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 From: Tom Fine <tflists@BEV




________________________________
 From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>

 

Hi Richard:

Yeah, well, Ontario ain't the USA. I suspect the copyright owners here would never allow such a 
thing without huge up-front fees.

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I believe that there are some US schools that have agreements to use the Naxos Music Library. They also provide services like Professor playlists. In the "old" days, we used to prepare tapes for classes…illegal. 

There is also DRAM, which has all of the CRI, New World, Lovely, etc. My former employer offers access to all employees, students and retirees.

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I'm more worried about non-availability of large parts of recorded history, because material will be 
caught in a limbo of little to no immediate commercial value but no incentive for the owner to put 
it in the PD. This is why I favor "use it or lose it" requirements and tax breaks for turning over 
materials to the PD (however I do NOT favor taxpayer funding of archival duties when copyright 
strings are still attached -- basically the ownership and all rights need to transfer with the 
archival materials). Big reforms in the law need to take place, but they won't given the current 
government. 
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For the most part, I agree. Yet, I don't believe that any the US government is likely to make substantive changes to the copyright laws. Based upon the fine postings updating us on the discussions, it seems fairly clear to me that the same well-healed lobbies are still "beating a dead horse." The discussions tell me that the industry and many of the "authorities" are so out of touch with the realities of what can be done technologically, and have little to no appreciation for the historic consideration, that we should not expect any major changes. Let's face it, we live in a country that  places little value on intellect, and when the notion of "intellectual property" is mentioned, it is only within a context of its earning potential.

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For what it's worth, vinyl production and sales were also up. Physical media has a long way to go yet.

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I guess I read a different story from those statistics.  My reading of sales statistics tells me that ownership of the recorded "object" is a decreasing percentage of sales. Whether or not it will continue to be economically viable  to produce the "object" remains to be seen. Pressing the object, and dealing with all that is involved in selling the object (storage, returns, etc.) adds cost. When so much is available for free, it seems to me that, that to remain in business, record companies will have to look at lower price points. Even with my small company, (classical…where consumers still seem to want the object) our sales this last year were 43% digital and 57% physical. Since we have no pressing costs for the electronic, our profit on electronic sales far exceeds what we make on physical sales. For me, it is interesting to speculate on how things will go.

Karl