LibriVox Forum

Thank you. I will check the page soon.

hugh wrote:I prefer public domain, because I think librivox should be libre free free free, but what do all of you think?

Based on my experiences (in both software development and in audiobook publishing) in dealing with the various flavors of property rights that are ours to play with (open-source and proprietary software; and public domain, Creative Commons, and traditionally-copyrighted audiobooks and music), I say that I am very thankful that the founders of this group chose to stick with the idea to keep all of LibriVox's work and its offerings in the public domain. To have done otherwise, even to have gone with the most "liberal" of Creative Commons licenses, would have placed a subtle-but-pervasive burden of "ownership" over many of our activities. When you "own" something, even through the most tenuous of claims (like CC-BY), you retain property rights that must potentially be actively looked after by someone, and constantly considered even as you produce your work.

Garrison Keillor offered a phrase in one of his monologues that has always stuck with me: "Property is the enemy of leisure." Of course, he was speaking, I believe, in the context of yard work associated with owning a home, but I think it would ring true in an alternate-universe LibriVox which held a claim to its productions as "property". Such property would truly interfere with our leisure. In our LibriVox, free from property worries, we don't have to be grown-ups who worry about "looking after our rights to the stuff we own", we can simply all be children running about the playground, looking for the next public domain work we want to pick up and play with.

dvimont wrote:

hugh wrote:I prefer public domain, because I think librivox should be libre free free free, but what do all of you think?

Based on my experiences (in both software development and in audiobook publishing) in dealing with the various flavors of property rights that are ours to play with (open-source and proprietary software; and public domain, Creative Commons, and traditionally-copyrighted audiobooks and music), I say that I am very thankful that the founders of this group chose to stick with the idea to keep all of LibriVox's work and its offerings in the public domain. To have done otherwise, even to have gone with the most "liberal" of Creative Commons licenses, would have placed a subtle-but-pervasive burden of "ownership" over many of our activities. When you "own" something, even through the most tenuous of claims (like CC-BY), you retain property rights that must potentially be actively looked after by someone, and constantly considered even as you produce your work.

Garrison Keillor offered a phrase in one of his monologues that has always stuck with me: "Property is the enemy of leisure." Of course, he was speaking, I believe, in the context of yard work associated with owning a home, but I think it would ring true in an alternate-universe LibriVox which held a claim to its productions as "property". Such property would truly interfere with our leisure. In our LibriVox, free from property worries, we don't have to be grown-ups who worry about "looking after our rights to the stuff we own", we can simply all be children running about the playground, looking for the next public domain work we want to pick up and play with.

(two thumbs up!)

msfry wrote:

Kristen wrote:Let's not be afraid of people profiting from our work, if they find a need to do that. Maybe we (collectively or individually) will find a business use for our recordings.

I was shocked to learn that at least 4 of my solos, and many LV titles I recognize by their covers are now on YouTube, as Full Audio books, monotized with ads. I haven't the slightest idea how to do that ... but I'd sure like to know.

Yes, I think it safe to say that many of us have felt the sting. An "unjust", "unfair", "unethical", or "just plain wrong" usage has been made of some creation of ours, yet this "confiscation" (of what we [not inappropriately] think of as "ours") is perfectly legal and done in the bold light of day! Well, I've already posted my little sermonette above on why we should stop worrying and learn to love the freedom granted us in a public-domain playground, but how do you deal with that nagging sting -- it's still there, particularly when you go into YouTube and see a really lame video (perhaps just a single still image, if any image at all) with YOUR voice behind it! Very little "value added" there!!

To that I would say this: sometimes putting on a better show is the best way to right the "scales of justice". All of us here have already (most of us by our own bootstraps) taken ourselves from zero knowledge of recording technologies (hardware, software, environmental acoustics, etc.) to a state where each of us can self-sufficiently produce the audio works we do. Given this proven track record, I say that just about any of us who chooses to can do the same thing with video-production technologies, enabling ourselves to produce and publish our OWN video-enhanced remixes of our OWN narrations.

When I chose to start doing this a few years back, I sought out a "pro-sumer" commercial video-editing package that would allow me to do "Ken Burns style" video production: slowly panning over, and zooming in and out on a given image. (If you've watched "The Civil War" or any of Burns's other fascinating documentaries, then you have happily spent several hours doing little else besides viewing just such panning and zooming over still images.) The package I found, tried out (with a free trial copy), bought, and still use today is called Cyberlink PowerDirector. I found its documentation to be a bit wanting (okay, quite wanting), but thanks to links to various user forums provided by Google, I ultimately managed to figure out how to use it to quickly accomplish what I want any time I need a video to enhance one of my narrations or other productions (and will gladly share this knowledge with anyone who might want to engage in producing similar remixes of their own work).

My most popular YouTube videos are THE GIFT OF THE MAGI (with view-counts always seeming to spike around the Christmas holidays, for some reason) and RIKKI TIKKI TAVI (popular throughout the year). Once I got going with the technology, I found myself sometimes going beyond pan-and-zoom, as I did in my THE LAST LEAF video, in which I executed slow-motion "defoliation" of a Van Gogh image, finally stripping a leafed vine down to a single, "last leaf" by the end of the story. Some of these videos use narrations that I produced for LibriVox (actually, I think Gift of the Magi is the only one), and the others use recordings that I made for commercial productions (for which I own the rights).

Another potential "value added" aspect of your YouTube videos is that you can upload the complete text for subtitles (which sometimes requires manual tweaking to make sure the correct text aligns with the voice, although YouTube's technology does a pretty impressive job of automatically aligning them). Thus, the complete text can be followed along with by youngsters (and by English language learners of any age) while they watch the video, not to mention the obvious: that hearing impaired folks can read along and enjoy the images, even if they can't hear the sound.

The bottom line is this: Every bad remix that they make can be answered with a good remix that you make (and yes, everything is a remix).

dvimont wrote:...we don't have to be grown-ups who worry about "looking after our rights to the stuff we own", we can simply all be children running about the playground, looking for the next public domain work we want to pick up and play with.

Yes yes yes! :)