Re: [ARSCLIST] Copyright of treasures

[John Ross <johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At  10/6/2005 06:55 AM, Karl Miller wrote:
> > Here at Northwest Folklife, we are making festival and concert
> > recordings available to researchers and the public in listening
> > stations, but we will not place the actual recordings online. We
> > evaluate requests for copies form bona fide researchers on a
> > case-by-case basis.
>
> Does the performer have it in their contract that a recording will be made
> and can be auditioned? If the contract states that they can be auditioned
> at your facility, why not have a contract which would allow downloads with
> the archive sharing any revenue with the owner of the recording?

If the contracts and releases that were signed twenty or thirty years 
ago had included that kind of language, it would have made my job as 
archivist a lot easier. But in many cases, we have little more than a 
shelf full of tapes  that may or may not have useful notes written on 
the box. Some are tapes of live radio broadcasts, others are 
soundboard tapes made by performers or sound operators for their own 
use. Still others are "ambience" tapes made by a sound artist who 
wanders around the ground with a binaural microphone every year.

We have changed the release form (and created a better filing system 
to preserve them), but that doesn't help with earlier recordings. 
We're happy to have whatever we can find.

John Ross
Sound Archivist
Northwest Folklife
Seattle