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Disclaimer

Posted: Fri 10. Jun 2011, 07:33
by Hokuspokus
Now that the first recordings are up, we really need to decide about the disclaimer.
Before we can do that, we must agree on a license.

The poll shows that most of us prefer a free license.
CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/# has the same effect as simple pd. In my understanding, it gives a bit more legal clarity.
The texts we use are not pd all over the world and CC0 says that rights of third parties are not touched by this license (= the copyright that is still in place in the US).

How can we say that in the disclaimer?
This recording if free of copyright.
This recording is free of copyright in all countries where copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author or earlier.
This recording is in the public domain.
This recording is in the public domain in all countries where copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author or earlier.

I think, it is enough to say "This recording is in the public domain", and additionally we put the CC0 link on the catalog page. Plus we have a big sign on the catalog page that says that the text of the recording is still under copyright in the US and all countries where copyright is longer that 70 years after the death of the author. (<= could some native speaker please put this in proper English?)

It doesn't make much sense to say that the text is still under copyright in the US, because when the listener hears this, s/he has already downloaded the recording and already violated US law.

The second question: Do we agree that soloists can choose a license that excludes commercial use? (only if they want to.)
The CC license chooser is here: http://creativecommons.org/choose/?lang=en

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Fri 10. Jun 2011, 09:55
by RuthieG
Hokuspokus wrote:Plus we have a big sign on the catalog page that says that the text of the recording is still under copyright in the US and all countries where copyright is longer that 70 years after the death of the author. (<= could some native speaker please put this in proper English?)
This is my suggestion:

The original text of this recording is in the Public Domain in countries where copyright expires 70 years or less after the author's death, but is still protected by copyright in the USA and some other countries. Please check the copyright law of your country before downloading.

The text of this recording was first published in 19xx.

The author died in 19xx.

I think, it is enough to say "This recording is in the public domain", and additionally we put the CC0 link on the catalog page.

It doesn't make much sense to say that the text is still under copyright in the US, because when the listener hears this, s/he has already downloaded the recording and already violated US law.
This is where I disagree. It's fine when they are downloading from our own site, but once it "gets out into the wild" (and it will) there would be nothing to indicate its licence or the copyright status of the original text.

If the recording itself has that information, then we can always point to the original recording on our site to prove that we have done everything possible to clarify copyright status.

I suggest that the licence e.g. CC0 or CC BY-SA also be included in the Comment field of the metadata.
The second question: Do we agree that soloists can choose a license that excludes commercial use? (only if they want to.)
This is such a difficult one. Having been active in LV so long, I feel almost disloyal wishing to exclude commercial exploitation of my work, but I do. Yes, there it is, I do. I want to share freely, but there seem to be more and more people trying to sell them not simply for a pound or two, but at commercial prices, sometimes without even mentioning where the recording comes from.

I would always want a share-alike licence so that Legamus is always credited. And sometimes I would prefer to prevent commercial use. But that's just my two penn'orth. ;)

Ruth

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Fri 10. Jun 2011, 11:15
by Hokuspokus
RuthieG wrote: This is my suggestion:

The original text of this recording is in the Public Domain in countries where copyright expires 70 years or less after the author's death, but is still protected by copyright in the USA and some other countries. Please check the copyright law of your country before downloading.

The text of this recording was first published in 19xx.

The author died in 19xx.
Excellent! Thank you!

Do we want this in English only on all catalog pages or have it in the language of the recording?
If the recording itself has that information, then we can always point to the original recording on our site to prove that we have done everything possible to clarify copyright status.

I suggest that the licence e.g. CC0 or CC BY-SA also be included in the Comment field of the metadata.
This is an excellent idea!

This is such a difficult one. Having been active in LV so long, I feel almost disloyal wishing to exclude commercial exploitation of my work, but I do. Yes, there it is, I do. I want to share freely, but there seem to be more and more people trying to sell them not simply for a pound or two, but at commercial prices, sometimes without even mentioning where the recording comes from.

I would always want a share-alike licence so that Legamus is always credited. And sometimes I would prefer to prevent commercial use. But that's just my two penn'orth. ;)

Ruth
I feel with you, Ruth. If my recordings were as frequently sold as yours (if they were as good as yours, that is) I would want a share alike license, too.

