Re: [ARSCLIST] The Incompetence at ENHS

[Karl Miller <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Mike Loughlin wrote:

> Has anyone ever been prosecuted under any of these "laws"? No. They are just
> an excuse used by archivists to horde their collections.  Playing these
> recordings is protected by the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

I do believe some archivists like to horde their collections. One rather
well known archivist explained his perspective to me..."if we make our
holding readily available (he spoke of photocopies), it diminishes the
value of what we own." Well so much for the value of research.

As for the copyrights...feel free to look at my many posts where I
complain about the conflict between the right to access information and
the copyrights. I have often wondered if some archive that held a unique
copyrighted sound recording were to make a copy available off site to a
researcher if the copyright owner would actually sue the archive. Let's
just say your archive holds a copy of an unpublished broadcast of the
Denver Symphony, a broadcast which your archive has reformatted and
preserved. You make a copy for some qualified researcher to use off
site. Is the Denver Symphony going to sue the archive? Is there still
a Denver Symphony? What would they gain? Most audio archives are grossly
underfunded, so you sue them...you put them out of business and then what
happens to your recordings...well, with most orchestras, they don't even
care. So, how about getting a court to issue an injunction prohibiting the
archive from doing such a thing again? Can you imagine the bad
press the orchestra would get from such an action...an non-profit tax
exempt organization (the Orchestra) limiting research. I would love to see
it happen...and I am, in general, very supportive of copyrights. I do
believe that one has the right to maintain ownership, but I believe that
with that right of ownership comes the responsibility of providing access
at a fair price.

Karl