"The best thing government can do is ease up the copyright laws so more of
the abandoned material can legally and
cheaply find its way into mass-availability, that's the surest way to
preserve these things."

Hear, hear.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Your taxpayer dollars being given to the Universal
Music Group.


> Uh Dave, I don't think UMG is covered in this merger. Vivendi still owns
> and controls UMG as far as I know. GE bought a majority stake in
> Universal's television production and movie studio years ago. That was
> then merged with NBC and the whole package sold to Comcast (Kabletown for
> us fans of "30 Rock") after GE got into deep trouble from its financing
> unit. The UMG masters on the Universal Pictures movie lot should have been
> moved out when the two entities were separated. I believe Vivendi owns a
> minority stake in Comcast now, although they might have sold their
> interest in NBC-Universal at some point.
>
> However, your statement about what happens to knowledgable people when the
> merger consultants start cutting payroll is absolutely true. I've seen
> decades of corporate memory and heritage erased time after time, and not
> just in the music biz. One of the huge downsides of rampant
> mega-glomeration (aside from that it violates old-school notions of
> antitrust law and erases viable competition and thus destroys industries
> and companies as it enriches the deal-maker bankers who midwife these
> disasters) is that it inevitably erases the heritage and culture of the
> absorbed company.
>
> Now, while all that is unfortunate, it's not the responsibility of the
> American Taxpayer to pick up the pieces and clean up the elephant poop
> when these megaglomerates implode. The best thing government can do is
> ease up the copyright laws so more of the abandoned material can legally
> and cheaply find its way into mass-availability, that's the surest way to
> preserve these things. Things get lost to history due to bad business
> decisions, it's been ever thus.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Lewis" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 1:38 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Your taxpayer dollars being given to the Universal
> Music Group.
>
>
>>I held off commenting on this thread, though I followed it closely. In
>>light
>> of what just happened to NBC Universal under the terms of the Comcast
>> merger, I think what the LoC was able to work out was best case scenario.
>>
>> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/NBC-Universal-now-apf-3953093694.html?x=0&.v=4
>>
>> I've been through this process, and I can say that it is terribly
>> demoralizing. These companies employ plenty of people like us --
>> specialists
>> in media matters -- and a phrase like this:
>>
>> "We aren't a family of two favorite sons, rather one filled with talented
>> people and companies all tied for first."
>> really means "We don't care about your legacy. Your job descriptions are
>> being changed to fit our standard and if you cannot fit into our
>> redesignated roles then you will have to take the tin parachute we give
>> you
>> and make a jump for it." As massive as UMG is -- or was, before the
>> Universal vault fire -- and as we know it to be, it is of no more
>> substance
>> than a Kuiper Belt object in the universe of the company that results
>> from
>> this merger. Assets that seem to be of more expense to store than their
>> potential to generate revenue will be divested or discarded. That not all
>> of
>> UMG's pre-1960 holdings were wiped out in Hollywood is reason to rejoice,
>> but for them to have been removed to a location where they can be
>> properly
>> catlogued and accessed is even better. If this hadn't been done before
>> the
>> merger, then that material would probably have been moved into deep
>> storage
>> with no staff to attend to it or junked. That there might be "junk" in
>> the
>> collection, as Tom suggest, is no reason to disdain it -- it had to be
>> all
>> or none in this case; cherry picking was not an option.
>>
>> Uncle Dave Lewis
>> Lebanon, OH
>> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Tom Fine
>> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>
>>> Another topic I didn't even touch on, but worthy of some debate because
>>> there are two good sides to the argument is SHOULD the LOC accept what
>>> amount to vault-dumps? Should the American Taxpayer accept the cost of
>>> in-perpetuity preservation of all the junk in these vaults? And, one
>>> man's
>>> junk is another's "forgotten genius" so who determines what we accept
>>> the
>>> responsibility and cost to preserve? This is one of my pet issues --
>>> preservation vs. accumulation and collecting vs. accumulation. I see
>>> accumulation as a fool's errand, but then one needs to figure out a way
>>> to
>>> make sure and not discard what a reasonably segment of the population
>>> may
>>> reasonably wish to preserve, and that's a moving target as interests and
>>> tastes evolve. However, I think if you just do vault-dumps into
>>> Culpepper,
>>> it will quickly become clogged, unmanagable and a red herring in future
>>> budget battles. I think most Americans like the idea of historic
>>> preservation but few want to dedicate very much of their tax dollars to
>>> it
>>> in this day and age. Furthermore, it's impossible to do a decent job
>>> once
>>> you clog up an "attic" too much. This is a topic that I think deserves a
>>> lot
>>> of thought and conversation in our organization and others.