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Fri 10. Jun 2011, 20:42
by kattekliek
Hokuspokus wrote:Do we want this in English only on all catalog pages or have it in the language of the recording?
I would suggest: let's start with English, and we can do translations later on (when more volunteers will be available for translation of webpages on Legamus).
I suggest that the licence e.g. CC0 or CC BY-SA also be included in the Comment field of the metadata.
This is an excellent idea!
Indeed! :)
This is such a difficult one. Having been active in LV so long, I feel almost disloyal wishing to exclude commercial exploitation of my work, but I do. Yes, there it is, I do. I want to share freely, but there seem to be more and more people trying to sell them not simply for a pound or two, but at commercial prices, sometimes without even mentioning where the recording comes from.

I would always want a share-alike licence so that Legamus is always credited. And sometimes I would prefer to prevent commercial use. But that's just my two penn'orth. ;)

Ruth
I feel with you, Ruth. If my recordings were as frequently sold as yours (if they were as good as yours, that is) I would want a share alike license, too.
Although Legamus cannot take any measures if a CC-no commercial use is violated, I think it is a good idea to give soloists the possibility to use this license and take action themselves if they wish. I wouldn't do it myself, because no one would want to sell my voice :P but for the professional-sounding readers it would be a reassurance that their work is not sold while everyone also could download it for free.

Also we should take into account the fact that in the poll - a rather large proportion of our members indicated the wish to have a possibility for CC-no commercial use. To leave the reader (soloist) free to choose the CC license they want (while keeping CC0 for group projects) would be a way to hear their voice - in more than one way ;)

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sat 11. Jun 2011, 15:44
by Leni
I understand Ruth's concerns about adding the information to the recording itself - but then, how would it be worded? Hokus gave an idea:
I think, it is enough to say "This recording is in the public domain", and additionally we put the CC0 link on the catalog page.
People said it wasn't enough, but no actual disclaimer was suggested.

As to the licensing... my only problem is that I don't think it's keeping with the Librivox spirit. Maybe it's just that I am a dreamer, but one thing that attracted me in LV is that even though other people seem not to "get it" and want to get money out of it, we are doing it for free, for everyone's benefit, even people who don't deserve it. This spirit of uninterested sharing is an essential part of Librivox for me, that goes beyond other people's meanness, other people's short-sightedness. They can be "morally wrong," but I won't control them, or try to control them. I do it the right way, even if I feel other people don't.

It seemed to me people wanted to just be able to do the same with more texts, the ones the US law, with its eternal extensions and changes, didn't allow. But of course, nothing prevents Legamus to have its own "spirit". I just feel it's weird to be part of something that is breaking with the absolute-free, absolute-share spirit of Librivox.

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sat 11. Jun 2011, 16:32
by RuthieG
Ah, you are still young and idealistic, Leni. I am old and cynical, though I never wanted to be either. :lol: I find I do not wish to encourage the modern idea of making money out of other people's work, while doing little or nothing yourself.

Ruth

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sat 11. Jun 2011, 16:33
by kattekliek
Leni wrote:But of course, nothing prevents Legamus to have its own "spirit". I just feel it's weird to be part of something that is breaking with the absolute-free, absolute-share spirit of Librivox.
I think Legamus can have the spirit of being as diverse as our members and their countries/languages/cultural backgrounds. Quite some people over here (I'm by the way not one of those, but probably only because my voice is not good enough to be sold) feel more comfortable for a CC-no commercial use on their own work. But all who wish to do so, can issue their recordings with a CC0-licence (which in practice is just as free as Public Domain - it just does not interfere with the impossibility to issue work into the PD in Germany and Austria).
RuthieG wrote:I find I do not wish to encourage the modern idea of making money out of other people's work, while doing little or nothing yourself.h
[offtopic]What makes you think that idea is modern? It's as old as humanity itself, I'm afraid ...[/offtopic]

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sat 11. Jun 2011, 16:39
by neckertb
I agree with Leni to some extent: I like the LV spirit. But I'll go with the majority.

On the other hand, I'd love to get this disclaimer thing settled soon, since we have our first project almost completed :)

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sat 11. Jun 2011, 16:59
by Hokuspokus
Leni wrote:I understand Ruth's concerns about adding the information to the recording itself - but then, how would it be worded? Hokus gave an idea:
I think, it is enough to say "This recording is in the public domain", and additionally we put the CC0 link on the catalog page.
People said it wasn't enough, but no actual disclaimer was suggested.
Oh, I understood that adding the license information to the metadata would solve the problem. Or am I wrong?

