The Grateful Dead vs. Archive.org

An anonymous reader writes "E! Online has an article about friction between archive.org and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead. They have come to an amicable understanding after some confusion involving online bootlegs." From the article: "A week after some of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead ordered a nonprofit site to remove free downloads of the seminal jam band's concerts--sparking massive online backlash and a Deadhead petition calling for a boycott of all band-related merchandise--the band has reversed its position. 'The Grateful Dead remains as it always has--in favor of tape trading,' spokesman Dennis McNally tells the Associated Press. "

Comments

Surprisingly large protest

[PurifyYourMind]

Fans pissed off at the merchanise type people put up a petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/. Theirs is one of the largest petitions on the site.

Not quite reversed

[LiquidCoooled]

From boingboing (where I saw this initially) comes the following:

He said the band consented to making audience recordings available for download again, although live recordings made directly from concert soundboards, which are the legal property of the Grateful Dead, should only be made available for listening from now on.

They are not reopening it back up fully. They are removing something which was granted to them earlier.

Quotes from the band

[rsidd]

Phil Lesh (bassist) was not consulted about the takedown.

John Perry Barlow (lyricist, but he has other claims to fame outside the Dead) was not happy. In this story he blames it on the drummers (Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann). The NYT quoted him as having had a "pretty heated discussion" with Weir, guitarist and his songwriting partner. Robert Hunter (Jerry Garcia's lyricist) was reportedly not happy either but is silent.

I'm just disappointed, that's all.

Re:Quotes from the band

[JabberWokky]

The drummer is the least significant component of any rock band. How these guys managed to call the tune is beyfond me. Just sit at the back and bash the pads, would you

You are clearly not a Grateful Dead fan... or at least have not listened to the long jam sessions in their live shows. The reason they have two drummers is because they are real percussionists -- rather than being in the band because they were "Nick's friend who owns a kit". The two of them work together and do some very spacey and complex stuff.

Unlike in most bands, the bassist doesn't simply repeat six notes and the drummers not only actually work hard, they use more than just the one drum kit in one song (another reason for two drummers -- so one can keep the beat while the other is running to a new instrument). Much of the quality that people like about the Dead is the fact that the underlying music is complex and slowly rotates across a long jam.

--
Evan

SUMMARY

[GreyPoopon]

In summary:

Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann were greedy because they felt the 50,000,000 per year that the band earned while Jerry Garcia was alive just wasn't enough to retire on. They threw a tantrum. Archive.org attempted to do what they though the Dead wanted and removed all the music.

John Perry Barlow, Phil Lesh and others disagreed, holding true to Garcia's attitude about trading. Live-recorded music (by fans) is restored to Archive.org; studio recordings are not.

Deadheads are freaking out and suffering from disillusionment. The question of whether the more pristine studio recordings should be allowed is not yet answered.

Re:SUMMARY

[BushCheney08]

Close. My understanding is that it's the soundboard recordings of concerts that are still being disallowed. Obviously, studio recordings wouldn't be allowed anyway under copyright law.

Jerry wanted the music to be free...

[digitaldc]

"once we're done with [the music], you can have it." - Jerry Garcia
Bassist Phil Lesh echoed that sentiment--quoting Garcia in an interview with Charlie Rose on CBS's 60 Minutes in 2004: "Jerry put it the best, as he frequently did, 'Let 'em have it. When we play it, we're done with it."
from: http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id= 49496

The Dead also released a disclaimer about their live music:
MP3 STATEMENT TO MP3 SITE OPERATORS
The Grateful Dead and our managing organizations have long encouraged the purely non-commercial exchange of music taped at our concerts and those of our individual members. That a new medium of distribution has arisen - digital audio files being traded over the Internet - does not change our policy in this regard.
Our stipulations regarding digital distribution are merely extensions of those long-standing principles and they are as follows:
No commercial gain may be sought by websites offering digital files of our music, whether through advertising, exploiting databases compiled from their traffic, or any other means.
All participants in such digital exchange acknowledge and respect the copyrights of the performers, writers and publishers of the music.
This notice should be clearly posted on all sites engaged in this activity.
We reserve the ability to withdraw our sanction of non-commercial digital music should circumstances arise that compromise our ability to protect and steward the integrity of our work.

Jerry Garcia did not care about people taping or downloading their music, he thought any live show could be shared and traded by anyone for their personal use, but not to copy and sell for profit. I would think the rest of the band would respect his wishes. Long live Jerry.
http://www.people4peace.net/pix/people4peace/jerry -garcia.jpg

Re:WWJD

[91degrees]

Yes. It turned out Copyright hadn't been renewed (and that was a requirement at the time), so it had been public domain since the 1970's.