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The
labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the
Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record
store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella
Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.
They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive
allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case
could be as high as $412 million.
Representatives for the Internet Archive did not immediately
respond to a request for comment on the complaint.
The San Francisco-based Internet Archive digitally archives
websites, books, audio recordings and other materials. It
compares itself to a library and says its mission is to "provide
universal access to all knowledge."
The Internet Archive is already facing another federal lawsuit
in Manhattan from leading book publishers who said its
digital-book lending program launched in the pandemic violates
their copyrights. A judge ruled for the publishers in March, in
a decision that the Archive plans to appeal.
The Great 78 Project encourages donations of 78-rpm records --
the dominant record format from the early 1900s until the 1950s
-- for the group to digitize to "ensure the survival of these
cultural materials for future generations to study and enjoy."
Its website says the collection includes more than 400,000
recordings.
The labels' lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their
copyright-protected recordings, including Bing Crosby's "White
Christmas," Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" and Duke
Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That
Swing)".
The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized
streaming services and "face no danger of being lost, forgotten,
or destroyed."
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by David
Bario and Diane Craft)
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