UMG, Sony Music, and other labels sue the Internet Archive for copyright infringement, saying its Great 78 Project works as an “illegal record store” for songs
The case places a preservation-oriented music archive inside the same licensing and control dispute that has long surrounded older recordings, including the earlier litigation over pre-1972 music.
The Internet Archive must defend the Great 78 Project’s handling of the recordings, placing continued access to the collection under legal pressure.
UMG, Sony Music and the other plaintiff labels seek to assert that making the recordings available requires their authorization rather than being treated solely as preservation.
Second-order effects
Archives and other digitization projects holding commercially controlled recordings may face stronger incentives to verify rights, seek licenses, or narrow public access.
The suit reinforces music rightsholders’ broader enforcement posture, later reflected in the RIAA’s litigation against Suno and Udio, across new forms of digital distribution.
Third-order effects
If courts continue to favor rightsholders in disputes over archival access, preservation projects may increasingly depend on negotiated licensing rather than unilateral online availability.
The longer-term fault line is whether cultural preservation can scale digitally when underlying recording rights remain fragmented and commercially enforceable.
The trend: Music rightsholders are extending copyright enforcement from conventional distribution channels to archives and AI services that make or use recordings at digital scale.
The Internet Archive seeks to preserve old recordings from deceased artists like Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby for future generations. Record labels say future generations can go to hell if they don't properly license the IP and pay them their cu…
Now the Washington lawyers want to destroy digital collections of scratchy 78rpm records, 70-120 year old, built by dedicated preservationists online since 2006. — Who benefits? — https://www.reuters.com/...
The Internet Archive, having learned nothing from losing a copyright infringement suit to the publishing industry, is now being sued by the record industry. It is deeply frustrating to watch the Archive put the invaluable work it does at risk with its recklessness distributing w…
As much as I hate siding with the music industry on this one, regardless of whose side you were on in the Internet Archive's lending library case, this “Great 78 Project” is an even more blatant and clear-cut thievery of easily accessible content: https://www.reuters.com/...
Sony and other labels sue the Internet Archive for its project to preserve rare 78 rpm recordings online. https://www.reuters.com/... As I've noted elsewhere, the record business worships the 3 L's: litigation, legislation, and lobbying.