Our Future of Texas Music Preservation…
Howdy friends, Johnny K. here.
I’m a little late to this party, but I recently learned about the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the Internet Archive, brought by Sony and Universal Music.
The Internet Archive, which touts itself as the world’s largest online library for books, music, video, newspapers, magazines, and websites, has been accused of copyright infringement for allowing popular audio recordings by Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry, Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley and more to be downloaded by IA’s users. It’s argued by the record companies that recordings by these artists are widely commercially available, which may be true to a point, but many of the recordings in question derive from the 78rpm discs themselves, and are not the current mastered editions available on digital streaming platforms or remastered reissues. The site’s Great 78 Project has spent years archiving and digitizing over 400,000 78rpm shellac discs to preserve, thanks in part to crowd sourcing by like-minded individuals and organizations. (The Rolling Stone article link above goes into great detail about what is currently happening with the lawsuit, presenting arguments for both sides and what is at stake, which I won’t get into here. It’s well worth the read.)
Recently, the courts ruled against the IA for a similar copyright infringement lawsuit filed by book publishers for IA making many publications widely available to the public during the pandemic. Everyone within the music and library industries are paying close attention to this lawsuit. According to reports, litigation could continue to take place through 2025. If the courts rule in favor of the music industry, there could be disastrous consequences for the likes of the Texas Jukebox Project and similar entities. Additionally, due to federal funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Art and Humanities, small non-profit organizations (like ourselves) are already wrestling with reduced opportunities to receive grants. What’s concerning for us, the music industry has enormous power to shut down and/or seriously hamper online libraries and internet-based archives that make obsolete materials available to the public.
As an artist and archivist myself, I understand the arguments both sides present. For the music industry, yes…they should have the right to exploit their copyrights for monetary gain. For the Internet Archive, they should have the right and ability to archive, preserve, and share materials that are no longer commercially viable to the copyright holders, and no longer wish to spend time and resources on materials making them commercially viable again. Laws need to be changed concerning audio recordings that allow libraries and archives to legally make materials available to the public should the copyright holders no longer wish to exploit their copyrights after a certain amount of time. However, the laws that do change seem to favor the ‘Big 3’ music companies (Sony, Universal, and Warner Music Group) and protect their billions in annual profits, which don’t necessarily benefit the copyright creators, artists, or public at large. It doesn’t seem fair or right that the major music corporations should be allowed to shelve culturally and historically valuable art and music in perpetuity because they no longer want to spend time or resources making this material available. That is where institutions like the IA and the TJP come into play. The demise of the Internet Archive could send shockwaves throughout the country and industry and how similar organizations will be allowed (or not allowed) to archive, preserve, and share culturally valuable materials.
As the TJP follows this lawsuit closely, we are not sure how to currently proceed with our longterm plans of building an online library to share our Texas recordings. We will still physically continue to collect and archive materials as they become available to us. For now, our online library plans are on hold until a court ruling is issued and we have a clear path and understanding what rights we have as an institution. We will still share many of our holdings via our weekly “Record Ranger Radio” broadcast, but won’t make individual tracks or the radio program available for stream or download, for now.
The irony is, if the TJP were based in Europe, we would have an easier time making our archive available to the public, as most recordings issued prior to 1962 are in the public domain. However, the United States has some of the strictest copyright laws in the world, making what we do a near impossibility. We’ll keep trudging on and see what the future holds for us and the Internet Archive. Stay tuned.