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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.
What format would they deliver it in? MP3? Would they use their own government MP3 encoder and pay license fees? Ogg? Wav? Real? Audio out to a big loud speaker that gets pointed to your house? What?
It's obviously a good idea to fortify the storage site, but what kind of arrangements will they have for off-site backup?
If these are the most important recordings, it would be a tragic loss to have a natural disaster or similar event destroy what may be the only complete recordings.
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
This site is a former bunker for the Federal Reserve Board and once held $1 billion in cash in case of a nuclear attack. It was transferred to the LoC in 1997. (Presumably this cash is now held elsewhere.)
sulli
RTFJ.
The law does. copy right office see chapter 7 section 704. The goverment is also exempt in many cases from paying IP payments.
To get most of the extensions put forth in these laws you must submit a copy to them. Small price to pay for a 70+ year monopoly...
Its ironic that the goverment is basicly the biggest warez collector there is! Then tells the rest of us to get stuffed!?
It is interesting that when the Library of Congress uses the word 'protected' in regards to a sound recording they mean exactly the opposite of what the RIAA means when they use the same word.
I like the LOC's meaning better.
tato (and tato only)
This post is strictly opinion, including the spelling.
I'd like to see a volunteer group turn this historical treasure trove into digital sound files and put them on DVD or optical media for safekeeping. Many of the recordings are on magnetic tape or other media that deteriorate over time, sometimes quickly.
The expensive part would be getting access to the necessary equipment to play the original recordings. Lots of geeks have DVD burners.
Catherine
I apologise for not providing a link as I'm at work right now and can't post long. Maybe some other kind reader will?
Wah!
It would be interesting if the LoC were to work in conjunction with a company/group to develop an open source swarm-based P2P client so the entire library could be instantly digitized, easily distributed, and any computer capable of viewing/playing the content could do so, whether a simple MP3 playing app for older computers, or full-blown MPEG-2 support for the high-quality multimedia content.
If DoD and DoE can spend millions of dollars on a supercomputer, then developing and storing the LoC materials in a permanent swarm net would perhaps be one of the great American institutions online, for all to share freely.
And it doesn't end there. A modern violin does not sound like a violin that Mozart composed for. Why? Difference in materials in making one, and more importantly (even when you're dealing with Mozart-old violins) modern synthetics used in string making.
This is a bit of a hellaciously huge argument in the opera community, who strive to get recordings of pieces the way a composer intended. There's also a lot of little changes; The meaning of 'allegro' has changed over the years, as well as the 'note to tune by,' currently A 440.
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
> However, a viable P2P business could be created with MP3 license fees being paid for by corporations who pay for distributed storage. Basically, your P2P archive would be a big data archive of some sort and you could export data you have privileges to.
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Interesting idea, but a few big problems:
1) It's unreliable storage, even despite its redundancy. Unreliable in terms of it staying intact (hard drives get reformatted, things get accidently deleted, etc.) and in terms of connectivity (people disconnect from the internet, have network troubles, etc.).
2) If the encryption of the privilege system is broken, quite a few people will have access to the data, a possibility which means that no company will be interested in storing any relevant information via distributed storage.
3) Hard drives are pretty cheap nowadays.
The only way I could see this possibly being used is by NASA or some organization that has something on the order of a few terabytes of data and figures that it might as well make it as reduntant as possible, for posterity and interested parties, and all that jazz (speaking of which, go see the movie version of Chicago if you haven't yet, it turned out great).
British Pathe has digitized and made public a huge quantity of their newsreels online, starting with the 1890s and going to 1970. Watch nearly a century of riots, wars and cheezy human interest stories on pretty much every topic. Type in "computer" and see the history of computers, as told in short chunks with dramatic voiceover.
About a week or two ago, I saw a documentary on The History Channel about this exact project. I was rather surprised to see them digitizing audio on Win95 workstations with a few primitive apps. These guys seriously need technological help. But the real focus here is on analog. I cringed as I saw historic reel-to-reel tapes shred when played, I was even more appalled when I saw vinyl-on-aluminum records that the vinyl popped off when he took it out of the sleeve. He said "oops, this album is ruined." They discard damaged vinyl like that, but I think they're screwing up. There are already laser scanners that can read the grooves optically, all you have to do is keep ALL the pieces and put them on a backing in the correct position, the laser will scan off the grooves and you can edit out the pops in postproduction.
But ultimately this is the same old conservation issue. Do you try to capture the deteriorating tapes and records NOW, or do you let them deteriorate further in hopes that a miracle solution will appear before they are completely destroyed? There is no good answer.
haha! Yeah man. I was trying to be funny. It was inadvertant, but I was trying on different levels. She this...she that.
But anyway... I really did mean what I said.
I don't disagree--surprising?
.GOV should think about selling it? They'd be making money and people would get what they want. Everyone happy?
I think its a beautiful idea of converting this media into a digital form. I love it!
I just wish they could share it with us. You have no idea how nice it would be to listen to these recordings. I would *love* it.
Maybe the