[Tig] Library of Congress facility in Virginia

[Jim Houston]

On Mar 14, 2007, at 10:03 AM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
>
> I don't see any purpose for licensing copyright-free content which  
> has been captured into digital form by Library of Congress.  Of  
> course the Library of Congress may also capture considerable  
> content which is not yet copyright-free.  Eventually copyrights  
> will expire and the content will become copyright-free.  It is a  
> long term effort.

True, but it is a statement of the state of copyright legalities that  
if you do work on a copyright free item to clean it up,
fix it, or otherwise edit and assemble it, you have a copyright in  
your work product, a new fixed expression of that material
in digital form.  So yes, you can potentially charge money for it  
under a license.   The LOC being a public entity can still
charge a user to copy it for them (and I believe can charge for the  
archival restoration costs as well?)
It is much easier to get something on which copyright has expired.



> It seems reasonable for the goverment to charge a fee related to  
> the actual cost of providing service, which includes a cost per  
> gigabyte transferred.  In fact, the fee could help pay for  
> restoration efforts and for storage of media on readily accessible  
> disk storage rather than on archive tape.

Like anything though, this becomes a volume game:     if they have an  
item that 10 people ask for,
they have to charge about $5K per copy.**  If 1000 people ask for it,  
they may be able to drop
the cost to $200. (there is a minimum amount of work that any request  
will always cause.)
They aren't likely to charge DVD prices because of the rarity of  
requests for what is
largely obscure material.

** Bits are never free,  it costs money to create them, as well as  
move them down wires.  It
costs money to store them, and to make sure that they don't rot in  
place, and all bits
have to be stored in a cell of a medium encased in a cartridge laid  
on a shelf in a
climate controlled room of a building that has security and constant  
maintenance.
And of course, you likely need multiple people just to find the one  
you want
especially when the robots get confused.


Of course, the LOC gets hundreds of millions of taxpayer money every  
year, so some
of what they do will be given away freely. (even in a Republican  
administration :-)

Jim H.