Isn't the requirement PD in the U.S.?

[DebraLynn]

I've been volunteering here for 4-1/2 years, and I have seen it written repeatedly that the LV server is based in the U.S. and that the books we record must be proven to be PD here. The other day, I tried to help out a fellow volunteer who had been told to find the birth and death dates for every author of every poem and story in a collection that had been published in the U.S. in 1911. Apparently, the idea was that if any of the authors had been dead less than 75 years, their particular story might not be PD in some countries.

In over 4 hours of diligent searching on my part, I was able to come up with one set of dates, and one possible name to go with an author who used only initials instead of a name. These books can have 30-40 stories in them. Some of the authors were apparently one-hit-wonders, who only ever published that one story or poem and then were never heard from again. Imagine the number of volunteer hours that must go into trying to find them all! And these stories are in a book that is known to be PD in the U.S., therefore so are the stories contained therein.

These books are downloadable from PG by anyone in any country who has internet access. PG didn't feel it necessary to give dates for each author. The compiler's birth and death dates are given, and that is good enough for PG. When did LibriVox get so fastidious? This was the first I've heard of it.

-Confused Debbie

[TriciaG]

Honestly, it's up to the people in countries that have Life+year copyrights to self-police. We provide death dates as a courtesy.

In a case like you're talking about, I wouldn't go to a lot of trouble to find them. I would perhaps mention that the death date is unknown, so that someone in a Life+year country will know and can take any risk on themselves. But we shouldn't have to spend hours searching public records for any sign of these obscure authors, IMO.

[DebraLynn]

That's what I think, too. A lot of recording and editing could be done with the time it takes to research something like that.

[GabrielleC]

That's what I think. If the people in Life + 'x' years countries want to download the books, then they can find out the death dates for themselves.
Of course, I'm sure that they would appreciate it if we could do it ourselves, but I wouldn't waste too much time on it.

[annise]

All hats off and talking personally , I feel it is good for it to be seen that an effort is made to maintain the laws of countries. I usually look in wikipedia, google and here http://www.authorandbookinfo.com/ and if I can't find it and the book is on PG just say unknown, it only takes a minute or so.

Anne

[DebraLynn]

It may only take a minute or so to find one author--especially if it is an author of a whole book. But this is trying to find 20 or 30 authors from a collection, many of whom may only have written that one poem or story. I'm pretty good at researching, but it took me 4 hours to get the data on one author, for certain, and one possible name. To ask one person to do all that just to be able to start a project seems a bit much.

If it said in the MW instructions something like, "Death dates for individual authors were not provided. If you live outside the United States, please consult the laws of your country." then a concerned person who was in doubt could look up the author of the story or poem they wanted to read. A few minutes for them could save 20 or so hours for the BC.

[DebraLynn]

http://www.authorandbookinfo.com/

Thanks for the link, by the way. That looks useful.

[annise]

Poetry is more difficult
Just say to the MC - I'm sure they would agree to something like that.

Anne

[bobgon55]

It seems to me that if the author is that obscure, it really doesn't matter. You have to figure if they or their estate is even going to bother to enforce the copyright law, if their work is even in copyright. I'm not advocating deliberately violating copyright law, but an author or their estate needs to be actively promoting their existence in order to enforce copyright. They would need the resources to come after any violator of the copyright. If they do not have the resources even to keep their name before the public at large, it is highly unlikely that they are concerned with collecting royalties or enforcing copyright. In any case, if it chanced that there indeed was a violation of copyright, one would receive a gentle request to settle amicably with the author before any serious legal action would be taken. I am not speaking as a lawyer, only from some experience with obtaining rights of works with obscure authors. Our school performed a play where we could not even get in contact with either the author or any of the author's possible representatives. We performed the play anyway without issue. Granted, this was just the instance of one university performing a one-act play for free for two days on campus, not recording a work for all posterity to distribute to the whole world via internet, but my point is that the author or his or her representatives needs to establish a presence in order to enforce copyright. One could always claim that one spent hours, days, weeks trying to get hold of the author to negotiate royalties but the search proved fruitless.

Anyway, just a thought.

Bob

[RuthieG]

Copyright in the vast majority of the world (the US is the ONLY exception, as far as I know) depends solely on the author's death date.

Yes, occasionally it proves impossible to find an author's death date, but I always go to great lengths to try, to protect both readers and listeners from outside the USA.

Ruth

[DebraLynn]

Again, though, I'm not talking about taking the time to find one author. If I wanted to record a short story and was asked to try to find the info about the author, I would gladly make the attempt. The book in question though, and there are many of this type, is a book containing stories and poems from many different authors, many of whom no one has ever heard of. One person gathered up all these stories 100 years ago and made a book. The person who did this, and is considered, in a sense, to be the author, died in 1915. This satisfies the 75+ rule for the book.

I know, Ruth, what great pains you take with your projects. But you are a die-hard LV'er who will not be easily frightened away. My concern is that such a daunting research project might scare a relative newcomer who has found a nice PD book of short stories and would like to try their hand at BC'ing it. Faced with having to conduct 20 hours of research (I'm not making that number up) before they can even post the project, I'm afraid some people would just turn tail and run.

