Over 300 musicians, including Canadian stars Tegan and Sara and Polaris Music Prize winner Cadence Weapon, have signed an open letter supporting the Internet Archive as the digital preservation site faces a $621 million US (approximately $880 million Cdn) copyright infringement lawsuit from UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Concord Bicycle Assets, CMGI Recorded Music Assets, Sony Music and Arista Music.
Fight for the Future, a digital advocacy group known for spearheading online protests, created the letter to support the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project, which preserves 78 rpm records. According to the letter, the Great 78 Project has rescued over 400,000 recordings.
“We, the undersigned musicians, wholeheartedly oppose major record labels’ unjust lawsuit targeting the Internet Archive, a crucial non-profit cultural institution,” the letter states. “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.”
Works by Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday listed in lawsuit
The lawsuit claims the Great 78 Project, which includes pre-1972 musical works by some of music’s biggest names including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald and others, serves as an “illegal record store” and is reproducing and distributing copyrighted works.
The aim of the Great 78 Project is to have “a digital reference collection of underrepresented artists and genres,” and that “the digitization will make this less commonly available music accessible to researchers in a format where it can be manipulated and studied without harming the physical artifacts.”
“Defendants attempt to defend their wholesale theft of generations of music under the guise of ‘preservation and research,’ but this is a smokescreen: their activities far exceed those limited purposes,” the lawsuit states. “Internet Archive unabashedly seeks to provide free and unlimited access to music for everyone, regardless of copyright.”
Lia Holland, Fight for the Future’s campaigns and communications director, told Rolling Stone that the lawsuit is 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,” she continued.
Other artists who have signed the letter include Kathleen Hanna, Cloud Nothings and Amanda Palmer, as well as Polaris Music Prize winner Backxwash.
