Are top-name artists giving their new albums away on archive.org?

February 24, 2017 4:26 PM

Noticed today that Kate Bush's recent live triple CD Before the Dawn is available for download from archive.org, plus there's the 2016 LP from Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker. Are these legal downloads? Did I miss an announcement from the archive.org people?
posted by porn in the woods to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

I would say not. Looks like that user is leaking all sorts of stuff. Also, if you click on the topic "albume", it leads to many more albums shared in this manner. Pretty sure the Rolling Stones didn't offer up their new album on archive.org.
posted by mykescipark at 5:05 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: To the best of my knowledge this is just someone using Archive.org as a barely-supervised place to secrete stuff. And this is said as someone who used to work there. Try emailing [e-mail] and they will let you know if there's something special going on.
posted by jessamyn at 6:18 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you, Jess!

I thought archive.org were more on the ball with screening uploads for illicit content but that doesn't seem to be the case.
posted by porn in the woods at 6:55 PM on February 24, 2017

Best answer: To the best of my knowledge they don't scan uploads at all and usually require rights holders to contact them for takedowns unless it's a super obvious copyvio or someone they have a pre-existing relationship with.
posted by jessamyn at 5:58 AM on February 25, 2017