The Librivox disclaimer

Comments about LibriVox? Suggestions to improve things? News?
TriciaG
LibriVox Admin Team
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Post by TriciaG »

Welcome to LibriVox!

I'm not sure if this was mentioned in this thread (it's been a long time since I read the whole thing), but the purpose of LibriVox is to make public domain recordings of public domain texts.

While it's great that we have listeners that download and enjoy the recordings, the listeners are secondary. Our #1 purpose is to record.

Sometimes the sections are short, making the disclaimer heard more often. But this is often so that the sections are in easier chunks to read. Once again - the reader is the priority.

As callous as it sounds, it pretty much comes down to the idea that if someone doesn't like how it's done, they're free to begin their own community to record PD books, omitting a disclaimer, if they choose. There are good reasons to have the disclaimer on each section, and it has been determined here at LV that those reasons outweigh the reasons to omit the disclaimer.
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earthcalling
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Post by earthcalling »

It's also perfectly feasible to view LibriVox's output as raw material, rather than a necessarily finished product. It would be perfectly fine to set our audiobooks to music, to knit the sections together into longer recordings, use them as soundtracks for movies, or just put them on CDs and sell them on eBay. In fact, most of those things have been done already by someone or other.

Our task here, though, is to make the recordings and give them away. After that, it's up to the rest of the world to decide what to do with them.
Nicholas19
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Post by Nicholas19 »

Kungfu_sage wrote:I was directed tot his post after making my own thread on the disclaimer. Of course this is a heavily weighed group of people in favor of the disclaimer because most people like me and kodabear simply leave. It is frustrating and there probably are ways of fixing the problem so that more people can enjoy this sight and the services it provides which in fact could be quite amazing and revolutionary. I think this sight has the power to change the availability of information and liturature for a lot of people, but it seems that those who are just stuck in the "we do it how we want to and we don't care what anyone else thinks" are stunting the power of this sight. It's a great idea that is shackled by conservatism to a method that has only been around a remarkably short time.
It's unfortunate that kodabear seems to have been offended. I don't think it is the case that LibriVox is shackled by conservatism. The disclaimer is there for legal reasons. If it weren't there, then the files wouldn't be in the public domain and LibriVox's purpose, that of auditorily liberating books in the public domain, would be made vain.
One suggestion I have is that you encourage people to edit their recordings together. So that you have multiple chapters in one audio clip. This way you can have longer periods of time without the disclaimer having to be read.
hmmm. well the chapters would be very, long and editing would be complicated. It would probably be possible to do this. The LibriVox community podcast involves multiple contributions. But I think that should be left to individual readers to decide as it makes recording any one book much more complicated.

Rather than being shackled or hindered, LibriVox is growing and growing and now has over 3000 books. More than 1000 of those were recorded just this year! It's a remarkably succesful sysem.
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icyjumbo

Post by icyjumbo »

Kungfu_sage wrote:I was directed tot his post after making my own thread on the disclaimer. Of course this is a heavily weighed group of people in favor of the disclaimer because most people like me and kodabear simply leave.
It sounds to me as though you think we are just blowing off people who come to the site with opinions like yours. I assure you that it simply isn't like that. We have thought and discussed and pondered and adjusted what we do. For example, the shorter disclaimer that we use for solos is a direct outcome of that discussion. But hat is only one among several changes that we have made to our disclaimer policy.
Kungfu_sage wrote:It's a great idea that is shackled by conservatism to a method that has only been around a remarkably short time.
As hinted above, we strongly believe the shackles are imposed on us by IP law.
Kungfu_sage wrote:There are ways to expand an audience through community building and making this a welcoming place, rather than shooting down people's frustrations.
I would urge you to count the number of contributors and look at the size of our catalogue before belittling the growth of our community. Of which you are now a member, I'd like to point out.
Kungfu_sage wrote:One suggestion I have is that you encourage people to edit their recordings together. So that you have multiple chapters in one audio clip. This way you can have longer periods of time without the disclaimer having to be read.
In fact, that is often done. We do impose a constraint on a section's duration so that any section can be written to an audio CD, because that is how many people consume our recordings.
Kungfu_sage wrote:this sight is a great idea, and ideas survive through out. If the founders of this community cannot meet the needs of the public it will fall someone else to realize the power of the idea more.
We would love other people to help us fulfil our mission:
To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the Internet
If you join LV, great! If you do it at another site, that's great too!
edhumpal
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Post by edhumpal »

I went into the search utility with my jaw stuck out just a half inch or so, accepting that the LV disclaimer would never change, but wanting to understand it better. I really have no problem with it anymore, and want to share for the sake of other recent volunteers who are trying to reconcile this matter. I've reoriented from listener annoyed by the redundancy, to reader desiring to help "record all public domain books."

In 2009 earthcalling made this exceptional statement:
It's also perfectly feasible to view LibriVox's output as raw material, rather than a necessarily finished product. It would be perfectly fine to set our audiobooks to music, to knit the sections together into longer recordings, use them as soundtracks for movies, or just put them on CDs and sell them on eBay. In fact, most of those things have been done already by someone or other.

Our task here, though, is to make the recordings and give them away. After that, it's up to the rest of the world to decide what to do with them.
That put it all together for me, because I am self employed and have used public domain imagery extensively in packaging and promoting my products, mostly from Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress, making me one of the very folks earthcalling refers to.
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