Hallo aus K�ln und Hinweis auf Kurt Tucholsky Copyright!!

Oliver.Lucas · Post by **Oliver.Lucas** » December 20th, 2005, 4:36 am

Hallo Ollie hier,

bin auch durch heise.de auf diese Idee aufmerksam geworden und wollte darauf hinweisen, dass Kurt Tucholsky Texte in 11 Tagen Copyright frei werden.

Habe schon mal das Essay "Der Mensch" gelesen und werde es dann uploaden...

Gr��e

Ollie

Gesine · Post by **Gesine** » December 20th, 2005, 6:07 am

Hi Ollie

(wenn Du lieber auf deutsch reden moechtest, lass' es mich wissen und ich uebersetze!)

Welcome to LibriVox! I'm responding in English because, until we have a decision on how to handle use of non-English language threads in LibriVox (which is being worked on as we speak), we're trying to keep things in English so that everyone can join in!

So, a quick recap in English of your post: Ollie came from heise.de and would like to mention that works by Kurt Tucholsky (famous German author - hope this is not patronising, I have no idea how well known he is abroad) will be free of copyright in 11 days.
Ollie has already recorded Tucholsky's essay 'Der Mensch' and would like to upload it when it's in the public domain.

Ollie, a few things. First of all, thanks for your enthusiasm and willingness to contribute! Would you like to record a few other things for LibriVox - we're trying to complete our first German language project (for which I unwittingly chose Winnetou I - sorry, but nostalgia won out) and are looking for readers. You can sign up here:
http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=421

We also have interest in German recordings of Grimm's Fairy Tales and the bible. You can post other suggestions in the Next Books forum: http://librivox.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=1.

Your Tucholsky essay so far would be a solo project. However, I think it would be really nice if we did _all_ of the Essays - either you could read them all as a solo project, or we could create a group project in Readers Wanted, then others would help record individual essays. Let us know, Ollie, would you? I think this is a great suggestion.

If you do decide to read the Essays as a solo project, would you mind posting it in the Going Solo forum? Please read the Sticky on how to post a German solo project: http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3667#3667. I don't know if you've already done it, but LibriVox recordings always have a disclaimer in them - see the Sticky for more information.

Of course, you don't have to limit yourself to German recordings - feel free to participate in any project!

Thanks again for your help, it's great to have you here. Any questions, please ask!:)

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » December 20th, 2005, 6:28 am

Hi neighbor Oliver.Lucas! In good weather i can see the cologne dome if i walk a few meters.
I'll be with your projects.

Gesine! What a wonderful welcome!

Gesine · Post by **Gesine** » December 20th, 2005, 6:32 am

Update - sorry, it just occurred to me that the EU copyright date doesn't match with the US copyright date.

As Jon Ingram pointed out in another post:

In Germany, and other EU countries, material is public domain 70 years after the death of the author. That means that you're fine to record material written by anyone who died before the end of 1934 (1935 in a fortnight's time!). Since this is a US site, however, we also need to abide by US copyright, which is a little complicated, but which basically lets you assume that everything written before 1923 is public domain.

I'm not completely clear on this - we need to check it.

Hugh, any idea whether we will be able to put Ollie's Tucholsky essay (and other European Gutenberg titles between 1923 and 1935, from the European Gutenberg projects) on LibriVox?

Jon Ingram · Post by **Jon Ingram** » December 20th, 2005, 6:43 am

You might be able to use Librivox to coordinate the recording, but the results won't be able to be uploaded to archive.org, which hosts the files once all the recording is completed, because it requires all the material to be public domain in the USA.

If the USA had a copyright law like almost every country in the world, then we'd be fine, because normally countries accept material as public domain once it becomes public domain in the originating country (so, for people in the EU, for example, Canadian material is public domain 50 years after the death of the author, and Indian material 60 years after the death of the author). Sadly, as far as I know the USA does not have a rule like this. For anything written after 1922, the US copyright situation is a real mess.

The way out of this would be to find a non-US location to store the non-US material. There's quite a lot of interesting stuff which this covers, by the way, including quite a few books I'd love to see recorded: the later works of Conan Doyle, George Moore, Stella Benson ... and from a fortnight's time a whole bunch more, including the Irish writer George William Russel. Canada would be ideal -- anyone have any connections with a Canadian university would might give us free bandwidth?

Thinking about it, I might contact PG Australia, and see if they'd be receptive to hosting post-1922 audio files.

Oliver.Lucas · Post by **Oliver.Lucas** » December 20th, 2005, 8:28 am

OK, thanks everyone for the warm welcome.

Special thanks to Jon for the information on US copyright law.
Since I am very concearned about not to infringe anyone's copyright I think I should postpone the Kurt Tucholsky project. (althought they are VERY good and I really love his strong words!)

I'll read a fairy tale instead.

One question that is on my mind. Somewhere here in the forums I read that we should provide the recordings as stereo 128kbps mp3. Why stereo? I've only got one mouth! I believe the quality would be better if we could upload mono .mp3s.

Jon Ingram · Post by **Jon Ingram** » December 20th, 2005, 8:52 am

Mono is also fine -- the only thing you shouldn't do is save a stereo MP3 with your voice on only the left or right channel.

kayray · Post by **kayray** » December 20th, 2005, 9:28 am

Yes, just make sure your finished mp3 is audible in both ears when you listen through headphones.

Kara

tis · Post by **tis** » December 20th, 2005, 2:39 pm

Of course, books which are out of copyright in Europe but not in the USA could be distributed with bit torrent... we have enough non-US participants who would (I think) be willing to act as seeds.

Post by **hugh** » December 21st, 2005, 1:59 pm

Hmmm... I wonder if long term we can set up hosts around the world in no-copyright-friendly places, to enable hosting in places where a recordning would be copyright free. this not, for instance, to be "pirates" but in cases of legitimate public domain work that happens to not be considered public domain in US.

just thinking out loud.

re: legal side, we REALLY need to pair up more officially with gutenberg (that's my task for new year) to be able to take advantage of the legal work they do.

Gesine · Post by **Gesine** » December 21st, 2005, 2:03 pm

Hugh - are you also contacting the non-US Gutenberg Projects? Perhaps the European-based GPs could host LibriVox recordings until that are in the public domain in Europe but not yet in the US.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » December 21st, 2005, 2:56 pm

I am thankfull that LibriVox is opening itself to others countries laws. And is preparing itself for exceptions.
You could as well designate the US Law as the common denominator here, as it?s the law for most LibriVox titles and the most restrictive law too, just out of simplicity. In order to avoid all those pesky dry copyright threads.

I am really thankfull because i see a chance for DEUTSCH: WotW to be happening, which would be sitting between US and European Copyright Law...1923 here... Life+70 there.....because Author died 1931. (wrote a kind letter to the present publisher for clarification)(after that i realized that LibriVox.org might be an audio-books publishers nightmare)