Grateful Dead pull archive

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 27 November 2005 10:42AM CST

Section: Intellectual property

The Internet Archive has been asked, presumably by the Grateful Dead, to pull more than 1,000 soundboard recordings of the band’s performances from its archive. Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle made the announcement on 22 November:

“Based on discussions with many involved, the Internet Archive has been asked to change how the Grateful Dead concert recordings are being distributed on the Archive site for the time being. The full collection will remain safe in the Archive for preservation purposes.”

Audience recordings will continue to be made available, but only in a streaming, non-downloadable format.

The Grateful Dead—collectively and individually—amassed considerable fortunes by touring and allowing deadheads to trade concert recordings freely. The business model was emulated by other creatives and more than likely helped establish the foundation for endeavors like the Creative Commons.

The Grateful Dead organization has yet to make an official announcement, so speculation and rumor is raging.

One thing is certain: the band recently began selling downloads of its shows using a whacko three-tiered pricing scheme based on whether the recording is lossy (higher price for higher sampling bitrate) or lossless (highest price of all).

Without knowing the full story, my initial reaction is that this strategy will almost surely backfire.

Updated: Thursday, 1 December 2005 5:15PM CST: The Grateful Dead has semi-reversed it’s ill-advised removal of its recordings from the Internet Archive. The AP has a straightforward account and here’s Phil Lesh’s disavowal of the whole business.

Funny thing is that the soundboard recordings are still off-limits for the Internet Archive (cynics will claim the band’s intent all along was to remove the SBDs from circulation at the speed of download). What’s most interesting of all in this fiasco is the Grateful Dead’s success in restricting access to intellectual property that was not theirs to restrict. While there’s no question the band’s soundboard recordings are their intellectual property, it’s a different story in the case of audience recordings. The audience recordings were encouraged by the band and each of those individual recordings are the intellectual property of the recordist, not the performer.

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