Jeremiah's Music Blog: Aural Memory

Aural Memory

An interesting tidbit via BoingBoing today is a report released by the U.S. Library of Congress. A couple of highlight quotes:

"The usual allowances for copying or distributing given to older works by federal law under the orphan works clause do not and will not apply to pre-1972 recordings, further impeding public access. Because only the copyright owner can legally make old recordings available, historical recordings are at risk of physical loss as well as of passing, unnoticed, from the nation�s aural memory."
"One consideration by Congress in extending copyright protection to owners for such a long period was to give those owners an incentive to reissue, and thereby preserve, older recordings. How successful has this incentive been over time? This report answers that question by quantifying the commercial accessibility of recordings published before 1965. Recordings, like other publications, do not usually remain in print in perpetuity. On the basis of statistical analysis, this report shows that most pre-1965 recordings have not been reissued for public sale and are accessible only to those who visit the institutions that archive historical recordings or to individuals with access to private collections."

While there are some other archival sources (The Prelinger Archive, for instance), it probably represents less than a tenth of actual recorded material in existence. I think this is huge cultural blunder, as archival recordings present a unique sonic insight into human history - an "aural memory" as suggested by Samuel Brylawski, the author of the report.

Unfortunately, there's no pragmatic way for this issue to be of front-burner public interest. This leaves us with private foundations (who's patronage may not be easily won) and individual enthusiasts shouldering the responsibility of our cultural preservation.

Photo by martha1104.

Posted by Jeremiah at October 5, 2005 02:26 PM | Tag This Post | Digg It!