Rovi and Michigan State University Establish Largest US Library Media Collection (marketwatch.com)

New submitter dbosman writes: A donation from Rovi Corp. announced Monday is bringing a gigantic media collection to Michigan State University that includes more than 850,000 CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays and video games. “We are honored to be the proprietors of the largest media archive in the country, which has quickly become the most requested material in the Michigan inter-library loan system,” said Clifford H. Haka, director of libraries, Michigan State University. “The ‘Rovi Media Collection’ dramatically enhances our teaching curriculum and research within the College of Music, popular culture and film studies, and an emerging gaming program. Assembling a collection of such cultural and historic importance and overall magnitude would simply not have been feasible with our current budget. On behalf of all of our users at MSU and across Michigan, we thank Rovi for this generous gift.”

Comments

I hope they paid for

[The Real Dr John]

all those CDs and DVDs.

Now upload them

[Anonymous Coward]

Now upload them so everybody can enjoy them

Backups!

[Anonymous Coward]

For the good of all, all libraries need the right to backup collections such as these, and rip and re-encode in new future formats. DOWN with the DMCA and any law or treaty that limits this! RESTORE FAIR USE! Especially for libraries.

Bundled

[Anonymous Coward]

Was the donation bundled with Adware?

Back it up

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd better RIP that collection ASAP before it's mostly "borrowed" and never returned, or the collection won't have much "Historic" value for long.

Re:Back it up

[Mal-2]

I used to check out music CDs from the local library frequently, about fifteen years ago. I asked if they were concerned about them going missing, and found out that almost all of them came from the personal collections of the librarians -- who had first made CD-R copies for themselves on a machine owned by the library. (At this time CD burners were expensive but not exorbitant -- like $200, and $1 discs could be had in quantity). I would hazard a guess that most libraries do the same, even if they don't bother telling anyone about it. They may not make physical copies, but I'm reasonably sure they make some sort of archival copy. Even if they have multiple copies of the original media and withhold one, the discs are subject to physical damage over time.

As a side effect, I ended up making friends with two of the librarians (an early 20s white female who liked The Offspring, and a mid-40s black male who liked avant garde jazz) because I commented on how good the musical tastes of the donators were, not knowing the librarians were the primary contributors. There was a third with pretty good taste as well but I never got to discuss it with her. I found out they were making copies for themselves because I offered to do so, only to be told they already were. If I worked in a library and could make copies of anything I donated, I'd probably have done the same thing they did.

Re:Back it up

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

How do you know you're on SlashDot?

Stories about how someone made a friend in meatspace get modded up.

Show us the list of what they got

[Anonymous Coward]

I can come up with 850,000 movies/songs/games that are trash. Where's the list?

From the company formerly known as Macrovision

[Crowd Computing]

all those CDs and DVDs.

Don't worry. MSU got it from the Trojan horse's mouth. According to Wikipedia, this is the company that built its empire on preventing the easy archival of the material they have now donated:

Rovi was known as Macrovision Solutions Corporation (Macrovision) until it changed its name in July 2009. In that era of the company they were known more for digital protection but now focus on metadata licensing.

Great?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now hide it at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.... oh I mean restrict access to it though the inter-library loans system.

Rovi cost cutting?

[Malc]

I wondered how long they'd keep all that, now we see they've found somebody to pay for the storage. Rovi's only interested in the metadata about those discs. They've been desperately trying to cut costs since Fred Amoroso left a few years ago and the current CEO went on an anti-product purge and focused on patent trolling, which went abysmally in some places (see Rovi vs. Virgin Media in UK).

Borrowing DVDs from Libraries

[Jason Levine]

Libraries are often overlooked as a place to borrow DVDs from. While your local library isn't going to have the selection of MSU, it might have a respectable selection of DVDs to choose from. We make frequent trips to the library to take out DVDs along with our books. Best of all, it's free. Well, "essentially free." You pay for it via your taxes whether you use it or not.

