Lawsuit by record labels: Petition to save the Internet Archive
In an open letter, signatories call on the music industry to drop the 700 million lawsuit against the Internet Archive over shellac records.
By no means all 78-rpm records are made of shellac. The picture shows the unused blank of a flexible gramophone record made of Decelith, a PVC-based thermoplastic with a "tropicalized" rating.
(Image: CC-BY 2.5 Wikpit)
A dramatic appeal hopes to ensure the survival of the non-profit Internet Archive. The signatories of a petition, which is open for further signatures, are calling on the US music industry association RIAA and participating labels such as Universal Music Group (UMG), Capitol Records, Sony Music and Arista to drop their lawsuit against the online library. The legal dispute, which has been pending since mid-2023 and was extended in March, revolves around the “Great 78” project. This project aims to save 500,000 song recordings by digitizing 250,000 records from the period between 1880 and 1960. Various institutions and collectors have donated the records, which are made for 78 revolutions per minute (“shellacs”), so that the Internet Archive can put the cultural treasure online.
The music companies originally demanded 372 million US dollars for the online publication of the songs and the associated “mass theft”. They recently increased their claim for potential copyright infringement to 700 million US dollars. The lawsuit is based on the Music Modernization Act, which was approved by US President Donald Trump in 2018. This includes the CLASSICS Act. This act retroactively introduces federal copyright protection for sound recordings made before 1972, which were previously protected in the USA by different rules in the individual US states. The monopoly rights now apply throughout the US for a good 100 years (for recordings up to 1946) or until 2067 (for recordings from 1947 to 1972).
Critical infrastructure of the internet is at stake
According to the petition, which is currently supported by around 56,000 people, the legal action is not only directed against music. Rather, the focus is on the question of “whether our digital history survives at all”. The controversial fragile recordings are “part of a disappearing American culture. They capture early jazz, blues, gospel and folk – voices and sounds that could otherwise be lost forever.” The Great 78 project is trying to “preserve this heritage and make it accessible for research”.
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The lawsuit ultimately threatens the existence of the entire Internet Archive, including the well-known Wayback Machine. This important public service is used by millions of people every day to access historical “snapshots” from the web. Journalists, educators, researchers, lawyers, and citizens use it to check sources, investigate disinformation and maintain public accountability. With the legal attack, a “critical infrastructure of the internet” is also on the brink. And this at a time when digital information is being deleted, overwritten and destroyed: “We cannot afford to lose the tools that preserve memory and defend facts.” The Internet Archive was only forced to delete 500,000 books in 2024. It also has to deal with ongoing IT attacks.
The case is called Universal Music Group et al v Internet Archive. Originally filed in the US Federal District Court for Southern New York (Case No. 1:23-cv-07133), the case is pending in the Federal District Court for Northern California (Case No. 3:23-cv-6522). The Internet Archive believes that the Great 78 project does not cause any damage to the music industry, on the contrary: people who want to enjoy music use commercial streaming services anyway; the old 78-rpm shellac recordings are study material for researchers.
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