Seven Pillars of Wisdom on Gutenberg Australia: PD?

icyjumbo · Post by **icyjumbo** » April 4th, 2009, 1:06 pm

I'd like to read Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom as my next book, but the only edition of the text I can find is on PGA, at http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100111.txt. It seems to be a transcription of the 1926 edition of the book, and Lawrence himself died in 1935, so I think it ought to be OK to use it.

Can anyone confirm for me that that is an acceptable text? And if so, where did you go to determine that it was OK?

Thanks for your help.

Post by **hugh** » April 4th, 2009, 1:10 pm

hi icy, unfortunately the rule of thumb is published before 1923 ... so on first glance i'd say probably not, but there are occasional exceptions, which can be teased out by those with a more solid command of the arcana of US copyright law than I possess...

lezer · Post by **lezer** » April 4th, 2009, 1:12 pm

Hi icy,
There was a discussion of this here: http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16475 - didn't look too hopeful at the time, unfortunately, would be a great audiobook... I put in some links in that previous discussion.
Regards,
Anna

icyjumbo · Post by **icyjumbo** » April 4th, 2009, 2:05 pm

Rats!

My first thought was "Why isn't there a LibriVox.org.uk?" And then I realized it was just pique.

But I keep coming back to that question. It seems a perfectly reasonable ambition to release audio versions of UK and European PD books into the audio Public Domain. I can't believe this hasn't been discussed. I know that I feel left out when the weekly poetry is something that we in Europe can't record, and I should very much like there to be a space for us Europeans. Any pointers?

I've just checked, and the domain librivox.org.uk is no longer available, it seems to have been registered to someone calling himself icyjumbo

(It was under £3 to register the domain for two years, so there seemed no reason not to go for it.) I'll happily release it to a more deserving group, if one exists, or ever constitutes itself. For the moment, I have some web space that I can devote to a new site.

I don't mean this to be in competition with what Hugh is doing. I do, however, see activities such as PGA (Project Gutenberg Australia) which serves a useful purpose aside from the main PG site. It seems reasonable to do the same for LV. Please folks, give me feedback.

Cori · Post by **Cori** » April 4th, 2009, 2:08 pm

We just need an archive.org.uk and we'll be rolling. The storage space is the key issue, really ... if we can find a big-bandwidthed partner in Australia, Canada or anywhere in Europe, librivox.org.uk could work. While the only big public internet repository is under US law, it's all a moot point.

(And yes, I know archive.org's law is a little bit vague, because there are items on there from Canadian libraries which I wouldn't think ARE US-PD, but still.)

icyjumbo · Post by **icyjumbo** » April 4th, 2009, 2:29 pm

Of course, storage and bandwidth! Why didn't I think of that?

I'll try to think of some ideas.

Post by **annise** » April 4th, 2009, 3:33 pm

I think it would be fantastic - every Australian book I want to read seems to fall foul of USA or Aussie rules - it was either written after 1922 or the author lived to some ripe old age instead of dying in 1954 like they should have

Of course the storage would need to be FREE to wouldn't it ?

Anne

horatio · Post by **horatio** » April 4th, 2009, 5:57 pm

It could be torrent only until/if more storage space and bandwidth was available?

Post by **hugh** » April 4th, 2009, 7:04 pm

we would need to be a bit careful. right now LibriVox avoids nasty copyright lawyer letters because we clearly operate under US laws, and do everything in our power to make sure everything is above board.

if there were a LibriVox.org.uk publishing books that are still under copyright in the USA, it might raise the ire of the copyright lawyers, and cause real problems for LibriVoxes on both sides of the atlantic.

I'm supportive of the idea in principle (i'm in canada, after all, hello public domain 1984!), but if there is a real move in this direction, we'll have to ask our pals at Gutenberg.org, Archive.org and EFF.org for some advice on how to handle it to avoid any troubles.

Post by **annise** » April 4th, 2009, 10:23 pm

I thought I might just as well see what PG Aust thought about audio books so sent an email and got a reply

Colin Choat wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just happen to be at my desk, so you get a prompt reply.
>
> No, we do not have any audio books at all.
>
> Coincidenatally, only the other day, someone pointed out that there is a site in the US, Librivox, (http://librivox.org/) which has lots of actual human voice audio books based on PG files and asked if there was something like it based in Australia. I don't think there is.
>
> I have enough to do looking after the ebooks at the PGA site. Someone else will have to pick up on the audio books idea I am afraid. He/she/they would have a good start what with all the resources available at Librivox to refer to.
>
> If you want audio books read using a 'digital voice' you can use Yread from http://www.spacejock.com/yRead.html. The software has an inbuilt link to the PGA catalogue so you can download any of our books and listen to them.

In asking I was not actually thinking of have a Librivox.anywhere_but_USA , more wondering if someone wanted to read on their own they would have somewhere to post it as Archive is probably out

Anne

Lucy_k_p · Post by **Lucy_k_p** » April 4th, 2009, 11:27 pm

I've considered this as well, in terms of having a storage site for works that are PD outside of the US, but not inside it. I have a very technically minded friend who is on holiday at the moment. I'll ask him when he comes back. (He does have his own server, as does my boyfriend, and they do have a lot of storage space, but for something that will end up being as big as Librivox, this is only a temporary solution.)

And yes, I reckon copyright lawyers would start sending us a lot of nasty letters. They don't have a legal leg to stand on, but they will be hoping to scare us into stopping either because we aren't sure of the law, or because we don't want to spend money to take them on. The only real way to deal with that is for someone to volunteer to be the test case, and let themselves be prosecuted and go to trial, so that they can be found (hopefully) innocent in order to set a precedent which will make the other copyright lawyers back off. The only downside is that this could cause people to decide to change UK copyright laws to be in line with the US.

Steampunk · Post by **Steampunk** » April 4th, 2009, 11:42 pm

A P2P network (using LimeWire or some variant) of European and otherwise non-US folks might be a solution. Bit Torrent (as horatio suggests) might work, too, though either way a core group with pretty decent storage and constant on-line presence would be necessary to keep it anything like an active "catalog."

I agree that it would have to be totally non-affiliated with LibriVox and any similarities of methodologies or LV projects living or dead would be purely coincidental...

Jim

seanohara · Post by **seanohara** » April 5th, 2009, 9:51 am

annise wrote:I think it would be fantastic - every Australian book I want to read seems to fall foul of USA or Aussie rules - it was either written after 1922 or the author lived to some ripe old age instead of dying in 1954 like they should have

How about My Brilliant Career (1901) by Miles Franklin (1879-1954)?

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11620

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Franklin

Cori · Post by **Cori** » May 2nd, 2009, 6:22 pm

I just bumped into Europeana, which is working with all sorts of cool people and places, one organisation of which is the Internet Archive, as Europeana's aim is to create a European Archive. And I just sent them an email, asking whether IN THEORY EU-copyright-free volunteer-produced public domain audiobooks might be a welcome addition to their collections.

IF they were interested, and IF there were some non-North-America based folks interested in reading too, then I agree with the concerns raised above that we'd need to use something clearly non-LibriVox to group under and to make some kind of difference in copyright considerations clear to potential listeners. But that's a lot of IF, so ... I'll let y'all know what they say, and we can take it from there.

icyjumbo · Post by **icyjumbo** » May 3rd, 2009, 8:17 am

Cori, if all those conditions can be satisfied, then that is great news. Thank you for letting us know. There are lots of things that fall in this category that I'd love to read, or more to the point, listen to.