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I have a long-term experience to relate. I'm already in an area that doesn't pay -- I'm a composer.

My Bathory Opera site has been around a very long time and gathered lots of goth, vampire, and opera fans. Over the years I'd diligently answered their emails, provided research, and generally made it a useful site. So when it was finally time to produce the opera for about $25,000, I began fundraising. Of the 1,700 on my email list for the site, exactly five made contributions. The funds were raised from about 140 others (plus out-of-pocket) and the opera was eventually produced for about $27,500 (October 2011).

Many others then said, oh, yes, as soon as the DVD comes out, I'll get one (add lots of "!!!!!!!"). It's been available for two weeks as a physical copy with an opening night souvenir book or as a download. Sales: 1.

Yet these same folks continue to write, ask for information, photos, evaluations of their latest Bathory plays, etc. As long as their entertainment costs nothing, they're happy to play along.

Dennis

Upgrade path is the issue for me. I have programs which are upgrades of upgrades all the way back to Windows 3.1. Without an actual in-place upgrade, I have to plead with each company (one of them Adobe for several programs) to allow me to upgrade with special keys. Buying new copies of Adobe Audition (upgraded multiple times from Cool Edit), Framemaker (upgraded from Pagemaker when Aldus owned it), etc., isn't in the budget. Some companies are out of business and installation on a new machine isn't possible. I have over time bought a lot of expensive software, but I'm a composer with a very small budget and a studio with five machines, all XP SP3. In other words, a clean installation of Windows 7 is simple -- it just wipes all those licenses and keys. It's unaffordable.

Dennis
http://bathory.org/store.html

I didn't delete files. Some materials are converted, some aren't, some are in original media, some are recovered from those media and restored when needed.

My response was to your comment about 10-year-old backups: "Do you even have any idea what is in those 10 year old backup tapes? If it's not on the computer, your company's not making efficient use of the stored info ". Whether archives and backups are different is really not relevant -- the OP was about opening old files, which is a combination hardware/software issue. That extends to backups as well as opening original media, including pre-digital ... Read Michael Gerzon's essay "Don't Destroy The Archives" for more on these issues.

What it comes down to is this: There's a simple limit to the time available to up-convert ... this afflicts artists, especially composers. The sheer quantity is hard to deal with. I have composed 1000+ pieces (about 1/4 electroacoustic since the 1960s), written nearly 1000 articles, written books, done graphics, and recorded thousands of hours of performances in formats encompassing mono open reel, those old Beta F1 digital tapes, dbx I open reel, 4-track 3.75 cassette, DAT, flashcard... and, of course, photographs on thousands of 35mm negative strips through digital formats (including proprietary raw formats.

These are formidable archives and backups and original media. Didn't mean to get into semantic differences ... just that the issue of preserving useful (and even significant) materials can be overwhelming.

Dennis
http://bathory.org/

I suppose companies have legal resposibilities and have to keep archives.

As for my own work, I have musical score and book/article backups to 1993 and text materials brought forward from cassette tapes dating from 1978, plus paper scores and articles dating from 1963 and tens of thousands of scans of that material and pre-digital artwork and photography, as well as recordings (including source tracks for electronic music) dating from 1969.

Why? I'm an author and composer, and for us, history doesn't stretch back just a year or two -- it stretches back a lifetime. I was very happy to have those ancient electronic sources from 1972 when an ensemble wanted to premiere that composition in Amsterdam in 2003.

Dennis
http://bathory.org/

A couple of points.

First, by its nature of being forward-looking and leading cultural change, much art, music and literature outside the popular realm does not get attention for quite a while -- that means the rewards don't come until there is a sufficient public to pay for it. (My own compositions from the 1970s are finally getting performances.) Items in the popular realm make their money at the beginning; other forms make it much later. Seven years would not recognize this split that began showing up about 100 years ago.

Second, the lifespan when the Constitution instituted copyright was about 35. It's now nearing 80. The 28+28 old copyright law showed how the copyright term based on the Constitution (Article I Section 8) grew with that, and I think it makes sense for the creators.

I support Creative Commons-style licensing and oppose unlimited copyright extensions, and especially the 19th century legalization of corporations as artificial persons. Take that away, and copyright has much less commercial value and would slowly fade as an issue.

Dennis
Please support my Blood Countess opera. Do it now unless you want me to depend a whole lot on copyright!

Good points all, especially the cultural biases.

For the past few years I've been quietly looking for an industry eye open to the idea of a historically based video game, wherein the individual characters create speculative history dealing in culture, politics, music, religion, and war -- while still maintaining an intense game atmosphere.

Dennis

http://bathory.org/

Good grief. I suppose I should stay out of this, but I've been a professional composer using orchestral and electronic media for more than 30 years, and the PC has always provided the breadth of tools and configurability that I need, especially if I need to quickly build up a control device of some kind.

Look, I know those who started with Macs are happy with their stuff. That's fine. But I can't be tied to an Apple corporate stamp of approval for a product. For example, I'd not likely see an AudioMulch for Mac -- unless you consider Max, priced at 10 times the cost for similar functionality (and with Max lacking the ability to produce techno quickly, for example). And Sound Forge, Cool Edit Pro, Cakewalk, Finale, Graphire Music Press ... all (and hundreds of other programs and advanced plugins) are wonderful and flexible PC software. Finale and Graphire both started on Macs, and Finale's first PC port was terrible. But once they started writing from the ground up for PC, the results were stunning. And according to users on both platforms, the Graphire PC version leaves the Mac version behind for ease and speed of use.

As for professional results, legacy studios with Mac equipment do not a case for Macs make. My CD was produced with PCs alone, as have been thousands of others. Likewise, as an editor and book designer, I have had no trouble accommodating the needs of legacy print houses who still use Macs.

I have no problem with Macs and those who love them, but you are presenting a bogus argument from the computer world of a decade past.

Dennis

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