Hi Mason:
You are making a very important point. At each BEST NEW THING moment, some of the content on the
antiquated media doesn't get ported over. There may be a tipping point (which will require copyright
reform and some strong-arming of megaglomerates) where much or all recorded material ends up
available in streaming digital form, probably via some kind of subscription system. It's possible
and doable, but there's not strong enough incentive for big copyright owners to do it.
Meanwhile, we may be entering an interim period where LESS material is widely available at places
like libraries. Why? Because so many CDs are going out of print. Libraries are shy about asserting a
fair-use right and ripping CDs to hard drives, so when their original copy wears out, if the disc is
out of print, it's then unavailable to all patrons. I have never seen any case-law that says a
library can't circulate a CDR as long as they hold the original CD. When I was a kid, the local
library did just that with cassettes, and they had invested in their own high-speed cassette
duplicator. Their reasoning was that replacing expensive library-market cassettes was too high.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mason Vander Lugt" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2013 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Folk Music in America
> To bring this back to an earlier point, I don't blame libraries and archives
> for embracing new media, but it does leave decades of recordings painfully
> unavailable to the margin for whom they're interesting and important.
>
> I wish that all of the original LP reissue labels' back-catalogs were on
> Itunes and Amazon too (and congrats/thanks to Folkways, County, Yazoo, etc.
> who have done so), but there comes a point that you have to stop wishing and
> start doing. I'm not going to say MP3 blogging will solve everything, but
> it's sure more accessible than private collections or ILL (most libraries
> won't lend sound recordings).
>
> I've been hesitant to suggest this on this list because I know some people
> aired concerns over my decision to scan and distribute my copies of "Record
> Research" magazine, but FMiA has had a fairly positive reception, so here
> goes: If any of you have recordings (78 or LP), or small books or magazines
> that you think should be available, but are out of print / off-market, email
> me off-list and we can talk about getting them online. I have all the time
> in the world, but few resources, and think that the reward is worth the risk
> and effort.
>
>
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