US Library of Congress: Copyright Is Destroying Historic Audio
You think only "pirates" and "freeloaders" rail against current copyright laws? Well, think again – even the Library of Congress seemingly has had enough. The topic is recorded sound preservation, and in a 181-page in-depth study, the Library of Congress concludes that apart from technical difficulties, US copyright law makes it virtually impossible for anyone to perform any form of audio preservation. The painted picture is grim – very grim.
The very detailed and in-depth report has been ten years in the making, and was commissioned in the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000. The goal of the study was to inform Congress of the state of audio preservation, the difficulties encountered, what kind of standard procedures are needed for preservation, and so on. The conclusions in the report are grim, at best.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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