Creative copyright is a very sensitive topic among creative professionals, especially in the United States. Recently, it has been reported that the Internet Archive, a website that focuses on archiving digital information in an open source manner has now been sued by a number of music labels in the United States, including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and others.
This suit was filed because of one of the Internet Archive's projects called The Great 78 Project, which aims to ensure the survival of songs that were previously stored in 78RPM discs. These audio files are typically classic songs sung by famous pre-1972 artists such as Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Bill Murray.
According to the suit filing, the songs offered for free by the Internet Archive can already be heard through existing popular streaming platforms, and there is no need for the organization to offer these songs again because they are already stored digitally. They also say that the offering of these songs given away for free goes far beyond the need for preservation and research of the old technology.
These music labels are seen suing the Internet Archive for $150 thousand (~RM691 thousand) for each song they own, and the total lawsuit is seen to reach $237 million (~RM1.1 billion)