[mb-users] Using archive.org for cover art

[Brian Schweitzer]

> > 2) in the event that the site doesn't own the copyrights of the images
> > they provide (eg discogs.com), then we are basically using their
> > communities hard work to our own end. they don't 'own' the images, but
> > that community 'owns' the time that got them there. i think we need to
> > respect that and not just screen-scrape.

My own sense is, most of these communities have borrowed the same
image ad infinitum - Discogs may be an exception - but most "fans of
band X" pages simply seem to use the same images that all the pages
use.  Or, for the rarer releases, some of the images may be
user-contributed scans, but those too end up then being on every other
site, with or without attribution to the original site, and almost
never with attribution to the original scanner.

All of it boils down to, however, does it really matter who scans the
image?  A community that shares info out could make just the same
claims about our using the barcode, cat #, release date/location, etc
from their listing.  What makes art scans special?

As I see it, such information, whether it be textual or scans of liner
art, once made publically available on a site, is open for anyone to
use.  The only person or organization who can say no to such use is
the copyright holder - and that's where the legalities come in, which
I'll ignore for the moment, as it's not relevant to this argument.

Simply scanning, or collecting a group of scans, conveys no ownership
rights to a site, nor do I feel that site really can make a claim to
such ownership even in a "what is right?" sense, if not a "what is
legal?" sense.

Basically, this argument that "we are basically using their
communities hard work to our own end" could be said for just about any
information we collect, not just liner art.  Otherwise, if a community
collects a (perhaps even only partial) discographic listing of an
artist's releases, would we not use that information, simply because
it was collected by that community?  Of course not.  So what makes the
liner images - which are really only just another datapoint themselves
- any different?  As long as we are using archive.org, and thus not
causing any drain whatsoever on the bandwidth of the original server,
(so long as the image's copyright holder has no objection to our using
that image), I see really no difference between "cover image for
release foo" and "tracklist for release foo" or "release event for
release foo".

Brian