Re: [ARSCLIST] National Recorded Sound Preservation Study

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger and Allison Kulp" <thorenstd124@xxxxxxxxx>
> Uh guys,I seem to think you're missing a big point here.The brick and mortar
music/video retailers,are every bit as much of a dying business model,as the big
labels themselves.Everything is online these days.Hell,every Christmas season
you hear more and more about how more and more shopping is done online.I collect
records,by three modern bands,Jet,Green Day,and Blur/Gorillaz.I have been
collecting Blur for eleven years.Every single record I have by these groups, I
have bought off the web,mostly when brand new.Two weeks ago,I bought the new Jet
album,in the form of a 1000 copy,numbered box set of seven 45s.
>
> As an economic Austrian,I completely understand the changing nature of the
market, and how you have to adapt to it.If you want to buy something,off of a
website in Japanese,there is a lot of software avaliable to translate web pages
into English.The ones you download for free aren't great,but they give you
enough of an idea of what is said,so you can use the site.If the site has
webforms that only accept Japanese characters,send them an email,and ask to have
someone at their end set up an account for you.If you are serious,I doubt they
would turn down your money.
>
All true...but none of it addresses the actual problem at hand!

In the USA today...and quite possibly elsewhere, as the record
industry promotes the US idea of "eternal copyright for sound
recordings"...the interested portion (admittedly tiny) of the
public is blocked from legally accessing the ENTIRE known history
of sound recording...except for whatever tiny fraction the
copyright owners (various mega-corporations, for pre-1942 items
as well as many later items insofar as they exist...) consider
to be monetarily worth re-issuing.

If I want to hear a 1917 recording made by the Pathe firm and
issued on a "sapphire-cut" record in the same year...I am at
the mercy of CBS-Sony, who inherited the rights to the Pathe
catalog by virtue of Pathe's merge with Cameo, and the
subsequent merger of that firm with Plaza and Regal to create
the American Record Corporation which evolved into CBS-Columbia
c. 1939.

The likelihood of this multinational, multimillion dollar corporation
reissuing this track, with a potential sale of me and a handful of
others...or even making this track, along with the rest of the
historic recordings which the own, available on the Internet
(even on a pay-to-listen basis?) is somewhere very close to
zero...if not lower!

And therein lies our problem (given our interest in our musical
past...!)

Steven C. Barr