Musicians Tegan & Sara, Open Mike Eagle, Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and more organized by Fight for the Future demanding music labels drop their , the online library and nonprofit best known for the Wayback Machine.
“We, the undersigned musicians, wholeheartedly oppose major record labels’ unjust lawsuit targeting the Internet Archive,” the reads. “We don’t believe that the Internet Archive should be destroyed in our name.” Instead, the letter offers three alternative ways the lives of musicians could be materially improved: By partnering with organizations like the Internet Archive to preserve original recordings and music culture, allowing musicians to keep 100 percent of merchandise sales and ending vertical investments in streaming services like Spotify.
The advent of streaming services already made being a working musician highly unprofitable, but as the letter notes, things like the and have made it nearly impossible to perform without some kind of extra expense.
The original lawsuit put forth by labels like Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group was specifically targeted at the Internet Archive’s , which aims to preserve music recorded on 78 RPM records. The project has over 400,000 recordings available to stream, including music from well-known artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra. If the labels win their lawsuit, the Internet Archive could be on the hook for up to $621 million dollars in damages to account for the music streamed through the Archive since 2006, .
Music isn’t the only front where the Internet Archive is fighting. The organization recently in an ongoing lawsuit with publishers . The Internet Archive claims its digital book library can lend out eBooks under the fair use doctrine, but multiple judges have now disagreed.
