Internet Archive Hit With $400+ Million Copyright Lawsuit From Top Record Labels

Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and several other prominent record labels on Friday filed a major copyright lawsuit against Internet Archive, its founder, and others. The suit, filed in a Manhattan federal court, seeks upwards of $400 million in damages stemming from the nonprofit’s “Great 78 Project”.

Launched by Internet Archive in 2006 to preserve recordings made on 78rpm records—the primary medium from the early 1900s into the 1950s—the collection hosts over 400,000 recordings, per the site, including songs by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Berry, Bing Crosby, and many more. The plaintiffs, which include UMG Recordings, Sony Music, Capitol Records, Concord Bicycle Assets, CMGI Recorded Music Assets, and Arista Music, allege that the “Great 78 Project” has acted as an “illegal record store.”

“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 labels allege in the lawsuit reviewed by Rolling Stone. “Internet Archive unabashedly seeks to provide free and unlimited access to music for everyone, regardless of copyright.”

The suit seeks statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each protected recording infringement, which could exceed $412 million, plus attorney fees and any further relief determined by the court. While the Internet Archive launched the “Great 78 Project” as a campaign to save obsolete media, a statement from the Recording Industry Association of America supporting the case argues that all of the recordings are available on “legitimate” streaming services.

“When people want to listen to music they go to Spotify. When people want to study sound recordings as they were originally created, they go to libraries like the Internet Archive,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle said in a blog post responding to the lawsuit. “Both are needed. There shouldn’t be conflict here.”

Founded in 1996, the Internet Archive catalogs books, music, websites, and much more under the mission to “provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.” Kahle, who is named in the lawsuit, has posited the site as a digital library preserving content for the general public to access free of charge. The record labels, on the other hand, allege that it is simply a massive copyright violation, and they’re not the only ones.

Back in March, a judge ruled in favor of four of the country’s biggest book publishers in a similar copyright lawsuit against the Internet Archive. Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House all brought legal action against the website over its “National Emergency Library”. Active for a brief period of time at the onset of the pandemic when physical libraries were not open to the public, the online resource provided digital access to scanned copies of books published prior to 1927 (the cut-off point when works enter the public domain).

The Internet Archive contends itself as a digital library, functioning through “controlled digital lending.” The policy requires libraries to only lend the number of book copies it owns, with the Archive counting its physical copy of the book and up to one book copy from its partner libraries to make up the inventory. Unfortunately, the “National Emergency Library” did not uphold this practice as the Internet Archive lent out more digital copies of books than it had, which left the organization open to legal action. In response, IA has said its actions were protected by the doctrine of fair use, which protects usage for “purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”

“IA’s fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koetel wrote in his opinion. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.”

Internet Archive plans to appeal the decision. An exhaustive examination of the case published by The New York Times on Sunday states that the Archive and publishers have reached an agreement to remove all their copyrighted books from the website.