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Comment by carbor1 | Hacker News Reader

It's common for linguistics consultants to request that recordings be held private for a certain span of time after their deaths--- that may be one factor.

Another thing that is a factor for certain communities is that some stories or songs are the cultural property of particular families. In that case, older members of the family may make recordings to be held for when the descendents are ready for them--- when they're old enough, or perhaps when the language has been revitalized so that people can understand them again.

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OK, but why should we respect such wishes?

Because we want to record as many people as possible, and demonstrating respect for those wishes helps us do that, while trashing those people's wishes doesn't help us get recordings.

Recordings no-one, except a few people who have the right ancestry, is ever allowed to listen to?

Because you want to be nice?

Nice to the dead people?

Or instead be "nasty" to the dead people and nice to all the living people by sharing freely with them. To me it doesn't look like a question of niceness, it's far more nuanced surely?

It's not just dead people you're talking about, it's the families of those people. Keep in mind that in many cases the recordings of their ancestors are the only ones existing. It's not at all clear that a university or library should always be able to make those decisions without the involvement of the families.

There is often very private, very personal information in language documentation: even though it seems like the fact that the speaker should have been aware that making a recording was equivalent in some way to publication.

Plus, it's important to remember that before modern standards of informed consent were created, many linguists didn't have the speakers' best interests at heart, and were unscrupulous about recordings.

The ethics of legacy field recordings is a very messy business, with consequences ranging from legal measures to the unceremonious end of otherwise productive relationships between speech communities and researchers. I've seen cases where individual children of a single speaker have had differing opinions on what should happen to recordings.

Why do my children get claim over my speech, that I freely gave, any more than anyone else?

> I've seen cases where individual children of a single speaker have had differing opinions on what should happen to recordings.//

Which is natural as relatives make an emotional response, rather than a response that looks to the greatest/greater good. Which is exactly the reason why a broader view should be taken.

Legally speaking I imagine the recorder [of the speech, or lead researcher] owns the copyright or its in the public domain -- there really doesn't seem a strong reason to try and add additional restrictions based on racial discrimination and supposed moral outrage.

Do you want to create a right of people to hold censor over all media their ancestors produced or is it only native North Americans you want to pussyfoot around?

There were massive genocides in not too distant past; I fail to see how adding modern racial inequity fixes that in any way.

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