Sony, Other Music Labels Sue Over Sinatra 78s Stored Online

  • Companies seeking $372 million for copyright infringement
  • Internet Archive maintains digital collection of text, music

Frank Sinatra 

Photographer: Daniel Rosenblum/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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Sony Music Entertainment and five other major music companies sued the non-profit Internet Archive, saying that its posting of thousands of old songs and recordings online amounts to “wholesale theft” of copyright-protected music.

The Internet Archive’s “blatant infringement includes hundreds of thousands of works by some of the greatest artists of the Twentieth Century,” lawyers for the record companies said in a lawsuit filed Friday in Manhattan federal court. Among the artists cited: Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk.