>1) A thought: Copyrighted material currently passes through two gross
>phases of life; initially proprietary and eventually public domain. It
>might be good to create a third which benefits archivists. If data is kept
>alive in the long term, those who keep it alive should be able to benefit
>in some way. This would create incentives for speculative commercial
>archivists. There needs to be a concept of "digital stewards' rights"
>rather like squatters rights, in that such rights would accrue
>automatically. If well designed, a "stewards' rights" law would give
>incentives for the preservation of the widest variety of bits. To benefit,
>a steward would have to show that the bits would have died without
>intervention- and all holders of copies of the bits would have to split
>proceeds, creating incentives for divergence.
>
>2) Kodak claims to have a gold reflective layer CD that lasts for
>centuries in accelerated aging tests. I will make the connection between
>the folks at Kodak and T&B