Control over information

"While companies like AI firms may be able to afford legal fights with rights holders, libraries must be careful, even when they launch projects that seem completely harmless and innocuous, Butler said.

"Consider the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project, which digitized 400,000 old shellac records, known as 78s, that were originally pressed from 1898 to the 1950s.

"'The idea that somebody’s going to stream a 78 of an Elvis song instead of firing it up on their $10-a-month Spotify subscription is silly, right?' Butler said. 'It doesn’t pass the laugh test, but given the scale of the project —and multiply that by the statutory damages —and that makes this an extremely dangerous project all of a sudden.'

"Butler suggested that statutory damages could disrupt the balance that ensures the public has access to knowledge, creators get paid, and human creativity thrives, as AI advances and libraries’ growth potentially stalls.

"Meanwhile, AI firms face dozens of lawsuits from creators and publishers, which Kahle thinks only the biggest tech companies can likely afford to outlast. 

"The momentum behind AI risks giving corporations even more control over information, Kahle said, and it’s uncertain if archives dedicated to preserving the public memory will survive attacks from multiple fronts."