Resistance to rollscanning and roll duplication

The thread for rollscanning is moving along nicely in MMD.  I thought
that the group might be interested in hearing one view that hasn't
been raised yet concerning both rollscanning and roll duplication.

In my pursuit of Violano rolls, I have located two significant
collections that are not open to anyone but the owners.  Neither
collector will loan their rolls for either recutting or rollscanning
efforts.  Their reasoning is that their lawyers have advised them
that if the rolls are duplicated then the value of the rolls will be
diminished (perhaps they share a common lawyer?).

One of these collections has something like 500 Violano rolls in it,
which is one of the largest single concentration of these rolls that
I am aware of.  Unfortunately, I had a conversation with a fellow
enthusiast (custodian of a larger, open collection) who had the
opportunity to see this 500 roll collection recently.  His report
to me is that the rolls are stored in an unregulated environment
in a part of the country that sees wide swings of temperature and
humidity.  As a result, the Violano rolls that my friend examined,
which are on a high acid content paper, are dried out and brittle.

Many of the rolls are last known copies.  Due to their condition,
it will be very difficult to salvage the information on the rolls and
the task becomes more difficult with every day that passes.  It is not
inconceivable that when this collector dies that his heirs will not
know the potential rarity of the collection.  I can imagine them
looking at the boxes full of dried out paper and sending them to the
dump, thinking that they are useless.

It is ironic that the reason given for not opening the collection to
any form of copying is to keep the value elevated, yet on the other
hand no effort is being made to preserve the rolls and so their value
diminishes daily.  Ultimately, it will be a loss of the valuable
musical heritage for which we are supposed to be the guardians.  At
this point, not even the owner can listen to the music that is locked
up in this collection.  Should he put one of these fragile rolls on
a Violano, it will shred and end up being tossed.  The only hope for
retrieving the music is through roll scanning, and this opportunity has
been removed, at least for the time being.

I have had no contact with the owner of the second "closed" collection.
I can only hope that his storage conditions are better than the other
collection I talked about.  Unfortunately, closed collections frequently
belong to pack-rats or hoarders whose obsession is to amass huge volumes
of items with little regard to the care or condition of the things they
have acquired.

Jack Breen
Southborough, Massachusetts