Physical media?

[Dan East]

So it's all physical media? That's so 1999.

mac ROVI sion

[cibus]

Rovi.. that's the company once known as macROVIsion. That's right - rights-management on video tapes.

MSU also has the largest comic book collection...

[ZipR]

...consisting of 250,000 items. Think of the mylar! http://www.mlive.com/lansing-n...

We regret to announce...

[raftpeople]

That 400,000 of the CD's were AOL mailers

Congratulations - now embrace the bit rot.

[pecosdave]

I've got a rather large media collection myself, I won't pretend it's as big as theirs, but it's large, I tend to buy bargain bin movies at Big Lots and other places, and I also buy new releases I actually want to see.

I've run into lots of bit-rot, especially on Warner Brothers releases - I've emailed them about it and they won't even give me the courtesy of a "go fuck yourself" reply.

Take this Blu-Ray of A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas" for instance. It is unique in my collection as a single disk has both the Blu-Ray extended version and the DVD Theatrical release. It's well cared for, not a scratch on it - I'm a stickler about my disk. As my friends tend to have that sort of sense of humor this movies been watched a few times.

When I first got it I watched the extended uncut Blu-Ray side. That side of the disk doesn't work anymore. I can hold it up to the light and see the deterioration through the disk - the DVD side places perfectly - not a scratch on either side of the disk anywhere.

Again - that Horrible Superman Returns movie - DVD - rotted.
Natural Born Killer - DVD - rotted.
The Green Mile - DVD - rotted
Samurai Jack Season 3 - one little spot of rot, one of the episodes is now unwatchable, I had it ripped it a couple of years prior at low-res for use on a netbook and PSP. I re-ripped the whole disk save that one episode where I kept the old low-res version of the one.
The Greatest American Hero - straight into ripping off-the-shelf, never watched off the disk, like Samurai Jack, one episode.

I bought the twin pack of The Day The Earth Stood Still. The old one - AKA the good one rotted. The newer tree-hugger edition works fine. Those were both DVD and scratchless - I actually went out and bought the BluRay of the older one.

Granted some of these disks were really old and had literally underwater in a Hurricane - most of them - especially the BluRay - cannot.

Oddly I don't think any of the bit-rotted movies were out of the bargain bin, those seem to have held up despite the scratches on the used ones. It's the ones I've bought new, off-the-shelf and removed the cellophane myself that have rotted.

I would say I have 1 out of 150 rot? Maybe a bit more. To say the least I feel justified ripping and compressing my movies to put on my media server at this point.

Re:Congratulations - now embrace the bit rot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have you been storing your discs, stranger?

Re:Congratulations - now embrace the bit rot.

[pecosdave]

Mostly in a closet in an air-conditioned and heated apartment. I use big Case Logic cases for the most part so as to not have to dedicate a bedroom to the collection.

I do tend to like it closer to outside temps. In the summer I tended to have my thermostat on 80 when I was home, maybe 85-90 when not to save power. In the winter I may have it at 60 when I was home and 50 when not, temperature may have been a factor. I don't consider those temps too extreme for optical disks, but crappy ones may disagree.

Now that I'm married the temperature range is a lot tighter and tends to stay in the low 70's. My power bill has increased significantly, but that's only been two years (next week). I've had most of my collection much longer than I've had my wife, queen of the thermostat.

Also, Houston area so the humidity is really high.

Get on my level.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like what, half of my collection. Get on my level

Rovi is Macrovision

[Anonymous Coward]

Rovi's bread and butter is DRM. Until 2009 they used to be named Macrovision, famous for their VHS copy-prevention scheme, which is also implemented in the analog video output circuitry of all licensed DVD players. They also sell DRM systems that embed in digital media too.

DRM is antithetical to the central goal of all libraries - the free exchange of knowledge. MSU should be ashamed for letting Rovi use them to white-wash their corporate image.