Preserving the Sound of America

jonerik writes "The Associated Press (by way of MSNBC) has this article on the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, which 'seeks to ensure even greater protection for some of the most notable songs, speeches and other utterances.' To that end, the library's extensive collection of recordings and photos will soon be moved to a massive 41-acre complex built into the side of a mountain in Culpeper, Virginia. When construction on the site is completed - in about three years - anything stored in Culpeper should be available via computer at the library's Madison Building on Capitol Hill. The Library of Congress has been collecting recordings for almost 100 years, the first being a recording of a speech by German Emperor Wilhelm II. Since then the library has collected recorded speeches by every American President since Theodore Roosevelt, oral histories, music, radio broadcasts, and other examples of recorded sound." This sounds like a collection which will become more valuable as more people have access to the actual content of the collections.

Comments

Mickey Hart and Save Our Sounds

[pyite]

Mickey Hart of Grateful Dead fame has had a big part in this effort. It's a real noble movement they're participating in. Everyone thinks history is always written and suddenly people realized that we have the technology to make it more. Read more about his involvement and Save our Sounds here.

NPR All Things Considered this afternoon

[yet another coward]

I heard a piece, including some sound clips, this afternoon on ATC. The story and a few selections are here. It is an excellent project. The copyright limitations are disappointing, however.

What it used to be

[Alegato]

I live near and work even closer to this very interesting facility. It used to be the Federal Reserve System's Communications and Research Center (a pretty important part of the Federal Reserve System), and it also served as an emergency "continuity of government facility" at one time. Check these links for your browsing pleasure (links have pictures, Google search "Culpeper Federal Reserve" gives lots of info)

Link1

Link2

Link3

Re:Digitalize it !

[kaaphi]

They're in the process of doing this right now. It's a joint project between the smithsonian and the library of congress called Save our Sounds. They have a webpage here.

Hmmmmmm.... this is interesting

[sickboy_macosX]

The library's extensive collection of recordings and photos will soon be moved to a massive 41-acre complex built into the side of a mountain

Sounds like the federal government is taking lessons from the mormon church in Salt Lake City. (All of the Mormon Church Geneology records are entoumbed in a Mountain in Big Cotton Wood Canyon in Salt Lake City, and up by McCall Idaho. They do it because of the fact that if the Apocolypse ever happens there are records.

The government must know somthing we dont...

Re:Presidential speeches?

[evilmrhenry]

Link?

Washington Post

Re:Creating digital sound files

[akb]

Maybe you should talk to these people. They've got 30TB of copyright clear music and have as their goal "universal access to human knowledge".

Re:Obligatory Copyright Jab

[Waffle Iron]

Ahh, no. Like any other library, they can buy their own copy of anything they want.

Bzzzt. As the guy one thread above pointed out, copyright law chapter 7 section 704 says:

(a) Upon their deposit in the Copyright Office under sections 407 and 408, all copies, phonorecords, and identifying material, including those deposited in connection with claims that have been refused registration, are the property of the United States Government.

(b) In the case of published works, all copies, phonorecords, and identifying material deposited are available to the Library of Congress for its collections, or for exchange or transfer to any other library. In the case of unpublished works, the Library is entitled, under regulations that the Register of Copyrights shall prescribe, to select any deposits for its collections or for transfer to the National Archives of the United States or to a Federal records center, as defined in section 2901 of title 44.

If you were congress and invented IP, you'd be a fool to saddle yourself with the restricions you're imposing on everyone else.

Re:Off-site backup?

[ragnar]

The facility is a former military building which is built into the side of a small mountain (more of a hill if you ask me). The first layer of protection is pretty good. It is referred to as a digital vault of sorts.

At this stage of the planning there isn't a much concrete discussion about backup, not because it won't be needed, but rather because the technology is a moving target. If memory serves right, they hope to open the facility in about 3 years. Backups are no doubt on the integration plan, but a lot of the architecture is still in a planning phase.

