Garth Brooks cover art problem

MusicBrainz
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While reviewing this Garth Brooks release https://musicbrainz.org/release/e58ea39b-43e7-46b6-be14-afaf22e4200d I noticed the cover art will not display. I then tried to add a new front cover but received an error message. When clicking on the old art, “Item not available” message appears.

This message > D: 22:48:28,108 browser.filelookup.launch:58: webbrowser2: https://musicbrainz.org:443/search/textsearch?limit=25&type=artist&query=Garth%20Brooks&tport=8000 <also showed up in my error log. Any thoughts? Is there a different place I should forward this type of problem?

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for me it has image not yet available. it means that album art has just been add give it some time then check back if it is not there in a few hours then post back here.

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The reason you’re seeing that error message is because the IA removed the cover art for that release due to a DMCA takedown request. When they receive such a request, they flag the corresponding release so no more images can be added for it.
Nothing can be done about this. The only thing you can do is manually add the cover image (if you have a copy saved locally).

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I am familiar with the wait time but these were added in Oct & Nov 2018. I think @HibiscusKazeneko may have given me the reason(s).

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I appreciate the heads up on this release. Your answer has added a few more wrinkles to my grey cells. I hadn’t come upon this before so now I know! :older_man: Should an annotation be added to this release to let others know of the problem?

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Perhaps. You’re not the first editor to notice. I remember someone linking to it a long time ago (I think it was on IRC) as an example of what DMCA’d cover art looks like.

ETA: I made a folksonomy tag to keep track of releases that have been darkened by the CAA.

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Is this something that could be detected and displayed as a proper notice by the server? Currently it is misleading.

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It would be possible, probably (MBS-6567) after which we could change the message (MBS-10343). @Bitmap might have a bit more experience with cover art things and might be able to say how hard it would be :slight_smile:

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I’d also like to know if it would be possible to proactively prevent users from uploading cover art for a particular artist. In this case, it appears Garth Brooks (or someone representing him) has made significant effort to scrub images of his releases from the CAA, so it might be in our interest to block new images from being uploaded (to releases that haven’t been hit with claims yet, obviously) so as to avoid liability or (worst case scenario) extrajudicial retaliation.

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That’s a weird one. So they haven’t gone after Discogs \ musik sammler \ wikipedia \ etc?

It would certainly be a good idea to have a better error message on the Cover Art page so this kind of issue is clearer. Didn’t know there was a legal issue with some Artists. Would be good to flag these up so we know who the greedy and litigious ones are.

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I’ll bet you a beer that Garth Brooks does not know he is being billed for the removal of his cover art from CAA. (I’m assuming that who-ever is filing the takedown notices is doing it for money.)

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I severely doubt he had no involvement in this. He has been known to be very vocal about artists’ rights. Back in the early '90s he crusaded against used CD sales, up to the point he forbade retailers who sold such from selling new CD copies of his music. The Federal Trade Commission eventually got involved because behind the scenes, the major labels had made a pact amongst themselves to do the same (prohibit retailers who sold used CDs from carrying new CDs); this was deemed a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act’s prohibition against “concerted refusals to deal.”

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Thanks.
Discogs has just about every front cover.

Rolling stone should do an investigative journalism article on this! :cowboy_hat_face:

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When I saw the name, it did not surprise me. He fits that type where money is more important than anything else. He certainly knew all about this. That is why I would like to see a nice big “Greedy Git says NO to Sharing” flag on artists like this. I then know to never waste my time on his data.

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Don’t forget about the barbecue tour:

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I’m not with rolling stone, but here’s some info.

The takedowns appear to have stopped (:crossed_fingers:), and there are a couple of releases that have cover art again. I don’t think the (main) purpose was ever to take down the cover art (which would explain why other sites, like Discogs, aren’t affected) and that CAA was just unfortunately caught up in a mass, overzealous takedown spree on the Internet Archive. I’m going to share some links to some queries, beware that they may take quite a while to load and they probably require an “admin” account on IA (which just means you have permissions to view more cool stuff).

There were two batches of takedowns on Garth Brooks CAA items, one in August of 2016, and one in April of 2018, see here, after which no more CAA items of Garth Brooks cover art were taken down. However, not limiting ourselves to CAA, takedowns on IA have continued until at least November of 2018 (see here), many for items which IA ripped themselves but provide with 30s samples only. No CAA items were included there, though.

Now, you may say “Yes but maybe there just weren’t any other CAA items for them to take down”, but there were: See here. That shows a handful of releases they appear to have missed previously, but also about 10 items which were uploaded before the last takedown spree in November of 2018. In general, since April of 2018, only 10 items were taken down, vs. 185 between 2014 and 2018, a steep decrease (see here). What gives?

Well, in August of 2018, a change was made to CAA items upon request of the IA, to exclude all CAA items from their public listings. This means that without having access to the item identifiers (or the right “admin” tools), you cannot find any CAA items on the IA. The only way to get to them is by going through MB.

What I suspect has happened in 2016 and 2018 is that Garth Brooks hired some copyright trolls who just ran a search query on IA (perhaps this one) and blanket claimed all matching items without doing the least bit of checking what those items actually were. Since the noindex change, the CAA items aren’t included in those search results anymore.

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