Here is a really interesting website and project that I stumbled upon today. Through strictly volunteer work, LibriVox has set out to record all of the books in the public domain and make them freely available online. Ambitious project! Many of the recordings are quite good too.
There are several elements of this project that interest me:
1) I commute from the suburbs, so I fly through audiobooks and am always looking for affordable sources of audio entertainment.
2) The very fact that LibriVox has set as a goal to record all of the public domain speaks to the shrinking nature of the domain. If the domain were as large as it could be, this would be nearly impossible. Should this be a red flag?
3) By spreading word of this and other similar projects that specifically discuss the public domain, we help spread the word about the copyright debate. When someone asks why a more recent author's work isn't recorded, a conversation on the extended copyright and the problems that it creates can promptly ensue.
At the bare minimum though, it's a good place to look for a free (and legal) audiobook.
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3 comments:
"We free books into audio. Free beer and free speech, we're doing both. We're unlocking text with our voices and freeing the books into the airwaves" - LibriVox
So -- this assumption that you have to somehow "unlock" a text by reading it out loud, or that audio "frees" a book? Those are some negatively rhetorically loaded terms...
They have 1315 files in their catalog as of March 27 (today). From their FAQ:
Q: "Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet." Are you crazy?
A: Ok so it's pretty unlikely we'll succeed. Probably impossible. But what's wrong with trying? Like world peace, we think it's a worthy objective. Don't you? It would be silly to say: "Our objective is to make some books available" since we've done that already. We want the project to continue while there are public domain books to read. If that takes 1,000 years, well, nothing could make us happier.
Me: Something could make me happier...
For ehrengard: do you not like audio books in general? Or just this idea that the audio format "frees" a book? I haven't listened to many audio books, but I'll give some of these works a try as they might aid my daily commute (one hour each way).
i am also wondering if ehrengard is pointing out the negative in audio books as a medium or as an "unlocking" mechanism. i thought the argument that lynn brought up was great and ties in with our discussions about the public domain shrinking and the debate about copyright growing.
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