A coalition of major record labels has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive—demanding $700 million for our work preserving and providing access to historical 78rpm records. These fragile, obsolete discs hold some of the earliest recordings of a vanishing American culture. But this lawsuit goes far beyond old records. It’s an attack on the Internet Archive itself.
This lawsuit is an existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything we preserve—including the Wayback Machine, a cornerstone of memory and preservation on the internet.
At a time when digital information is disappearing, being rewritten, or erased entirely, the tools to preserve history must be defended—not dismantled.
This isn’t just about music. It’s about whether future generations will have access to knowledge, history, and culture.
I donate to the internet archive every year, but they need to decentralize their data into a distributed p2p protocol fucking ASAP.
Trying to fight fascism in oligarch-owned courts is a losing battle. All it takes is one corrupt judge and we lose the library of Alexandria. Centralizing an “internet archive” in any jurisdiction was always a mistake. I don’t want to fund court battles. I want to donate hard drives, CPU’s, and bandwidth for the rest of my life.
The longer they do not do this, the less value I see in my donations, and the more I feel they are not proper custodians of the data they hold. It feels like they aren’t taking the risks, or their value, seriously.
Have they ever stated a reason why they haven’t?
Even a small donation is helpful. Archive.org is an enormously resource. Please do all you can to support this project.
Signed petition and donated. IA is vital.
