File hosting, distribution and storage

FAQ, comments and suggestions
Carl Manchester
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Joined: Thu 2. Jun 2011, 18:24

Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Carl Manchester »

Viktor wrote:On the other hand, creating a German audiobook on LV that is non-PD in Germany, Austria and Switzerland but PD in the US or Canada cannot be called reasonable. I think this kind of case-by-case reasoning does already take place within LV. Sure, this is subjective, but so is life :)
"Reasonable" would indeed be subjective, but LV would instead go by what's "lawful", meaning that LV can (and does) record works by German authors that are not PD in Germany. What it definitely doesn't do is make up the rules as it goes along. If there's an unusual case, someone will try to look into what the law says.
Technically, what counts? Take me as an example: My nationality is German, my place of residence is France, legamus.eu is registered with a French provider, in the whois you'll find my German e-mail address.
I think what counts is the jurisdiction legamus falls under. According to the advice that LV was given, this is mainly about where the files are located, although LV decided to make sure the whois registration is also in the same place. Additionally, individual readers should not do anything that is illegal where they are, but that's seen as ultimately their look-out.

I think makes sense that the project should have a nominal geographic home and "non-specific Europe" isn't one. If there's this host in Ireland, why not just declare Irish law to apply and stick with that host? Regardless of whether the concerns I'm raising are slight or whether there's another way of looking at it, what is gained by being incautious about it?
neckertb
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Location: French in Denmark

Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by neckertb »

I think Carl has a point, actually. We would not loose anything by being cautious. The problem with ge.tt is that the files expire after 30 days, right?
I propose:
1. we try and get the same kind of info from free, where the files don't expire
2. we go with ge.tt and reupload every 30 days until we get a sponsor somewhere. more tedious.
Nadine
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

I think files expire only after they have not been downloaded for 30 days, in the case of ge.tt that becomes even 90 days if one uses a registered account instead of an anonymous download. Reuploads are only necessary if no one downloaded the work for that time.

The problem is a different one. ge.tt is a freehoster that looks very nice today, but that's no base to build a project on. If tomorrow they drown the user in tons of ads; if they go out of business because they don't; if they decide to move from Amazon's Irish servers to Amazon's US servers; we're screwed. We have then to quickly pay money to rent a server from an Irish hoster... I might as well start immediately renting one in France! At least that's where I live.

Of course I understand Carl's point. But I seriously doubt that "a single legislation" will put us out of legal danger when that legislation happens to concern all downloads but only a fraction of our readers and listeners.

I also read loads of assumptions that I've neither said nor meant, but I'm too tired and it's generally not my style to take things on the Internet personally. Obviously we will neither be against the law nor random. The problem with lawyers is that obeying the laws is necessary, but not sufficient to avoid them. We're in Europe - actually even in more than just Europe, hello Brazil, hello India - and we're on the Internet. We won't be able to avoid crossing borders.

What I called "reasonable" is not anything else than what the law says, it's actually less then that. Recording German authors in German language on LV that aren't PD in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, that's something I wouldn't do nor endorse. I think it sets the wrong tone. In an analogue example (hosting Dutch works in Canada that are PD in Canada only) this has been called "stretching the law". Actually, I dare to say that my approach - as I have it in my head, maybe I have communicated it wrongly - is more cautious than sticking "only" to the law of a small country (as compared to the world, even the US are small) and thus ignore the fact that a large share of my listenership might disobey their laws, and hope that each lawyer who smells an easy buck will accept the situation.

Now, how to get something productive out of this discussion...

No problem with centralising the file hoster in one country. But we should have something safer than a freehoster who looks good today.

We definitely have to collect exceptions. Wikisource has already something. Just because I call it "reasonable" and "subjective" does not mean it cannot be formalised a bit. What about this... should be a fairly standard scenario...

There is a work by author A in language L that we want to record. We have the possibility of putting them on a freehoster in country C1 or on a freehoster in country C2. The Legamus catalogue and uploader are located and DNS-housed in C2. Interested readers come from countries C2, C3 and C4.