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Tom Fine
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Miller" <
>>> [log in to unmask]>
>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 8:58 AM
>>>
>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Your taxpayer dollars being given to the
>>> Universal
>>> Music Group.
>>>
>>>
>>> Tom,
>>>
>>> I find your suggestions to be highly imaginative and worthy of serious
>>> consideration. From my perspective, libraries and archives need to
>>> redefine
>>> themselves.
>>>
>>> Karl
>>>
>>> --- On Mon, 1/10/11, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Your taxpayer dollars being given to the
>>> Universal
>>> Music Group.
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Date: Monday, January 10, 2011, 5:07 PM
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Karl:
>>>
>>> I agree with you. The American taxpayers shouldn't be Universal's
>>> transfer
>>> and mastering engineer, and archivist/storage facility for that matter.
>>> I
>>> think the deal should be done this way:
>>>
>>> 1. The Universal masters transfer to the LOC and become the property of
>>> the
>>> US taxpayer, including all outstanding copyright ownership. There should
>>> be
>>> a tax writeoff of some sort on this in order to encourage all the vaults
>>> of
>>> the teetering megaglomerates to be preserved.
>>>
>>> 2. The LOC agrees to transfer this material to digital format within a
>>> reasonable timeframe. One possible funding mechanism is described below.
>>>
>>> 3. Universal then gets a limited time (I'd argue the max time be 2 years
>>> after digitization of a given piece of content) to commercialize
>>> anything
>>> the LOC has transferred, paying a mastering charge and royalty on sales
>>> to
>>> the US Treasury. In other words, they get one bite on the apple, but
>>> they
>>> may keep something in print commercially as long as the copyright on the
>>> new
>>> version lasts. If they take it out of print, I think everything should
>>> revert back to the US taxpayers. Universal could choose to make its
>>> "claim"
>>> and then sub-license material to Mosaic or other boutique labels, but
>>> the
>>> material must remain in print and royalties be paid to the Treasury in
>>> order
>>> for Universal to have its exclusive bite of the apple.
>>>
>>> 4. Anything not chosen to be commercialized by Universal should be put
>>> in
>>> the public domain by the LOC. There may have to be a download charge of
>>> some
>>> sort in order to pay performance or publishing royalties, where these
>>> are
>>> still due. If none of these royalties are due, then the material should
>>> be
>>> widely available for free to its owners, the US taxpayers. Obviously,
>>> the
>>> way to do this is via a free download site. All of this could be
>>> supported
>>> by the royalties from what Universal chooses to commercialize. I can see
>>> that the LOC might need to charge a small amount to support all of this,
>>> rates akin to Amazon and iTunes downloads would seem reasonable (ie
>>> market
>>> prices). The goal of the PD element is not to get something for nothing
>>> as
>>> much as to get all this stuff back in print and readily available to be
>>> enjoyed.
>>>
>>> One taxpayer's views ...
>>>
>>> -- Tom Fine
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Miller" <
>>> [log in to unmask]>
>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 5:44 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Your taxpayer dollars being given to the
>>> Universal
>>> Music Group.
>>>
>>>
>>> --- On Mon, 1/10/11, Michael Biel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Michael Biel <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Your taxpayer dollars being given to the
>>> Universal
>>> Music Group.
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Date: Monday, January 10, 2011, 11:56 AM
>>>
>>>
>>> On 1/10/2011 11:14 AM, Karl Miller wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you read the article below you will not that Universal will retain
>>>> copyright ownership to their recordings.
>>>> Karl
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> That is the same deal that the NBC collection is under.
>>>
>>> ******************************************************************
>>>
>>> Same as most of the unique recordings held at LOC and other
>>> institutions...yet as we approach copyrights in perpetuity, the
>>> rationale
>>> for spending taxpayer money for this sort of activity seems questionable
>>> to
>>> me, especially when there will not be reasonable access and even more so
>>> when the copyright owner has stated upfront that they plan to use the
>>> digitized recordings for their own profit.
>>>
>>> Will LOC get a cut of the profit from the sale of the recordings they
>>> have
>>> digitized?
>>>
>>> For me, there are substantive ethical questions on both sides of the
>>> argument, but it seems to me that there is room for questioning the use
>>> of
>>> public funds for this purpose.
>>>
>>> Karl
>>>
>>>
>>> Karl
>>>
>>