(disclaimer: I work on this project at the Library of Congress)

Sound Archives collections. Boston Public Library.

[donsaklad]

Our Boston Public Library, the so called Massachusetts Library
of Last Recourse, deflects people interested in our Sound Archives collections.
Of interest are the recordings of now defunct local broadcasters.
Shelf lists are public record, but BPL has
violated state freedom of information principles!

See also
Weblog. Guide to Problematical Library Use. Boston Public Library.

Stories
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.WebLogs.com/ stories

Updates
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.WebLogs.com
http://zork.net/~dsaklad

Re:P2P

[cgenman]

1. The incentive is to do the right thing. There are still a lot of people out there who believe stealing music is at its heart wrong. I know I do, and I think most Kazaa people do too. But I also think that we do this to protest the current state of the music industry. All of the musicians I know still charge for their music, yet except for one, they all have put their own files on a P2P network.

2. According to RIAA figures, only 1 in 10 bands it has hand-signed and selected is profitable. What they forget to mention, leaving you to connect the dots yourself, is that "profitable" means that they made money above and beyond recoupable costs. The Distributing companies wind up eating some costs, but so far the band has made *nothing at all.* Under such circumstances, it would be a lot better to make 50c per album straight than nothing at all. Perhaps we should sell album downloads at 1.00 each, just to make sure the rate is higher than the industry's payout for extremely successful acts?

3. The recording companies are very profitable. The artists are not. There are a lot of artists out there, which loweres their bargining position, but they are the ones who actually make music. The recording companies sell acts: they have no capacity to make music. You don't really need them to get onboard... if I could find DJ Entropy on a paid Kazaa system, why would I want the latest scruffy guitar punk ripoff band?* It would be good for selection to have labels onboard, but it would also be great for quality to have just indies.

Of course, Entropy gives away his albums on his home page, which is one of many reasons why I go out of my way to pay to see him live.

4. This system would give leechers a choice: you can be free or you can be a leech, but you can't be both. I think this choice will satisfy most people. And while it may drive away some of the leeches... isn't that the point? Doesn't that make your network all the better to be a part of?

Anyway, I think this could really work. The only downside I can see is having more sharers than downloaders, as I tend to think that more people would rather have free music legally while uploading than pay to legally download music while leeching. Of course, many of these people don't have jobs and / or credit cards, so I don't fault them.

More ideas?

*This is not to rile against scruffy guitar punk ripoff bands... this is to rile against the scruffy guitar punk ripoff bands who have carefully manicured holes cut in CK shirts and who have an equally manicured sound to appeal to this generation youth extremism with the previous generation of musical voice knockoff.

Re:Off-site backup?

[vrmlguy]

I'm curious about how the files are organized. EMC has an interesting product supporting "Content Addressed Storage" (not to be confused with content addressable memory, for you CS geeks). The idea is that you store so-called static content (image, audio, video, etc) and you get back a ticket, which is a cryptographic signature. To retreive the content, you present the ticket. You can then re-compute the signature yourself to ensure that no one's changed the file when you weren't looking. (For example, another poster inquired about editing cat-calls from presidential speeches. This would make it obvious if that were to happen.)

(disclaimer: I work for EMC. In spite of that, I would love to see an open-source implementation of the APIs, as it would encourage greater adoption of the technology, and I feel that my employer could do quite well providing high-performance solutions for high-end users. Here is a review of the technology.)

Re:Off-site backup?

[ragnar]

I don't know specifics, but I wouldn't be surprised if EMC wasn't on the discussion table. Currently we use an MD5 hash to maintain integrity, but as we all know even that relies on the integrity of the person who works with the file prior to hashing. ;) We sometimes joke about preserving our voices or self-images for all posterity, but in reality no one would do it.

Thanks for making the suggestion. I don't personally have any decision making power in this (I'm just developing software for metadata capture) but I'm glad people find it interesting.