So for for group recordings and CC0 solos we can still say "This recording is in the public domain" or in German" ist gemeinfrei und in öffentlichem Besitz". The CC0 license makes it more waterproof. Expressing ones intention has still some legal weight, even in Germany.
Soloists who choose another license will have to say something less elegant "This recordings is published under the CC - what so ever license."

I see the possibility to choose a license as a way to make readers more comfortable. Like at LV or mission is to make free audiobooks from pd text. Does it hinder our mission if some of the audiobooks don't allow commercial use or even derivation works, if they still are free to download, to listen to and to share? In no way. It helps our mission to make readers more comfortable. Not only the audiobooks are free but also the readers are free to share their work in the way they want to.

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sat 11. Jun 2011, 17:13
by kattekliek
Hokuspokus wrote:I see the possibility to choose a license as a way to make readers more comfortable. Like at LV or mission is to make free audiobooks from pd text. Does it hinder our mission if some of the audiobooks don't allow commercial use or even derivation works, if they still are free to download, to listen to and to share? In no way. It helps our mission to make readers more comfortable. Not only the audiobooks are free but also the readers are free to share their work in the way they want to.
Hear, hear! :D

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sat 11. Jun 2011, 23:13
by Leni
Readers are already free to do that, at archive.org, and so many other places. Anyone can upload anything they want there, with all those licenses as a choice. I actually think it does hinder the mission of making all audiobooks free if we stick any restriction to it. This is a very old thread from when I wasn't even a part of Librivox, but I believe it says it all:

Hugh's post about PD and CC

Also, I may be young - is 32 young? - and idealistic, Ruth. I hope I can stay like that for a long time yet. But I find it not a little sarcastic that I have just this afternoon listened, in one of the very first books by legamus, to your voice saying:
Khalil Gibran wrote:You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sun 12. Jun 2011, 00:09
by Viktor
What an excellent subject for both inspiring thoughts and nasty flamewars... :)

I only have some thoughts to share, I hold in high esteem both the radically clear PD view as worded so skillfully by Hugh and the give-freedom-to-readers view of Hokuspokus.

The problem is the lack of distinction between "commercial" and "rip-off". I personally have few problems with "reasonably commercial" uses of my recordings (Carl will jump at me for yet another introduction of the word "reasonable" ;) ), but I also feel bad by giving weapons to scammers. A scam has a victim, and it's not me, it's the person who paid much too much, because s/he has not been well-informed. And these days, it's quite impossible being well-informed about everything.

Do Creative Commons give us the means to avoid scammers? With BY-ND, we would enforce our disclaimer but remove any permission for modifications, so that's not a solution. Simple "BY" though might be an idea - would the necessity of attribution take anything away from the user's freedom?

There is no answer to the question whether it's more "free" to enforce the user's freedom (by protecting him from proprietary re-uses) or to give middlemen all freedoms, including the freedom to turn something free into something proprietary, is exactly what we find in Free Software: you have the eternal competition between the GNU General Public License (GPL, "copyleft" enforces a software to stay free and the BSD and Apache licenses (where you can turn a Free software into a proprietary product). Selling a Free software is permitted under the GPL, but it has to stay Free software.

When several companies work at one product, many say that the GPL is more popular because it's the "fair-play guarantee" for the companies: if they invest money into the product, the others cannot just close down and sell that investment. They may sell it, but their improvements must also flow back into the Free software. Then again, there are many examples of very successful, large BSD-like projects, like the excellent PostgreSQL database or the Apache web server.

In software development, I really like the GPL. What could be analogue for audiobooks? Maybe it's BY-SA. You must give attribution, if you modify the work you must keep it under the same license, but you may sell it for any price if you like. Or simply BY, as the scammers usually don't add any value to the work. Scamming is still allowed but the victim would at least have to know that he has been scammed. Of course, enforcement is yet another discussion.

Reality shows that there are loads of GPL software, loads of BSD software as well as loads of software under other Free licenses. Obviously people will create audiobooks under more or less restricted CC licenses. The question we have to answer is what we should do with those people:
  • Welcome them in our Legamus community?
  • Have such works in a special area of our community? A sort of "Legamus CC"? On our catalogue but in a special section, and in our forum but in a special section?
  • Only allow PD or CC-0 content on Legamus and ask people who insist on using other licenses to go to a different place?
Given the fact that we have some very deserved and distinguished LV readers who would like to use or at least experiment with CC licenses, I'm in favour of the second option.

