Re: [ARSCLIST] ARSCLIST Digest - .BWF backward compatibility

["Copeland, Peter" <Peter.Copeland@xxxxx>]

Dear All,
    This "crystal ball gazer" sees nothing but trouble from this side of the
pond.
    The law of copyright here gives fifty years of protection for software.
So if you buy something (say) for reading 24-bit files and reproducing them
on a 16-bit machine, you can only install it on one computer, and you cannot
make a legal copy of it at all.
    So, looking at this with an "archival hat" on, you might reasonably wait
for fifty-one years and do your migration from 24-bit then. Unfortunately,
the original "source code" for such a piece of software has to be "compiled"
to make it run on a particular microprocessor. At present, when Intel chips
are dominant and they all have a common "instruction-set" (apart from ones
which lack a "maths co-processor"), this may not appear important. But this
situation isn't likely to continue. And software companies guard their
source-code like diamonds.
    My personal view is that an archivist should *never* be in the position
of relying on copyright software. And the same goes for a computer's
"operating system" (which includes its hard disk) and for many digital
storage media (whether they are storing Broadcast Wave Files - an "open
standard" - or not).
    Speaking for myself, I had to "break the code" for an early Microsoft
.WAV format file-header when the .WAV format had just been launched, and I
could not find any information about it. It was a trivial task compared with
the other problems I can see!
    As if this weren't enough, there are also many error-correction systems
for digital media, which get added-to and interleaved-with plain digital
audio samples. Error-correction is indeed the main advantage of digital
recording; but frankly I dread how much work will be needed by future
archivists to tame these problems.
    The greatest advantage of conventional CDs is that they were protected
by patent law - not copyright law - and the patents have now expired.
Peter Copeland

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Miller [mailto:lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 29 March 2004 17:09
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] ARSCLIST Digest - .BWF backward compatibility

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004, John Spencer wrote:

> It does underscore the fact that digital archives will have routine file
> maintenance as part of their workflow.

Which for me is my fundamental concern. Not only is it the question of
refreshing files, but the concerns over being able to read files in the
future. While it seems that these days, such concerns are handled on a
regularized basis, is that a given?

First there are the considerable costs for reformatting, then there are
costs for maintaining the digital archives. It makes archives more subject
to the systems people. While the current storage costs seem relatively
nominal, and the innovations in storage technologies can often reduce the
costs, I still wonder about the long term ramifications when we start
building up substantially greater numbers of files done with higher
resolution. While it doesn't seem practical to consider any other modality
for storage, I just wonder what the future might hold.

Any crystal ball gazers out there?

Karl


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