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Creative Commons Audiobooks
xanderwilson writes "The New York Times (2nd half of the article; free reg. required as always) writes, 'Project Gutenberg is well known for offering free electronic versions of famous public-domain texts. Now Telltale Weekly wants to be its audio-book equivalent.' Of interest to others in the Slashdot community: Ogg Vorbis and MP3 downloads, payment via Bitpass micropayments, and a cheap-now, free later (with a Creative Commons License) business model." (And if you buy the Ogg Vorbis versions, part of the money goes to xiph.org.)
I fail to see how this is analogous to the Gutenburg Project. Firstly, the Gutenburg Project has free books, with a wealth of literature there for all.
This project, is not free, thought it is cheap, but does it have the depth of literature behind it? Audiobooks are relatively new compared to normal books, is there such a great selection and wealth of information/literature out there to warrant a community project such as this?
This is the sort of thing that makes me just feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Open source format, using public domain works, eventually releasing under CC, and making money! No DRM needed or used, and proving that if you let people, they'll be perfectly willing to abide by such terms.
/me runs off to buy "The Kiss."
#define DRM chmod 000
Colour me stupid, but I don't pay any license fees to run my mp3 players. So who does pay?
Yet.
every content provider is looking to incorporate more and more DRM as the quality, cost, and ease of creation of copies improves.
the music industry doesn't care about people copying songs off the radio. it didn't even really get its panties in a bunch when CD-Rs first hit the market. or when mp3s hit the ftp servers. It went ballistic when anyone could download a single application and instantly find a never ending stream of perceptibility loss-less perfect digital copies.
likewise with the MPAA and DVD encryption, likewise with the new Cable Set-top standard.
They want to cut out MythTV, Tivo, splitters, H-cards, and cable descramblers. It's becoming too easy to get at the current data, so they want a change.
with the analog system working (fairly) well as is, why else would they create a new 'standard' for the digital system? It certainly isn't in the interest of the consumer.
Why doesn't Sony support the Blu-Ray with its stock rewritable feature?
Why did Disney/Circuit City/et al try to push (the bad) Divx onto the market in the first place?
It isn't because consumers are clamoring for less control or cheaper movies.
The time is coming when content producers are going to have to realize that their profits will no longer come from format-updates (repurchasing 8-tracks as CDs, VHS classics as DVDs, etc), and will -not- come from service-style access to data. Classic TV advertising may even have to give way to pure product-placement campaigns.
Cable will realize that a move to pay-per-channel is the way to support content without advertising in our new time-shifted digital reality. Some people -will- pay $1/mo for TLC. Home Depot will still pay for product placements in Trading Spaces. Maybe the Super-station will go away - but the cable companies, and popular channels, need not.
the film industry has already shown that the theatre experience is not losing out to cheap cam copies. they've learned that feature-rich dvds or dirt-cheap dvds are preferred to the customer over hacked-together recompressed copies on filesharing networks.
The record companies will need to realize that to win with digital music requires providing the best quality, with the least hassle. They will need to realize that they must beat file-sharing on features. People will give up hunting around for a good (not mislabeled)256kbps rip of Britney's newest song - if they know they can just hit iTunes or its ilk and cough up $1.
Fair Use needs to win out. These purported 'losses' from file-sharing need to be revealed to be grossly overestimated fabrications. (A PSA from a supposed union set painter claiming that file sharing is killing the movie industry, and threatening his job - airing during it's highest grossing year of all time is particularly tactless)
DRM is the tool of the content dinosaur. If they concentrated on actual content piracy rings - where big money is being made off black-market copies, and abandoned their fruitless DRM research - their profits could be higher than ever.
But such is not the reaction of anti-competitive cabals. Being forced to -compete- is not what they do. Suing, threatening, bullying, bribing - these are the blunt instruments they wield instead of the precise tools of innovation, imagination and competition.
So in the meantime - expect every advance to carry DRM in the fine print.
-- BSD or Bust
Most of the oral arguments to the most important Supreme Court cases are available as MP3's from Oyez.com.
Thousands of old radio programs, including mysteries, comedies, political/historical audio, etc. are available for a small flat monthly fee ($7.50/month) at RUSC.com.
I've found it really interesting to be able to listen to *primary* sources for a lot of the cultural history of the United States. Think you understand Brown v. the Board of Education? Listen to the arguments and you'll see how much is missing from your high school telling of the story. It tends to be a bit more meat for listening when compared to the candy that many modern audiobooks provide.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I wrote a short story for my son and recorded it at a local studio.
After hearing about TellTale Weekly on NPR I decided to see if they'd post my story.
They did.
They set the price to cover bandwidth costs and still give me some pocket change. It's a 20 page story which reads in just under 30 minutes. The price was set at $1.50.
I think that the biggest detractor for this medium is that most people don't realize how long it takes to read things out loud.
I read books on tape for the blind through Minnesota State Services for the blind. Even a book which is written with the intent to be read aloud takes more time than just reading through it to yourself.
Anyway, just thought I'd throw in a shameless plug for my story, with hopefully some insights into the whole process.
It's called Ah Sunflower
Read any good sonnets lately?