I am not a fan of the length and breadth of our current copyright system. My other posts are surely testament to that. The time line is so unrealistic that music and movies that have long lost any substantial or even noteworthy marketability are now disintegrating in cans on archive shelves. That facet of our culture is literally dissolving because of copyright.

Groups in the past, concerned about these potential losses, have come forth to volunteer to digitize the media, to which they were told “Not without permission from the copyright holder”. Alas, the copyright holder for literally the majority of the media in the 20th century is either too numerous or too difficult to find for getting permission. Well, at least for a small not-for-profit group.

So, what about a company that can make money from the media? I’m not talking about a lot of money; if these media could make a lot of money, it would already be doing so. I’m taking about pennies. But get enough pennies, and you have a business.

Perhaps we can hope that some company – perhaps Google, Inc or the like – will form enough interest in our culture to clear or even buy rights to, say, old, obscure jazz from the ’30s, and then put all that onto a site that charges based solely on market demand. A song that no one’s even heard for a decade likely has no economic value at first, but as it heard, featured, referenced, on such a site, perhaps it will be worth a dime to one person, and then a quarter to the next, and finally the acceptable ceiling price-per-track of a dollar.

To assume that all of the media rotting in canisters holds no cultural value because it holds no current market value is entirely erroneous of course. A piece of art repackaged and re-introduced to society, or – more importantly – to those who already have a indelible interest in like media, is a piece of art that can form commercial value, and the value to society is that it has not dissolved and disappeared forever.

One would hope that if a company were to take up this mantle, it would not simply drop a song or movie or book from the site because it fell into the public domain (which works will begin to do again in 2018), but would let it slide into the digital archives for public usage while – naturally – still featuring and trying to market those works still covered under copyright, but formerly unknown to most.

Perhaps there’s even room beyond selling copies to listen to or watch, but also to employ in user-generated media. As a filmmaker, I would be especially interested in cheap, underused footage to use as b-roll. I’m sure that a remix artist would feel the same way about unknown or unremembered music, as well. Indeed, only if such a service actually owned the copyright could they allow for use (as opposed to only consumption), but it’s not far-fetched. Tracking down copyright holders and buying rights is impractical for individuals, but to a company with the long-game in mind, why not?

And by all means, if anyone reading this is suddenly struck by the desire to make a service like this come to life, I’m happy to have been the one to inspire it.