Yet again the Internet Archiving is suffering big this time, a coalition of major record labels filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive demanding $700 million for the extensive catalog of 78 rpm records. 78s are sometimes more than a century old at this point and i bet a lot of them are out of copyright, but i suppose for the few that still are majors are hitting it big towards the IA
This lawsuit is pretty much another existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything it preserves, including the Wayback Machine, and we’re fucked if we ever lose access to the Wayback Machine.
the original article asked to sign a petition, but i think a more logical way to support is to donate them directly so that they have more money to better defend themselves in court in this and other cases they’ll undoubtedly face in the future
They lost that argument when they implemented the possibility to play games they host in the browser.
I’m all for an archive. I’m not sure IA are doing this right.
but come on, it’s not like they’re modern videogames or something, they’re old stuff from the 80s and 90s that one would never be able to play without access to the original hardware, so even in that case it’s about preserving the media, not committing plain copyright infringement to the original game publisher or something
They can be archived without being playable - and many of them are definitely still sold today and playable through commercial emulation. Playing PSX (Playstation 1) games is part of Sony’s Playstation Premium subscription as an example - and Nintendo has the same.
Completely unnecessary, and puts the actual archiving arguments at risk meaning we might see court action that makes it impossible for other “real” archives to exist.
Arguing that subscription services should be the only way to experience 30+ year old media that you may have already purchased is certainly one view… I don’t think you’ll find much support here, however
You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger darling.
Imagine an archive for unreadable books, unwatchable films, and unplayable games too!
I think you forgot commenting the part about your “never be able to” statement being a flat out lie.
They acted like a regplar library: only one person was able to play concurrently. If that’s not ok, then all libraries should get sued.
What good is an archive where you cannot access the content?
Not much, no. In this climate I would say, keep it hidden, keep it safe. Then wait for better times.