As predicted, the Internet Archive restored the aud recording downloads, and made the soundboards available for streaming only. Good for us, and good for the band’s business interests. I’m happy, and after a little reading, it seems like most reasonable Deadheads are happy as well. Here’s what the folks at the Archive had to say:

We at archive.org now realize that our mistaken attempts to move quickly were based on what we thought the Grateful Dead wanted. For this we apologize both to the Grateful Dead and their community. There has been a great deal of reaction, our actions have caused more than necessary.

We believe these changes will be more appropriate for both the Grateful Dead and its community:
* Audience recordings will be restored as they were before– for download and streaming.
* Soundboard recordings will be available streaming only.

Thank you all for helping guide this process. There may be changes in the future, but for now there is access to great concerts, and the audience recordings may be downloaded from here freely.

This will take a day or two to fully implement.

-brewster
Founder, Digital Librarian Internet Archive
-Matt Vernon
Volunteer Archive.org

I’m not completely sure that they have anything to apologize for, because Dennis McNally’s initial statements made it seem like the removal of all downloads was what the band — or some of them anyway — had in mind. But I guess I’ve had enough of trying to figure out what happened and whose fault it was.

And now would be a good time to say something I just realized I had omitted through this entire thing: The folks at the Archive provide an amazing service — and not just with the live music section of the archive, although I’ve used that section to about double my music collection in the past year or so. The rest of the archive is just as cool; take a break from downloading Dead at some point and poke around — they’re hosting lots of great stuff.

And now, back to my list. In a scattershot fashion typical for Uncle Crappy, I had started going through and downloading my favorite shows and those with especially sharp soundboards. No more, especially since there’s still a little voice in the back of my mind that’s telling me to get this done before someone changes his mind again. Buckeye Lake 1988 — Hornsby’s first appearance with GD and an ungodly hot afternoon in Central Ohio — is up first.