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Re: [ARSCLIST] The Incompetence at ENHS

I hope I can stop your head from itching. First off, the Sonny Bono act did not come from any desire of the American people, who were plenty content with the copyright laws as they were. It is not a tricky "conspiracy theory" it is a very simple straight line from Sonny Bono, a man sent to congress by the entertainment industry to do their bidding. The Sonny Bono act was a piece of legislation primarily to protect the interest of The Disney Corporation, a company that was founded on the character of "Alice" from Alice in Wonderland, a book written by Lewis Carrol (aka Charles Dodgson) in the late 19th century and whose copyright expired by the 1920s when Walt Disney used the book and the character of Alice to begin his career. If Carrol or his estate could have gotten somebody in Congress as effective as Sonny Bono, that estate would be worth hundreds of millions today and the Walt Disney Corporation would not even exist.

Corporate America is not trying to make this information unavailable to "scholars" ,(this is a term that has no leagal standing, it would be totally unconstitutional to make information only available to "scholars", it belongs to "the people") they are trying to make their "intellectual property" (a total oxymoron) unavailable to anyone who doesn't want to pay for it. To make their hold on their valuable "intellectual property" strong the legislation had to include all recordings ever made. As I said before neither Congress nor the Supreme Court knew anything about the real history of the recording industry, or how far back it really went, they just knew they had to say "all recordings" for the legislation to be effective.

The information on wax cylinders and all acoustic recordings is now historic. A person listening to the recordings of Billy Murray and his contemporaries can learn more about American life at the times these recordings were made than any other medium available. They are part of Americas "collective unconcious" if you will. The producers of these records are all dead. The artists are all dead. The song writers are all dead. The recording engineers are all dead. These are the people that made money off these recordings in their lifetime. These are the people the Constitution says have a right to make money off of these efforts for "a limited time" and they all got the money that was due to them.

It is not the American government that is paying for the botched up restoration of the ENHS it is the GE corporation, a company Edison founded which threw him out as soon as they could. Instead of the American people being willing to pay their taxes to help the ENHS continue its work they have relied on Corporations to do it. The same is true for the LOC. They rely on corporate donations, and so, as I said on the Amereican Memory site we have a site that is nothing more than a commercial for Coca-Cola (which they probably get a tax deduction for) and no Memory of the history that early recordings reveal.

"Those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it." Corporations are giving the country a huge case of Alzheimers to suit their own agenda.




From: David Breneman <david_breneman@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx>
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The Incompetence at ENHS
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:40:14 -0700

--- Mike Loughlin <mikel78_rpm@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> As you say, this has been decided by theLOC General Council, acting
> in the
> interest of Corporate America and not the American people.  If not,
> then
> what is the LOC saving this stuff for anyway? The record companies
> certainly didn't.

Statements like this leave me scratching my head.  What interest
does "Corporate America" have in keeping these items unavailable
to scholars?  Never ascribe to sinister conspiracy that which can
be readily explained by simple bureacratic lethargy.  And the
LOC, Smithsonian and other institutions actually hold onto things
for the sake of history, not as a way of doing the dirty work
for Eeevil commercial overlords.

David Breneman david_breneman@xxxxxxxxx



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