
dfxm12
8 hours ago
Yes, but it shouldn't have to. The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old. Few people even have gear to play the discs. Have the authors of these songs, the players on the recordings and the publishers of these discs not had enough of a chance to make their money? I'll take whatever judgement I can get in favor of the Internet Archive, but I think we should be aiming for a principled stance of enough copyright is enough!
Retric
7 hours ago
IMO copyright simply isn’t fine grained enough. Allowing 1:1 copies after 20 years isn’t economically meaningful to the creators in general, but when you use a work as part of a movie, commercial, political campaign, etc it’s co opting the original creator as if they where endorsing what you’re doing. Which simply isn’t appropriate while the creator is alive.
On the other hand if you’re selling action figures you expect little kids to create their own stories with those characters. Culture has long mixed existing characters in new ways just look at any mythology before writing. Jokes, memes, fanfics, etc are the natural progression of a culture and giving up on that seems detrimental in ways that aren’t obvious.
idle_zealot
3 hours ago
I agree that we're probably giving up something culturally and socially important by restricting the telling and remixing of stories, myths, characters, etc. As for co-opting work to spread a message the author wouldn't necessarily endorse, that interpretation sounds like one borne of a world with strict copyright that has trained people to expect all instances of a character or uses of a work to involve the author's permission. In a world without such an expectation that sort of usage would not be misinterpreted as endorsement.
redundantly
6 hours ago
Your distinction between commercial use and things like meme culture doesn’t hold up. For example, memes can harm creators too, like Pepe the Frog being co-opted by far-right groups. If you want to protect creators, there’s no simple solution, as both can distort their intent.
Retric
4 hours ago
Focused on “commercial” and while ignoring “political campaign, etc” misses the point. There is a difference between making up a new Chuck Norris fact and using the meme to support religion, brands, politics, or whatever.
Legal systems constantly deal with intangible abstracts like intent. “Pepe the Frog being co-opted” is cashing in on the existing work rather than operating in some hypothetical framework.
redundantly
an hour ago
Pepe wasn’t officially adopted by that campaign, and its misuse and harm began long before and continued well after the press tied it to MAGA.
Beyond that, creative works shape society, and arbitrarily restricting them stifles creativity. Granting exceptions for reasons like ‘think of the children’ or ‘it’s just for the lulz’ fails to address the greater issue.
Retric
an hour ago
> Pepe wasn’t officially adopted by that campaign, and its misuse and harm began long before and continued well after the press tied it to MAGA.
Being ‘Official’ is irrelevant. Noting happens without individuals doing something, who would then be liable in the system I am describing.
> Granting exceptions for
Exceptions completely defeat the point here. It’s the implied support that’s the problem not what’s being supported. Someone could be a well known champion of the issuing being supported, but disagree with being associated with the people presenting the message.
We limit what you can do with someone’s likeness and someone’s works deserve protection for similar reasons. Under the current system this issue is irrelevant because of how long copyright lasts, but if you want dramatically shorter copyright people are going to want this kind of protection even for works they aren’t receiving royalties from.
squarefoot
5 hours ago
> The youngest recordings we're talking about are ~65 years old.
So they could have gotten some value again as relics?
gosub100
3 hours ago
remember when they tried to codify it into an international treaty, effectively removing even congress' ability to control it?
jancsika
7 hours ago
> Regardless of copyright, it does feel like there is a place for archival indexing of historical recordings.
Does anyone have a link to such an index for what.cd? Just the following:
* album/track string plus minimal metadata (release date or whatever)
* hash for the track that goes along with that given piece of unique metadata
Such a thing is obviously on the right side of the law-- you can't reconstruct the copyrighted content from the hash or the title. And the name of an artist/track title isn't copyrightable.
That would be a valuable index that shows the exact state of what.cd's database before it was taken down. And I don't think it would be that large.
dublinben
6 hours ago
This might be what you're looking for: https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release
rblatz
9 hours ago
Isn't that supposed to be the role of The Library of Congress?
jrochkind1
4 hours ago
Supposed according to whom?
Believe it or not, the official role of the Library of Congress is mostly to be a library serving Congress.
Their website says "The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office."
They do keep copies of things registered for copyrights, for copyright purposes.
I don't believe there is any legislation or funding to give them the role of finding and preserving 80 year old 78s en masse.
dfxm12
8 hours ago
"That" has a little wiggle room here, but the answer is still probably no regardless of what you mean. The Internet Archive's goal is to provide universal access to all knowledge. This is not the goal of the LOC.
mrighele
7 hours ago
I think the parent refers to this [1]:
"All works under copyright protection that are published in the United States are subject to the mandatory deposit provision of the copyright law (17 USC section 407).
This law requires that two copies of the best edition of every copyrightable work published in the United States be sent to the Copyright Office within three months of publication. Works deposited under this law are for the use of the Library of Congress"
I don't know how/if it works in practice, but if the copyright is supposed "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", I think that it is perfectly fine for the LOC to guarantee that when the copyright expires at least a copy is still around.
This doesn't mean that it should provide universal access though, especially while the copyright is still valid.
nodamage
6 hours ago
Wait, does this apply to software?
mrighele
5 hours ago
I have no idea :-). Frankly I was under the impression that this requirement had been weakened/removed over the years, but this is what they write on the official website and I cannot find any reference about that so that's why I wrote "how/if it works in practice"
(maybe the devil is in the referenced details, but alas I have not time to investigate now)
But my point was more about the matter of principle: it is reasonable for the government to ask a copy of the works (for preservation reasons) in exchange for time-limited rights over it.
jrochkind1
4 hours ago
I mean, it certainly doesn't apply to 80 year-old 78s published long before the law said that. They don't go looking for ancient stuff that predated that practice.
azemetre
7 hours ago
What.cd was more than an archive of nearly all recorded music, both analog and digital. It had some of the best collage lists and recommendations I have ever seen. None of the child sites came even close, but some are promising.
It was truly one of the best ways to discover music because behind each recommendation was a human that were both enthralled you were interested and would tailor their recommendations to suit your tastes.
Spotify use to have humans curate their playlists and during this time is was almost as good, but since they've moved to ML models recommendations have gone to truly awful now.
joe463369
7 hours ago
They can archive things without breaching copyright. Why not digitise your 78rpm copy of White Christmas, stick it in the vault, and publish it when the copyright expires?
idle_zealot
3 hours ago
There's always the possibility that the organization falls apart, suffers catastrophic data loss, or is legally compelled to destroy their copies. The name of the game is redundancy when it comes to archival, and the best way to achieve that is to distribute copies to anyone who wants one. Many parties storing copies on many mediums in many jurisdictions for many reasons.
matheusmoreira
5 hours ago
I'll never forgive the copyright monopolists for the closing of what.cd. The world lost another library of alexandria that day. Don't care what the law says, how many of their "rights" were infringed, how much money it was costing them. I'll never forgive them for it.