[Wikipedia-l] Dream a little... --> The entire corpus of pre-1942 commercial sound recordings

[Jon Noring]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you 
> would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of 
> generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be 
> purchased and freed.
> 
> Dream big.  Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase 
> copyrights to be made available under a free license.  What would you 
> like to see purchased and released under a free license? ...
> 
> I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a 
> position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what 
> we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would 
> expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.


Although this is not associated with text in any manner, I strongly
recommend that the rights and metal parts for all the pre-1942 sound
recordings now held by Sony BMG (which includes just about everything
recorded in the U.S. before 1942, including the Columbia/ARC and RCA
Victor catalogs) be purchased and "freed". I don't know the exact
number of recordings, but this collection definitely comprises over a
million "sides."

Although I'm not certain Sony BMG would entertain an offer, there is
some reason to believe they might, especially if linked in with some
potential tax write-offs and the positive publicity that this would
give Sony BMG.

For background information on the unusual copyright status of early
U.S. sound recordings (which is surprising!), and whether or not Sony
BMG might even be interested, refer to the article I wrote about the
topic of freeing the older sound recordings:

   http://www.projectgramophone.org/TeleRead-Article-01Nov2003.html
   
(Especially refer to the section entitled: "A Note To The Major Media
Companies: Why Not Donate Your Older Sound Recording Catalogues?")

Note that this is serious. I have close ties to Brewster Kahle at the
Internet Archive (we've explored how to get many of the older
recordings digitized and placed online and have even talked about
acquiring a large collection of 78 rpm records), plus I have close
connections with the Association for Recorded Sound Collections:

   http://www.arsc-audio.org/


I'll be happy to discuss this further with the person in the position
to potentially make the purchase.

Jon Noring