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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. "
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.
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.
liqbase
"once we're done with [the music], you can have it." - Jerry Garcia= 49496
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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
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/jerr
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson