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Oyez.Org Releases Supreme Court MP3 Archives

Posted by timothy on from the your-rights-online-the-real-thing dept.

jeblucas writes "The US Supreme Court's multimedia site, Oyez.org, has released numerous archives from seminal cases from the 50's, 60's and 70's. They are available in MP3 format for the first time. Previously you could order cassettes and listen to .smil RealAudio, but who wants to do that? Want to learn more about: The Right to Remain Silent? Roe v Wade? Affirmative Action?"

1 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... by cjkarr · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm the technical lead on Oyez. I didn't imagine that this would make Slashdot quite so fast... Egads... Though it explains the dead server this morning. :-) It's fine now, though if the heavy traffic volume message comes up again, mail me using the link on that page.

    This release is a bit premature. We are working with Creative Commons to license this audio so that others can download and share and create non-commercial derivative works of the audio. If you would like to do me a huge favor, please download the cases you like and place them on your favorite peer-to-peer network. We're looking to make these audio files as widely available as possible, while showing that there are substantial non-piracy uses for P2P networks. (It'll be harder for the RIAA to argue next time to shut down these networks when they are used to distribute Supreme Court audio to citizens. :-])

    In any case, look for a press release soon. I just posted that URL so that Oyez users would download the audio and start sharing. I didn't imagine that it would get this publicity so quick.

    Anyways, I'll be monitoring this thread, so if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please let us know. We're a very user-centric site. :-)

    -Chris Karr, Oyez Technical Lead