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sun 12. Jun 2011, 02:12
by RuthieG
Leni wrote: But I find it not a little sarcastic that I have just this afternoon listened, in one of the very first books by legamus, to your voice saying:
Khalil Gibran wrote:You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
Hah! Put firmly in my place. :lol: I'm glad I was convincing, but I don't necessarily agree with Gibran on everything. ;) As I say, I am torn, but take a look at this page. Hundreds of LibriVox recordings and not a word about LV at all.

Or this page and tell me why audio CDs (made from compressed MP3 files) should cost $29.95 for ripping out the LibriVox disclaimer and adding a bit of muzak.

As Viktor says, there's a difference between commercial use and a rip-off. And there's nothing to stop a reader giving permission for reasonable commercial use in Europe if asked.

That said, I will go with the flow on Legamus. But I am concerned about The Prophet, which I believe needs more protection than the usual, because of its immense popularity in the US.

Ruth

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sun 12. Jun 2011, 04:18
by algy pug
I am in favour of a CC licence, such as the one employed by that excellent Italian language site Liber Liber.

While I applaud the noble spirit in which Librivox casts its offerings on the world, I also feel that readers should receive acknowledgement for their skill, dedication and countless hours of labour (even if it be a labour of love.) It is also worth pointing out that many readers have invested substantial sums of money in acquiring the equipment on which these splendid recordings have been made. Ironically, while the product is free for the consumer its creation has not been free of charge for the reader.

With regard to Ruth's suggested disclaimer, I find it interesting that the Librivox disclaimer contains no warning that an audiobook may not be in the public domain in a country outside the US. After all, if, in Australia, I listened to a Librivox recording of a Robert Frost poem (none of which, alas, I would be allowed to record) I would be breaking the law.

Cheers

Algy Pug

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sun 12. Jun 2011, 15:55
by kattekliek
RuthieG wrote:That said, I will go with the flow on Legamus. But I am concerned about The Prophet, which I believe needs more protection than the usual, because of its immense popularity in the US.
'The flow' at legamus.eu is - looking at the intermediate results of this poll: 3/14 public domain (like Librivox), 5/14 creative commons, as free as possible (same result in practise as public domain), 4/14 creative commons, no commercial use, and 2/14 no preference. By no means is 'public domain' the majority of the votes.

I think the best way to implement these preferences would be to put all group projects in either PD or CC0 (PD in Germany and Austria being impossible, CC0 would seem the most logical solution to me), and to give soloists the choice what they will do with their recordings - provided that if they would put a CC-no commercial use on their recordings, they (and not legamus) are the ones to follow up if anyone would infringe that.

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sun 12. Jun 2011, 15:57
by kattekliek
algy pug wrote:With regard to Ruth's suggested disclaimer, I find it interesting that the Librivox disclaimer contains no warning that an audiobook may not be in the public domain in a country outside the US. After all, if, in Australia, I listened to a Librivox recording of a Robert Frost poem (none of which, alas, I would be allowed to record) I would be breaking the law.
It is clearly on their website. But then, if someone will copy & host, or deeplink LV-files, it is not visible anymore for the one downloading & listening. A good solution 'in between' would IMHO be to put it into the ID3-tags of the MP3's.

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Sun 12. Jun 2011, 17:35
by RuthieG
With regard to Ruth's suggested disclaimer, I find it interesting that the Librivox disclaimer contains no warning that an audiobook may not be in the public domain in a country outside the US. After all, if, in Australia, I listened to a Librivox recording of a Robert Frost poem (none of which, alas, I would be allowed to record) I would be breaking the law.
It has always bothered me that the LibriVox disclaimer simply states Public Domain, and also that the archive.org pages do the same (Source: Librivox recording of a public-domain text). The LV catalogue pages make the situation clear, but not the Internet Archive pages, and many people download directly from the IA. I have suggested in the past that this should be amended to Source: Librivox recording of a text that is in the Public Domain in the USA, but it didn't happen for whatever reason.

From my own point of view, it's not a problem, because everything that I record for LV is in the Public Domain both in the US and in Europe and other death+50/70 countries, so there are very few places in the world where it is not in the PD. However, I do think it is very confusing for listeners. They aren't copyright experts, and if a British person sees, say, a P. G. Wodehouse recorded by a US reader that says it's in the Public Domain, are they likely to know that they are infringing UK copyright law by downloading it from the Internet Archive? (You may well ask, do they care? But that's another question. :lol:)

So what I'm saying is that I would feel a whole lot more comfortable making it perfectly clear both in the tags and in the recording itself, that my Legamus recordings are not PD in the US. I think that I am in this way protecting both myself and Legamus.

