RecordedSound
Latest
Sony and Library of Congress launch streaming National Jukebox, ready to DJ at your local speakeasy
Who's better, Sammy Hagar or The Great Caruso? We know you have every track the Red Rocker ever laid down, but if you haven't upgraded your gramophones of the great Italian tenor, today is the first day of the rest of your life. The Library of Congress, working with Sony, now streams a collection of 10,000 historical recordings, including Caruso and other pre-1925 greats. This "National Jukebox" is a bit of a hodge-podge, including everything from early jazz to poetry to yodeling, but digging through the archive is half the fun. But while access to this material is great for sound preservationists, commenters on BoingBoing point out that it's not truly public domain work: thanks to our spaghetti-tangle of copyright arcana, Sony still owns the rights. It's allowing users to stream but not download, and technically could revoke its gratis license at any time. So get your Caruso fix while you can.
Report warns that Copyright Act threatens recorded sound preservation
A new report issued by the Library of Congress entitled The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States: A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age, has some sobering findings on the state of historic audio, whether on vinyl, wax cylinders, or optical disc: namely, that it's "at risk." What does that mean, exactly? It seems that a combination of antiquated copyright laws and a wide array of digital formats means that libraries are often unable to back up its holdings (even when it is legal to do so). "Were the law strictly enforced," the report explains, "it would brand virtually all audio preservation as illegal." It goes on to detail steps that could be taken to fix these problems, were lawmakers not too busy grandstanding and cozying up to special interest groups, including: reformation of the Copyright Act, decriminalizing the use of orphan works for which no rights holder can be established, establish a legal way for third parties to reissue long out-of-print "abandoned recordings," and establishing legal ways for libraries to more easily make audio copies and share files.