To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that we stop the practice of giving birth and death dates, if known, for the authors of books we record. I am only referring to the special case of books that are multi-author collections.

[Hokuspokus]

Birth and death dates are important to most of the world, so if they can be found, it's worth the effort to search them.
This project is a very special case with so many unknown authors. Most people begin BCing or recording a solo with something more common. In a case as this, it's enough to make sure that the book is pd in US and OK for LV to record. The missing dates can be searched while the project is running. There are books that are just not made for beginners and LV can't have written instructions for every single problem that might come up.
Only US based people will be able to record and PL and until the dates are found. There should be a warning at the top of the first post.
And it's always good to ask for help in difficult cases. In our community chances are good that someone has an idea that no one had before. And if they really can't be found, well, what bobgon55 has said.

All non-US readers always have to look up birth and death dates and the publication date to make sure that the text they want to record, is OK both for them and LV.

[DebraLynn]

There are books that are just not made for beginners and LV can't have written instructions for every single problem that might come up.

But it seems like there are more and more rules being added all the time. I have over 8 days of recordings on here, but I'm still paranoid every time I want to start a new project, because the rules keep changing. This problem I'm referring to appears to me to be a new instruction that has been added recently. I've submitted quite a few short stories since I've been here, and all I was ever asked to do was provide a link to the PG text the story came from.

I wouldn't consider that a book of short stories would be something a beginner BC should be discouraged from doing. Why is it better to say to a potential BC, "While this book is PD in the U.S. and therefore LV legal, we're gonna require you to do a lot of additional research on behalf of other countries, so maybe you should do something else." than to say to a potential reader from another country, "Some of the stories in this book might not be PD in your country, so you might want to check first or consider reading for a different project."?

The "PD in the U.S." rule has always been with us and has been made abundantly clear. Why complicate things? It's nice to provide that information when it is readily available, but to send someone on a frustrating wild goose chase just doesn't seem right. More and more I see people who submit their first recording being given complicated instructions for improving the quality of their recordings that are way too much to expect from someone who has just started doing this. Other things get more complicated all the time, too. I fear we are straying away from the original purpose of this site.

This is supposed to be fun!

[bobgon55]

Why is it better to say to a potential BC, "While this book is PD in the U.S. and therefore LV legal, we're gonna require you to do a lot of additional research on behalf of other countries, so maybe you should do something else." than to say to a potential reader from another country, "Some of the stories in this book might not be PD in your country, so you might want to check first or consider reading for a different project."?

The latter portion of this statement, what you suggest, is precisely what I have seen several BCs already doing, and I think I have even seen MCs suggesting that BCs do when such an issue comes up. Your case about the multiple authors in a PD book collection is even more specific, however. What I can't understand is how the PD book collection can be PD while certain selections within it are not. That's just strange, to say the least.

The "PD in the U.S." rule has always been with us and has been made abundantly clear. Why complicate things? It's nice to provide that information when it is readily available, but to send someone on a frustrating wild goose chase just doesn't seem right. More and more I see people who submit their first recording being given complicated instructions for improving the quality of their recordings that are way too much to expect from someone who has just started doing this. Other things get more complicated all the time, too. I fear we are straying away from the original purpose of this site.

This is supposed to be fun!

I agree that over complicating things for beginners will scare them away. I'm not sure that is happening, though. I have noticed that BCs, MCs, and PLers make suggestions rather than give instructions on anything other than the most fundamental requirements of LibriVox, like the disclaimer or the tech specs. TriciaG (sharp cookie that she is) caught me leaving out the word "more" in the standard LV long-version disclaimer, pointed it out to me, but did not require me to fix it. I did anyway because I wanted it right. Elli PLed a submission I made to the Gulliver's Travels Told to the Children project and suggested that I do some noise cleaning. When I PM'ed her that I couldn't hear it and was reluctant to do noise cleaning and mess with the original signal, she wrote back in a very friendly manner and said it was probably her new, very sensitive headphones and not to worry about it. Laurie Anne (chocoholic) also chimed in and said she could not hear it but would defer to Elli and Elli still told me not to bother, that the hum she heard was too slight to matter much.

Anyway, I think your raising this issue is quite pertinent, that we might not want to put too many requirements on newbies but let them find their way, get obsessed, get better equipment, learn audio technicalities, and improve their readings at their own pace.

Bob

[lezer]

Searching the death dates is in my (personal) opinion not a solid requirement - just a courtesy. And if the reader could help with the search, that is a courtesy of the reader towards the MC. As MC when I'm cataloguing a work I always check death dates of authors. I'm always very, very grateful when the reader or the BC have been kind enough to do some checking themselves. For example, in the short story or poetry collections. It saves me the searching time!

Since this is an international community, I like making it accessible to everyone, not just U.S. citizens - and even spent time looking up death dates from many projects already in the catalogue some years ago, when we first decided to include them on the catalogue page. I found the search can even be fun

So: in my opinion it's a courtesy towards our listeners, towards the MC who's doing the cataloguing or towards the BC - would be great if the reader would help out.

Anna