Internet Archive’s big battle with music publishers ends in settlement
The true cost of keeping the Internet Archive alive will likely remain unknown.
funny how thats copyright infringement but AI scraping isnt
Actually there are several legal arguments about this currently ongoing. There is a lot of discussion and several lawsuits in progress.
There isn't really a final decision yet, but I think I agree with Cory Doctorow's opinion that the solution is to make the output of generative AI tools uncopywritable/public domain. This protects artists broadly, as any company that wants to produce a copywrited final work (e.g. film, television, music, books, etc) will need to hire an artist to do it.
The Archive strongly supports AI training being Fair Use. It has even advised the UK government to relax copyright laws to permit training. https://blog.archive.org/2025/02/26/internet-archive-submits-comments-in-uks-open-consultation-on-ai-and-copyright/
Some of the precedents won by AI companies offer great support for the Archive, but remember that they also had to pay up on occasion.
Keep the donations coming. IA is worth a million times more to humanity than all of these publishers combined.
I'm just glad they didn't go into a protracted and expensive legal battle with this one, which isn't exactly a good use of donated funds.
IA is worth more than AI.
No details of the settlement have so far been released
