Dear Prabhus, Hare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Concerning Madhudvisa Prabhu’s article, he has hit the nail on the head as usual.
The Bhaktivedanta Archives is not working because of a conflict of interest. Publishers should not be archivists and vice versa. Working on producing a new, improved set of MP3 files to be sold on CD- or DVD-ROMs and a new, improved version of the VedaBase to be sold for hundreds of dollars for one CD-ROM (which costs pennies to duplicate) is called “publishing.” It’s not only publishing, but it’s cut-throat publishing: very bad for public relations among the community of devotees.
This must be stopped. The Archives should be supported by the worldwide community of devotees so that they don’t have to worry about money. At the same time, they should be very frugal. Minimizing expenses should be a top priority.
Their duty should be to preserve, and at the same time, make available Srila Prabhupada’s priceless legacy. Now that we have the Internet, making exact, unedited, unprocessed digital copies of the originals available as free downloads costs almost nothing.
“Preserving and, at the same time, making available.” This was being done, starting in early 1971! When I first arrived at ISKCON New York (Henry Street in Brooklyn) in early 1971, I was shocked to see Srila Prabhupada’s original tapes from 1966 being played over and over again, in complete disarray, tapes being left on take up reels, etc. I immediately locked them up and no-one else was allowed to touch them. If someone wanted to hear a particular tape, I would make them a copy. The temple authorities were very supportive, and my expenses were almost nil, because they gave me free room and board as their way of supporting the archiving / distribution project. I had no car to maintain, no house or apartment to maintain, and I was able to borrow a temple vehicle whenever I needed to go to purchase blank tapes by the case lot, directly from the Maxell Corporation warehouse on Staten Island. It was Krishna’s divine arrangement that the best quality tapes were available to us at the lowest prices because even though the Maxell brand was the world’s best quality, they were relatively unknown at the time, so in order to break into the market, they sold their tapes for less than everybody else!
It’s expensive to live in the country. It’s also very time-consuming. They have to maintain the Archives building, their houses, their cars, their septic systems, and their wells. They have to make sure the grass gets mowed, that the various roads and driveways are maintained, and they have to expend a lot of time, gasoline, and wear-and-tear on their vehicles driving into town to purchase supplies. Because the climate there in North Carolina is very hot and humid, they have to spend a lot of money on electricity for air conditioning, and electricity in rural areas is much more expensive than in town.
Why not relocate the Archives to a large temple, in a relatively cool, dry climate such as New York City or Denver, Colorado where they probably wouldn’t have to pay very much for room and board? Then, they should, as quickly as possible, make exact, high quality digital copies of everything and distribute the copies for free on the Internet so that devotees all over the world could add them to their personal collections. Then Srila Prabhupada’s priceless legacy would stand the best possible chance of surviving for the next 10,000 years! Theoretically, digital copies are eternal because each and every copy is an exact duplicate of the original, but they need to be distributed as far and wide as possible in order to stand the best chance of survival.
I’m sure that the “New, Improved Bhaktivedanta Archives” would get the whole-hearted support of the entire worldwide community of devotees and that Lord Sri Krishna and Srila Prabhupada would be very pleased with their efforts.
By the way, you can make a difference right now! Please sign the petition!
Your servant, Pratyatosa Dasa
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