30 gigabytes worth of obscure tape releases up for grabs – but it’s probably not legal at all
Electronic Beats informs that archive.org unearthed a vaste quantity of obscure tapes. The selection includes tape experimentation, industrial, avant-garde, indy, rock, DIY, subvertainment and auto-hypnotic materials. The tapes were digitised in 2011 but they all date from the early 80s.
The tapes are up for download as a full 30 GB package, but it seems that the meta data is not all that well with missing titles and band names. But we noticed that it holds demo tapes from Cause & Effect, Trompeur et Sournois, Mind Body Split, etc. etc.. Lots of obscure stuff which never has seen a proper release as far as we can see. The above picture shows you a small part of what can be found on those tapes.
However, those old tapes must contain hundreds of songs still under copyright by numerous songwriters, so we are pretty sure this is not really legal, hence why we won’t link to the files. And we are not the only ones to think that. Already in November 2005, free downloads of Grateful Dead concerts were removed from the site as demanded by band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann. The band’s Phil Lesh on the other hand approved the free downloads.
Archive.org is reported to remove things when asked by copyright holders, and in some cases don’t allow content to be published without permission from said copyright holders. But that doesn’t turn it legal, at most it acts in a very grey area.
Archive.org is part of The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of “universal access to all knowledge”. It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including web sites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and nearly three million public-domain books. As of May 2014, its collection topped 15 petabytes.
You might want to try our “Face The Beat : Session 3” compilation instead if you want to download 100% legal content :).
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