Then we have to check whether the work is indeed PD in all the countries C1, C2, C3 and C4.
If it's not in C1, that's easy: just let's not use that freehoster.
If it's not in C2, that's kind of a dealbreaker.
If it's not in C3 or C4, we wouldn't want our readers to get into trouble and recommend them to read works that are in their PD (am I getting too paranoid here?)
and
if it's not PD in at least one country where there is a substantial number of speakers of language L, that would be a dealbreaker as well (case of "stretching the law").

How to determine this? We must maintain our list of exceptions (there shouldn't be that many - most of the discussion about posthumous authors seems to come from some liberal UK laws that are not relevant to the "life+70" principle). And we should rely more on the reliable text archives - if it's PD in Gallica, then it should be OK for France.

Obviously this is just the beginning of the discussion of our procedures. Do you think we're heading into the right direction?
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

Re-reading my post, it occurs to me that the location of the Legamus catalogue and uploader is the most important. Freehosters come and go; we'll use a link resolver and just write "http://legamus.eu/link/Roth-Radetzkymarsch", after that there's a redirect to ge.tt or free.fr or whatever is OK and legal.

How did the Agatha Christie case end? Did the recording stay on archive.org, but disappeared from the LV catalogue? How could one forbid the work to stay on archive.org when it's not connected to LV anymore? (no catalogue entry, no disclaimer...)

The Legamus infrastructure (forum, soon catalogue, uploader and link resolver) should definitely stay in one country (but it's natural anyway to put all of this on the same server). Maybe the answer to all of this hassle lies in a network of LV sister sites. Free software makes it possible. Say we have our infrastructure in France. Then we have to accept the French restriction for authors "dead in active military service".

Now imagine that this bothers a Canadian Legamus reader to the extent where he says: "I absolutely must have those authors. My country continues with life+50 anyway, and I want to do my own life+50 site". If all the website's code is available (and I intend to make it so), he can download it, put it on his own Canadian server and get it rolling. IMHO all interesting projects get created because someone got bothered too much. We're doing this here because we're bothered with the gap between the US PD and our PD.
Hokuspokus
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Hokuspokus »

I agree with Viktor that file hosters come and go.
I don't think that it matters that much where the server is (this may vary from judge to judge, but we will try our best that it doesn't come to that) as long as I have the right to share a file and as long as the downloader has the right to download it. Else the hosters would give much more information about what can be shared on their servers. Even Archive.org invites everybody to upload everything "that you have the right to share" and it is only in the small print somewhere, that they say something about US copyright law.

Anyhow, even if we'd ask two lawyers, we probably get three different answers.

In Germany we have something called Abmahnung. If you do something illegal on the internet, you can get a letter from a lawyer, that tells you that it is illegal and asks you, to pay a lot of money for this advice. As far as I know this is only in Germany. So what ever we do, we shouldn't host files, forum or anything in Germany.

As for German recordings on Librivox, I don't know one project that is not pd in Germany, too. LV would do it, that's right, but in my opinion it doesn't make sense for Legamus to record a text that is not pd for the majority of native speakers.

In the Agatha Christie case, LV took the recording down. Not only from the catalog but from archive, too. The disclaimer still said, that it was a LV recording. Now if the reader was an US citizen, s/he could remove the disclaimer and upload it to Archive.org on her/his own account. But I don't know if that has happened.
kattekliek
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Joined: Fri 27. May 2011, 09:15
Location: The Netherlands

Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by kattekliek »

Having all basic stuff for legamus.eu in one country sounds logic and reasonable to me; France seems the best candidate. Re. the advice of HP, let's stay away from Germany ... Hopefully we'll get a good and stable solution for file storage in the future. Until now I think we can do with European hosts, with the fixed URL-system that Viktor proposed.
Hokuspokus wrote:in my opinion it doesn't make sense for Legamus to record a text that is not pd for the majority of native speakers.
I fully agree!
algy pug
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Joined: Thu 9. Jun 2011, 05:19

Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by algy pug »

Hi Viktor

I would be happy to help out with file storage when I set up my website, which will be very soon.

However, there may be an issue with the use of Bit Torrent and similar services. In the their terms and conditions many web hosting services strictly prohibit the use of Bit Torrent by their clients, or in fact any service which would permit users to download material in breach of coyright (even if users choose not to do so.)

