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
>