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Comment by ipsum2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm interested in people's opinions on the legality of this. They mention "Archive Team considers the SoundCloud service in danger and, as it hosts a lot of original content, finds it important to prepare to save it selectively (a full grab would be too big and would raise concerns of mass copyright infringement).", but how is downloading any portion of artist's music not copyright infringement?

I've written my own Soundcloud offline audio player, but didn't distribute it because it was against their TOS.

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> but how is downloading any portion of artist's music not copyright infringement?

I had the same issue with backing up Geocities when it went down. I figured better safe than sorry, established a very easy deletion procedure for the copyright holders and have received only a very small number of nastygrams compared to an absolutely enormous number of messages from people that were happy their content got saved.

So at a guess, yes it is copyright infringement, no, it will not lead to trouble because most people are able to recognize a good faith effort when they see it.

> So at a guess, yes it is copyright infringement, no, it will not lead to trouble because most people are able to recognize a good faith effort when they see it.

A takedown notice from a few large commercial soundcloud users would probably be enough, no?

Each copyright owner can only request the takedown of their own content. They can't demand that you take the whole archive offline.

No, it wouldn't. You just take down their content, as is their right. If they sue they'll likely lose if they don't first send you a takedown notice but you are going to have to take that risk.

IIRC they said "selective backup"

To me that means "stuff that's most likely fine to preserve and most likely isn't found on other places".

Also according to Sound Cloud's ToS by using them you are granting all users rights to "to use, copy, listen to offline, repost, transmit or otherwise distribute" your content. So if Archive Team downloads everything they can (that does not in itself violate copyright (i.e. they are not Metallica songs)) there should be no copyright issues.

Not quite. The Terms of Use state that uploaders grant users the ability to use, copy, repost, distribute, etc. content specifically "utilizing the features of the Platform from time to time, and within the parameters set by you using the Services".

Which means you're only allowed to redistribute content through the facilities provided by Soundcloud. You're not allowed to simply download music and share it outside of the website.

That said, simply downloading music from Soundcloud isn't copyright infringement. You have to do that anyway to listen to the music. But redistributing it (outside of Soundcloud) is illegal unless the copyright holder has granted permission to do so, or the work is under Public Domain.

>By uploading Your Content to the Platform, you also grant a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid up, license to other users of the Platform (...) to use, copy, listen to offline, repost, transmit or otherwise distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, adapt, prepare derivative works of, compile, make available and otherwise communicate to the public

At least I read this only as "by default you are granting all users permission to do whatever you like", then you can restrict the access rights according to next part.

>You can limit and restrict the availability of certain of Your Content to other users of the Platform, and to users of Linked Services

I'd guess there are still plenty of stuff to backup even if some artists/performers/bands use more restrictive licensing.

One of the reasons I prefer Soundcloud is that it's trivially easy for me to enable listeners to download tracks for free.

I am sure whatever Archive Team downloads that is determined safe (enough) will end up on Internet Archive for everyone to enjoy. They have all kind of neat stuff there that you might not even think to preserve, like old super market announcements. You can easily spend an evening just rummaging through it if you are into older stuff.

It's really not much different from the Internet Archive as a whole. The vast majority of the content that the Internet Archive stores is copyrighted and not under CC, etc. The Archive mostly gets away with it because it is/was all public facing material and they bend over backwards (with retroactive robots.txt, etc.) to remove anything that the owner objects to.

Copyright only covers distribution. Merely having a copy of something is fine. When you download something from Soundcloud, that's them distributing a copy to you; presumably they have permission to do that. If you then distribute copies of it to other people, then it might be a copyright violation (there are exceptions, and varying laws, and, etc). Just holding on to something that was distributed to you isn't a copyright violation.

It probably is and archive team just don't care...

Maybe they're only pulling either indie stuff with no copyright, or the rarer stuff that they're less likely to get in trouble over.

indie stuff with no copyright

There's no such thing, copyright is automatic, it applies as soon as the author puts the work in some tangible medium (like an hard drive).

I've never thought about the medium thing. If you write a song (and perhaps perform it in public and everything), but never commit it into writing or recording, does copyright not apply?

What would the copyrights apply to if there's no recording?

Live concerts played from memory? E.g. Eubie Blake supposedly only wrote Charleston Rag down 16 years after composing it.

Someone else could write it down and publish it without the author's permission.

If you wrote it on paper, whether musical notation or just the lyrics, that would give you songwriter copyright.

If you then gave a performance and someone recorded it, the copyright in the recording would lie with them - but they would not be able to distribute it without also having your permission.

(People forget that these are different and the songwriter royalties are quite lucrative - famously e.g. the Beatles almost all the songs are joint copyright Lennon/McCartney, not the band as a whole)

Huh, didn't know that!

So if I record and master a random riff, I technically have a copyright on it?

To be fair, I was mostly talking about ones with a record label, where you might be hounded by a label with a lot of legal representation.

If you publish it. If you just sit on it, you don't. (At least not in the sense that you can get away with suing someone that publishes the same rift later)

What would publish imply?

Would putting it on a private Google Drive work? What about a Drive that's searchable and anyone can have a listen, if they so desired?

I'd guess that standard would be set by a court case, unless there already has been one like this (in which case please enlighten me). In general, with vagueness like this, a court usually has the final say.

IANAL, but unlike patents, copyright violation only occurs if you actually copy the work - independent creations are not infringing, even if similar. While the standard for showing that the work was actually copied is usually not high, especially since these are usually civil suits, some link in a random Google Drive might not be enough.

Yes, sure, if you record a riff or write a few sentences on paper, then you own the copyright to that - there is no "magic importance limit" that needs to be surpassed for works to become copyrightable.

Shitty drawings made by five year olds get the same legal treatment as Picasso, etc, etc.

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