With regard to file transfers I have subscribed to MediaFire (ie. paid subscription). However MediaFire also has a very good free file serving service which offers unlimited storage, unimited downloads and a maximum file size of 200 Mb. A proviso for the free account is that if it is not accessed for certain period of time the account (and all the stored files) will disappear. Here is the link for those who wish to check it out: http://www.mediafire.com/select_account ... medium=why

Cheers

Algy Pug
RuthieG
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Joined: Fri 3. Jun 2011, 11:07

Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by RuthieG »

Mediafire has its servers in the USA though, doesn't it? We have to use European servers (or at least some 'death+70-or-less' country), and you will have to use a server in some 'death+50' country, or your files will be hosted in a location where the content is still under copyright.

EDITed to add:
MediaFire Acceptable Use Policy wrote:you may not:
Promote an illegal or unauthorized copy of another person's copyrighted work;

Submit Content that is libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, harassing, threatening, unlawful or promotes or encourages illegal activity;

Submit Content that violates the rights of others, such as Content that infringes any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or violates any right of privacy or publicity, or that is libelous or defamatory, or that directs any user to the content of a third party without consent of the third party;


and
TOS wrote: You acknowledge that the Services contains various materials and content, without limitation, the "Content", provided either by MediaFire, third party authors, developers and vendors and the underlying intellectual rights, copyright and trademarks are owned by MediaFire and /or its contributors and may not be copied in whole or in part. All Content on the Services is copyrighted as a collective work of MediaFire pursuant to applicable copyright law. You may download, copy and make personal, non-commercial use of the Content permitted by the United States Copyright Act and not otherwise prohibited by any applicable law, rule or regulation, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained in such Content, and provided that you shall not retain or store any significant portion of any Content. You will comply with laws regarding transmission of data.
Ruth
algy pug
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by algy pug »

Another option for file transfer could be Opera Unite, which operates in a similar manner to Dropbox, but without a limit on file size. The disadvantage is that the file links appear to operate only in the Opera browser (which is, by the way, a pretty impressive product.)

The ge.tt site also looks impressive. However, surely there must be some limits on file storage?

Cheers

Algy Pug
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

Opera Unite is more akin to BitTorrent, the data gets directly streamed from the user's Opera browser.

Many ad-based freehosters do accept "unlimited" storage. Our challenge is to find a freehoster that does not display too many ads and who has all of its servers in life+70 "or better" countries. See the first post for details :)
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

While ge.tt and free.fr work fine, I occasionally look at other freehosters in case we need something else. Here is a huge list. One can sort it by date and thus stay up-to-date about "new" hosters. Many of them are small hosters (individual persons?) running the same ready-made script.

http://www.storemyfile.org looks OK and seems to be based in France. Files are valid for 30 days after the last download. Here's a test.
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

http://www.fileshare.pro/ is another candidate, this time from Romania. One has to wait 20 seconds before the download, but there are few ads and even a little audio player. Only one file at a time, though. Test
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

Good news from http://ge.tt - if one has a free account there, they give you now 2 or 3 GB and the files do not expire. As long as we do not have tons of recordings, this looks very good.
RuthieG
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Joined: Fri 3. Jun 2011, 11:07

Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by RuthieG »

Has any recent approach been made to the European Archive? I notice that a lot has changed there, and discovered this page:
http://www.europarchive.org/hostyourcollection.php

They have a Media | Recordings section which currently only has Public Classical Music. I should think it is worth trying again.

Ruth
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

True, it looks better than few months ago, when they were still explaining in their FAQ that they don't host non-institutional content!
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

Again good news from ge.tt - looks like a suggestion of mine got implemented: if you upload several files, they add a link "Download all" that gives you a ZIP. In other words, you don't have to upload the ZIP separately. The full 3 GB can be used for recordings, without duplicates. And one can listen directly in the browser! At the moment, they are pretty much perfect for us.
Hokuspokus
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Hokuspokus »

Image
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Viktor
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Re: File hosting, distribution and storage

Post by Viktor »

I had a contact with free.fr technical service. The captchas still don't show but you can now simply click on the "Valider" button and the download starts.

ge.tt is easier and preferable, but at last dl.free.fr is working again.
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