Steve wrote:
Your proposal is very fascinating and your tact is remarkable. =)
Well, my reply may have been a little too harsh. Ray did bring up valid points that needed addressing. The whole area of the copyright of pre-1972 U.S. sound recordings is one big tangled can of worms. So it is difficult to write something brief which completely untangles everything to everyone's satisfaction. I'm not sure if anyone, outside of a few top IP attorneys who are interested in the Public Domain, such as Larry Lessig, really have a good grasp of the various nuances (including state laws) regarding pre-1972 sound recordings.
And then there's the strategy in how to "free" the older sound recordings -- there will definitely be differences of opinions.
The important point, though, is that the corpus of pre-1942 sound recordings should somehow be "freed", and that is something which a few associates and I have been working on the last three years. We have an understanding of the various issues, and a good idea of how to digitally transfer, with state-of-the-art quality, millions of recordings once the "rights" issue is clarified (we are looking at doing this in semi-automated and automated fashion.) As noted before, we have close ties to ARSC as well.
And of course Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive is very interested in this as well, as he and I have discussed this. Once the recordings are "freed" and digitally transferred, the digital copies need to be preserved, as well as made available to the public in some fashion. Also, the "metal parts" need to find a home and we have given that some thought and have top experts (including one who was formerly the head of the sound collection at the Library of Congress) with whom we can consult.
So if the person with access to $100 million is interested in the pre-1942 sound recordings, we have a team of experts with good connections in various places that can be leveraged to help out with the acquisition, cataloging, digitization, archiving and distribution of the collection. We also have good connections on the legal front that we may be able to utilize -- even when acquiring the collection there will still be a couple copyright issues to deal with (which I believe are manageable.)
Jon Noring
(p.s., I keep mentioning "pre-1942". There are a couple reasons why 1942 is a suitable cutoff date which are explained in the paper I previously referenced:
http://www.projectgramophone.org/TeleRead-Article-01Nov2003.html
In addition to the "royalty" issue (making pre-1942 safer), there's the aspect that 1942 is well before the Rock era which started ca. 1953 (which the recording companies are less willing to part with) and before tape was used for recording -- nearly all commercial recordings before then were mastered as 78 rpm masters -- nearly all issued 78s are, in essence, physical copies of the masters. And some of the original metal masters still exist in good condition, and can be used to press vinyl copies for direct transfer. All in all, though, it is the royalty issue that makes post 1942 recordings more difficult to deal with it, but I suppose we should not rule them out entirely.)