Help back up the Great 78 Collections before the Record Companies force The Internet Archive to take them down!

yiffit.net Music labels sue Internet Archive over digitized record collection - Yiffit.net

Archived version: https://archive.ph/ZGo6X [https://archive.ph/ZGo6X] Universal Music Group (UMG.AS [http://UMG.AS]), Sony Music Entertainment (6758.T) and other record labels on Friday sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for copyright infringement over its streaming collection of digitized music fr...

See linked posting. I've commented there with a link to a CLI tool in Python that allows downloading of IA collections. I've submitted a patch to enable specifying start and end points so that it's easier to resume downloading a huge collection, or to allow multiple people to split up the work.

https://archive.org/details/georgeblood

https://archive.org/details/78rpm_bowling_green

F*ck the RIAA and absurdly long copyright.

EDIT: There is more than one collection of 78s on IA, so I updated the title.

The issue with these collections are that they're absolutely HUGE. And yes, IA offers torrents for them, but as a separate torrent for every. single. album. And the torrents have all data in them -- FLAC, fixed-rate MP3, VBR MP3, PDF liner notes, etc. etc... there may be some extremely hardcore data-hoarders out there who want everything, but IMHO as these are scratchy old 78 records, FLAC is overkill to just save the audio in a listenable format. The George Blood collection, just the VBR MP3s, is looking to be about 6TB. With ALL data it might be over 40TB! I can't afford that many hard drives :)

So, my approach at the moment is to save just the VBR MP3s (they seem to be done at up to 320kbps VBR) and the JPEG album cover. If I have a chance and any storage left afterwards, I can make a separate pass to get the album liner PDFs...

Tool used: https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive

Patch to allow setting start and end item indices for downloads: https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive/pull/605

Example usage to grab just the VBR MP3 and record label JPG for each (note the --start-idx and --end-idx arguments):

 undefined

        #ia download --start-idx=4001 --end-idx=8000 -a -i --format="VBR MP3" --format="JPEG" --search collection:georgeblood

I'm going to concentrate on the George Blood collection for now.. I'm starting at item 1. It would be great if others started at index 50,000, 100,000, 150,000, ... and others started at the end and worked backwards in similarly-sized chunks, so that it's assured someone gets each of them.

39 comments

Copyright has completely jumped the shark. There's absolutely no balance between the public benefit of the public domain.
30 years ought to be enough time for anyone to extract any reasonable value from an IP. If you haven't made your profit in 30 years, then let the public benefit from it.
Or at least let preservationists (data hoarders, let's be honest) keep our cultural history alive and accessible for future generations.
- Or a renewal step. If it's not worth renewing, let it into the public domain.
  This is why It's A Wonderful Life became a Christmas classic. Because it was in the pubic domain, it was used as late night filler.
  The MPAA and RIAA miss the point. If It's A Wonderful Life was still copyrighted, it wouldn't have become a classic.
  It's like the concept of Abandonware. If video games had a large copyright clearing house like the MPAA or RIAA, Abandonware wouldn't work, but abandoned media will disappear. Heck, non-abandoned media also disappears because profits don't reward preservation.
  
  Ok but then how will my ~~kids~~ record company benefit into perpetuity?
  In all seriousness, I think copyright law is the best example of how captured our government is to large corporate interests.
- And maybe short of very limited production runs there haven't been any 78s produced in a long time. All of that work should be in the public domain.

You don't need to censor yourself...
Fuck the RIAA, bunch of absolute cunts.
- Yeah, you're right, Fuck em.
  FYI I'm currently on 4001-8000 of the 'Great 78 Collection'. Looks like I'll need about 6TB to get it all, yikes! (Just the VBR MP3 files, not the FLACs. Holy Hell.)
  collection:georgeblood
  https://archive.org/details/georgeblood
  If everyone would take blocks of it, say 4000 each, we can eventually create torrents for each one or something so it can all be reassembled if/when the IA has to take it down.
  
  Yup. Torrents are the way forward to archive such collection.
  
  The IA has torrents for everything they upload already.
  
  which block are you on now?

Probably stating the obvious but „are in no threat of being deleted“ is an absolute joke.
A company holding the IP can just make it unavailable tormorrow. A big chunk of us is here because reddit somehow is allowed to delete our posts because the law is idiotic. At least european people are allowed to get their data but the cooperative works of thousands of people is threatened due to those laws.
The concept of IP needs to be reformed.
- Yeah. And whenever anyone says "Oh the music companies would never let these old recordings die, it's their bread and butter!" I give them this story.
  We cannot trust our cultural heritage to any one entity.
  
  Oof. I just read this. It’s pretty brutal.
- As concrete examples, try to get a copy of Disney's 1946 movie, "Song of the South." It's been removed from circulation because of its whitewashed presentation of "happy slaves." Similarly, 6 of Dr. Seuss' books, including "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" were withdrawn because of racial imagery (the mentioned book had a "Chinaman" drawn with a WWII stereotype style - rice hat, sloping eyes, buck teeth).
  There's media you simply can't get anymore.
  
  Our culture has been copyrighted.
  
  Fun fact, there is a fan made blu-ray quality remaster of Song of the South available on IA.
- Did you think your posts on Reddit were protected by copyright laws or something?
  Are you seriously comparing posts on a forum to music rights?
  
  What exactly are you trying to convey? That these „works“ made by ordinary people who have only a basic understanding of copyright law should be deleted if someone feels like it? That the law is more important than justice?
  Also, do you really think you‘re cool by implying things phrased as a question? Won‘t you just talk like a normal person and state your opinion instead of fake-calling-out others?

Cool tool! Please consider leaving GitHub for any of the numerous FOSS options.
- Oh, it's not my project -- I already have moved my own projects off there, yeah.
  
  That's awesome! Really encouraging seeing projects and devs migrate away from closed-source and proprietary systems and features. 💪

pirates sail your ship

Instructions unclear. Linked posting explains nothing. Will assume this is about 78 missing dragonballs and move on.
Jokes aside, we must preserve the 78 collection. What if in the future an alien signal will reach earth and no one can understand it because all 78s are extinct? We don't have Starfleet to go back in time and get a 78 from San Francisco in the past to save the future!

39 comments