Ruth

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Mon 13. Jun 2011, 08:53
by Hokuspokus
Completely agree about text pdnes and license info in the tags.
What bothers me is an long-winded spoken pdnes info in the recording. For two reasons.
1. When people hear it, it is already to late. They already have violated the law.
2. it is long-winded and inelegant.
I understand Ruth's concerns, but if the simple statement "is in the pd" is enough for LV, it should be enough for us, too.
Just think of the English translation of Siddharta by Hesse. Still under copyright in EU, and for quite some time. Even for James Joyce it was enough to put an additional warning on the catalog page.

I think we have a majority pro soloists can choose another license.
Now we need the exact wording of the disclaimer.

Only for the first section:
Book Title by Author. Translated by Translator.
This Legamus dot eu recording is in the Public Domain/ is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Chapter/section 1 (Chaptertitle)

For all other sections:
Section # of Book Title. This Legamus dot eu recording is in the Public Domain/ is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Chapter/section # (Chaptertitle only when a new chapter starts with this section)

At the end:
End of section #
If you wish: Read by xyz

At the end of the book:
End of Book Title by Author, translated by translator.
This audio book was brought to you by Legamus. For more informations or to record audio books yourself / help us recording audio books, please visit legamus dot eu

We agreed to invite volunteers at the end of the book. Do we have an exact wording for that already?

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Mon 13. Jun 2011, 12:13
by kattekliek
Hokuspokus wrote:1. When people hear it, it is already to late. They already have violated the law.
They can then always decide to stop listening and delete the recording.
2. it is long-winded and inelegant.
This is what I dislike about it ... but I think it is needed to be clear anyway. We could say in the first section of all books in English: "Please note: this book/text is still copyrighted in the USA." That is not long, and it ís very clear (along with a warning on our website and in the ID3-tags).
I understand Ruth's concerns, but if the simple statement "is in the pd" is enough for LV, it should be enough for us, too.
We do not need to copy everything of LV; we can rethink their way of doing things, and use for Legamus what is good and change what we think could be done better.
Just think of the English translation of Siddharta by Hesse. Still under copyright in EU, and for quite some time. Even for James Joyce it was enough to put an additional warning on the catalog page.
The US is a (much?) bigger audiobook market than Europe and other +70/50 countries, and lawsuits are very common over there. The chance of a European lawyer complaining to LV is minor in comparison to Legamus getting into trouble with US lawyers when we host popular books that are not PD over there.

Thank you for the proposal over the disclaimer. I think it is OK, except for the following part:
[...] is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This is much too technical (and hence not clear) IMHO. I am recording a modern Dutch translation of St Benedict's rule (the copyright holder, a Dutch benedictine abbey, agreed that I would issue it with a CC-
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) and thought about how to mention this while avoiding 'new speak'. The abbot and I agreed on the following text:

"This recording may be spread freely, if on a non-commercial basis, complete and unchanged - including this intro"

What do you think? Would it be suitable for Legamus too?

In the ID-tag and on our site we can put the CC-license incl. a link to the corresponding page on the CC-site - so everyone can look up the background.
We agreed to invite volunteers at the end of the book. Do we have an exact wording for that already?
I don't think so, but could we use the LV-text? "For more information, or to volunteer, please visit: legamus DOT e-u"

Re: Disclaimer

Posted: Thu 16. Jun 2011, 14:30
by neckertb
kattekliek wrote: Thank you for the proposal over the disclaimer. I think it is OK, except for the following part:
[...] is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This is much too technical (and hence not clear) IMHO. I am recording a modern Dutch translation of St Benedict's rule (the copyright holder, a Dutch benedictine abbey, agreed that I would issue it with a CC-
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) and thought about how to mention this while avoiding 'new speak'. The abbot and I agreed on the following text:

"This recording may be spread freely, if on a non-commercial basis, complete and unchanged - including this intro"
I agree with kattekliek, it is too technical, most people won't have a clue what we're talking about, so I like kattekliek's wording better.

As for the call for volunteers, I'd like something more dynamic:
Wanna help? Visit legamus.eu
or something like that.
But I don't have a super strong opinion on this, so will easily be converted to something else :wink: