Culture Theft - How Long Term Copyright Kills Creativity

[GhostShip]

Well folks my view is plain above and the library of congress seems to be in agreement.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5139522

 

Archivists and collectors have long lamented the lack of access to older recordings. So the Library of Congress commissioned a team to find out just how many are out of print. The report -- released in August -- suggests that over 70 percent of American music recorded before 1965 is not legally available in the United States.

Sam Brylawski, an archivist at the University of California Santa Barbara, and the former head of the recorded sound division at the Library of Congress worked on the study.

"The recording industry is a business, and their business is to sell records," Brylawski says. "And when the esoteric material loses its favor with the public, they have no responsibility to keep those in print. So recordings fall out of print, and they stay out of print."

I,m sure the original artists in many cases now deceased would make their anger plain to the greedy recording industry that permits this kind of audio cultural terrorism.
Music has always been a powerful medium and to have that creativity locked away to suit the whims of a tiny few greedy folks is a sick joke on society.

[Lysander]

Books are exactly the same way. Hell, it doesn't even ahve to be old. An acquaintance of mine got completely fucked over on distribution of his book, which is now out of print, but still copyrighted--so in other words, I'm stealing if I were to download someone's transcription of the book, but if i ask the publisher for a copy they'll tell me that it's no longer in service. So just who's money am I stealing here, exactly?