Kristen wrote:As a listener, I'm not a big fan of the "disclaimer" at the beginning of each file. I think it belongs at the end of the file where it's more easily skipped over by the listener. But I do think the PD information and brief credits to Librivox and the reader belong, for many of the reasons you feel are troublesome but have been defended and explained previously.
I am willing to concede removing the "disclaimer" to the end of each file would be a worthy improvement, absent stricter purity.
Change is still certainly needed, right away.
Kristen wrote:We want the listening audience to find LibriVox - as listeners and as volunteer readers. More attention to the project means more books recorded and released. As some listeners come to us from a single short story or piece of recorded poetry, having this credit on every file is necessary.
Yes, it must be admitted that this occurs.
There is a way to accomplish this task without soaking each fragment of literature with a "brand".
It is the principle of subordinating all literature to a fleeting technical vocabulary that rankles me.
Librivox.org will not, nor will any other domain name, survive the ravages of coming generations of technological change.
Yet the audio files will endure longer in their current form, and already do reside elsewhere in digitial archives, than the nexus that is Librivox.org.
We must aspire to emulate the kind of endurance that literature maintains -- not the more ephemeral whims of the current material forces of reproduction.
What is it that endures within an artistic, scientific, or philosophical work against time's decay?
It is not the bookseller, or printer, or binder, or type-setter, nor paper, ink, or layout in between pages.
Yes, modernity has wrought exceptions -- and incidental copies of antiquated books remain and even appear on our screens in images more accurate the the human eye.
But such membra disjecta are various and mutable -- centuries preserve only the essence, and our task is to renew the fallow fields of our heritage with our eye fixed immovably on permanence.
Perhaps I search in vain for purity in literature -- I have doubted my project since boyhood.
Yet I see my failing not in the correctness of the ideal, but the unrelenting clamor and domination of all forms of human life today, and its repugnance for value without ownership.
As if the human race is succumbing to an anxious disease whereby they pathologically refuse to imagine that something can exist without someone, somewhere knowing whose property it is.
A deep anxiety that nothing exists unless it is tagged, cataloged, and appropriated.
The encyclopaedist's efforts should annihilate any trace of her own labors -- letting stand only the work itself.
Each audio recording of a book is an encyclopaedic act over the strings of words.
It just is not right to "tramp your muddy boots" on the object you wish to preserve and share.
Definitely not with computer lingo, and probably not even with the reader's name -- although this problem deserves more public digestion and debate.
Kristen wrote:The "disclaimer" really isn't a disclaimer at all. It just makes perfectly clear what might otherwise be murky: the copyright status of the recordings. This is important knowledge for people who want to repurpose the files and for those who are recording the files.
The thinly veiled theft and exploitation at the core of copyrights today will remain murky whether your refer to it or not.
All the more reason not to inflict our own age's barbarities on the few treasures that escaped previous epoch's greedy and destructively ignorant overlords.
Kristen wrote:Many of the people who volunteer their voices for posterity want to be recognised in their quest for fame, fortune or whatever. It would be parsimonious to deny them that little perq for their time and effort.
I'll hazard an unorthodox thesis in the courtesy that Kristen has awakened in my polemic.
Everyone of us records books for the same reason, no exceptions.
I'll leave my arguments aside for now, unless prodded by the inquisitive and sympathetic.
Kristen wrote:If you want to rework the files into your own disclaimer-less versions and host them on a server that pleases you more than archive.org, I say go for it. The files are yours to strip as you like, as you well know from having heard "All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain" so many times.
Are there better or even equivalent free servers to archive.org?
I presume not, and would be glad to be wrong.
It's the double bind again -- the big bad guys have all the money and power, and with it, they create valuable resources -- but they always make sure to maintain control.
So, you want the best? You gotta get it from them.
I do, but I don't like it. And I carve out my freedom by saying so publically in the sharpest terms.
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Maybe several!