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<DIV>My own thoughts on this, which I also expressed on the meta page: </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1. There is plenty of material out that that is already public domain. Part
of the problem is that it can take forever and a day to digitize it all. In the
case of books and magazines, digitization often involves destroying the hard
copies in the process. There are, however, specialized scanners that can do the
work without ruining the books themselves. These are expensive (about US $30,000
a machine). Ten machines, strategically located around the world, along with
student staff to operate them around the clock could help to preserve these
texts and store them for prosperity. Additional people (paid and volunteer) will
be needed to OCR, proof, and hyperlink the material to ensure that it
doesn't get lost in a glut of material (I have visions of the final scene of
Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Ark was finally stored in some crate in an
army warehouse). </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2. While OCR capacities exist for some languages, they do not exist for
other languages, where the material is much more likely to get lost. Manuscripts
in Tibetan monasteries, for example, can be scanend but not OCRed easily. To
make this information available, developers should be paid to create adequate
OCR tools for these languages. Rough cost: $5 million.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>3. Music has been recorded around the world for well over a century, yet
many of the early recordings are being lost, especially those on wax cylinders
and porcelain records. Preservation includes locating, identifying, and
remastering. People must be trained to do this. Rough cost: $35 million over two
years.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>4. This is true of old films as well. Celluloid copies are extremely rare
and extremely flammable. Restoration is exceedingly costly. For example, [[Theda
Bara]] is a well-known vamp of early Hollywood (the word "vamp" was first used
to describe her), yet none of her films survive, and they were made less than a
hundred years ago. Films are international, they include important historic
documents such as newsreels, and they are being lost every day. Today, most
preservation work is being done by major studios, since it is so costly. In
other words, they are taking important works now in the public domain, restoring
them, and contending that the restoration is an original work, i.e., another
hundred years at least until some Vigo or Charlie Chaplin films enter the public
domain ... and little attention is being paid to newsreels of events like the
Russian revolution, World War I, etc. Like music, people should be offered
scholarships to learn the art of film restoration and work on these projects.
Until this happens it can be outsourced. Rough cost: $50 million. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>5. To ensure all of this remains accessible, we will need a LOT of
servers and bandwidth: Initial outlay: $10 million.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Total $100 million dollars, spent over 5 years. Costs include staffing,
identifying prospective targets, transportation, overhead, etc. Just
coordinating a project of this scope will take a lot of effort. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And there is competition too. As an example, <A
href="http://historical.library.cornell.edu/IWP/">http://historical.library.cornell.edu/IWP/</A> is
a collection of Internation Women's Journals, some of which are
very important historically. They are already scanned, but they are
inaccessible because a private company has (rightfully or wrongfully)
copyrighted the scans. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Lots to be done. You will see how quickly $100 million can be spent. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Danny</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 10/15/2006 11:27:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
jwales@wikia.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2><BR>I
would like to gather from the community some examples of works you <BR>would
like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
<BR>generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
<BR>purchased and freed.<BR><BR>Dream big. Imagine there existed a
budget of $100 million to purchase <BR>copyrights to be made available under a
free license. What would you <BR>like to see purchased and released
under a free license?<BR><BR>Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives?
Be bold, be specific, <BR>be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.<BR><BR>I
was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a
<BR>position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what
<BR>we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would
<BR>expect to take a long time to accomplish on our
own.<BR><BR>--Jimbo<BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Commons-l
mailing
list<BR>Commons-l@wikimedia.org<BR>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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