Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Bizarrely a friend of mine in her 90's was trying to get someone interested in her husbands Jazz collection. Not master tapes by any means, but some were rare, and she would have given them to a good home. Her husband was a Jazz musician himself and had about 40 boxes of LPs. I think they were probably thrown out.
Money is how we value things I am afraid, and often if it is free no-one values it. I am sure the obscure tapes are of value to someone, but to who and how much. DO we say that everything must be saved? If so it is simple, (haha nothing is ever simple, but for the sake of argument) pass a law that every work that can possibly be considered art must be preserved in perpetuity by the rights holder. Eventually they will run out of room for non digital items and start relinquishing those rights. I am being a tad facetious here, but answering your belief that all art good or bad, popular or obscure should be preserved. Even before copyright books and other art were lost. Nothing to do with rights. ANd we often only know they were lost when they are found.
Those that think that copyright will destroy any current works that are digitised are seeing reality than I am. Possibly they are right, but many old BBC films were destroyed (Tapes written over) and have surfaced from home recordings and illicit copies made by employees and others. Some I believe were even purchased by BBC and sold on DVD, although I have no actual proof of that. Could be a rumour.
Ebooks and scanned books, taped, ripped and bootlegged music , even old computer games are not likely to disappear into the ether unless there is zero interest in them. Even then they will probably linger on.
Helen
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The problem with copyright in these cases is that no one can legally save obscure works. Someone might want to host a "library" (web site) of obscure works that nobody else values (think Project Gutenberg), but they are legally prevented from doing so, so that a handful of famous works can be monetized in perpetuity. Maybe nobody cares about them, maybe somebody might choose to rediscover them. But as it is, most likely they'll never have that chance.
Will all works be preserved? Of course not. But if I decided to save, say 50's and 60's calypso music (and make available - with my labor and time and money for hosting resources), I can't - unless I want to be a criminal...
(The BBC stories are true. A number of Doctor Who episodes were saved from the dumpster (literally) and bought and sold at flea markets, et. al. And eventually given back to the BBC for making DVD's of.)