madlee wrote:Why the fuck weren't these stored in a fire safe environment?Exactly.

jeff\_fox wrote:How/why the fuck did they never make duplicates of these? Is it because all music industry people are stupid assholes?Maurice wrote:madlee wrote:Why the fuck weren't these stored in a fire safe environment?Exactly.Great questions.I am an archivist in my day job, and I am not particularly surprised by this. Shocked at the scale of the loss, of course, but not really surprised.In short: making backups, housing them in optimal storage facilities, having back-ups stored redundantly in different geographic areas ¦ that stuff is very expensive, and many (most?) institutions are not willing to make that commitment. A lot of folks are out there in the trenches fighting the good fight, making recommendations on what is needed to best preserve the objects in question, but by the time those recommendations make it up to the level where decisions are made, other stuff often takes priority. I work in the non-profit realm, but these problems are pretty ubiquitous across industries or disciplines -- non-profit, education, corporate. It will surprise no one here that business decisions are often very short-sighted, even in cases such as this, where the need for preservation seems obvious.

arthur wrote:I find it fascinating how a fire that happened 11 years ago, and that most - here and in the music-business related internet communities - heard about at the time (correct me if I'm wrong) can suddenly get so much press and attention just out of a NYT article.The damage was initially downplayed to "spare cameras and reels" (being a film lot), then hidden for years.

arthur wrote:I find it fascinating how a fire that happened 11 years agoI thought it just happened. I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall.

What people are really saying when they stridently announce online what Universal should have done to prevent this disaster is this: œStewardship of cultural heritage is too fucking important to be left to opaque enterprises where stockholder profit drives all decisions. Public funding and ownership of these artifacts is in the long run the only alternative to losing all of them. Of course, if you point this out, the whole internet full of Monday morning quarterbacks finds something else to type about in a big hurry, because fuck paying for any of that, commie.-r

Yes it s directed at the labels. They may have stalled for time, but this loss and bad publicity will affect their bottom line. Somebody did or will get fired over this.

Are you saying the Eagles belong in the library of Congress? I don t need all that. You had one job!

seanurban wrote:Are you saying the Eagles belong in the library of Congress? I don t need all that. They already are. Not the master tapes, I bet, but they're in there.seanurban wrote:You had one job! Not sure what you mean. If that's directed at the labels, they don't have one single job. They have one *main* job, which is to profit for their shareholders, and a shitload of smaller, maybe-we-do-it, maybe-we-don't jobs, such as the job of adequately protecting irreplaceable master artifacts. If the little job eats too much into the deliveries of the big job, the little job absolutely will not be done, as this episode demonstrates. This should be obvious. They kept the extent of the loss quiet for years and years specifically to protect share price levels against bad publicity. Main Job: done.-r