Performances and Rights
Posted August 27, 2006 12:27 AM
My wife and I spent an hour today using Odeo (this guy Ev is pretty amazing) to digitally record in mp3 fomat the works of Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss and Watty Piper. Of course, we can't share with you these mp3 or post them to librivox, but that's ok -- my son and daughter will enjoy it as they listen in the car to their favorite stories each day. I was inspired by this article in the NYTimes that I briefly commented on the other day.
Kara Shallenberg and her 10-year-old son, Henry, exhausted the audiobook collection at their library in Oceanside, Calif., five years ago. With Henry’s appetite for listening still strong, Ms. Shallenberg began to record herself reading his favorite books. Eventually she upgraded from a using a tape deck to burning CD’s on her laptop computer. Last fall she took her hobby to a wider audience.Ms. Shallenberg’s recordings of 'The Secret Garden,' 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' and other works are now available, free, to anyone with an [i]nternet connection and basic audio software. She is part of a core group of volunteers who give their voices and spare time to LibriVox, a project that produces audiobooks of works in the public domain.
"Everything I read to Henry was copyrighted,” Ms. Shallenberg said, adding that she was frustrated she couldn’t share those works. “The idea of creating audiobooks that other people could enjoy was exciting." Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod
I linked to the Michael Geist post, but I also enjoyed what Joe Gratz had to say in his post on the same subject:
It’s wonderful to see how people are squeezing as much utility as possible out of the frozen pool of public domain works we’re left with after the last 30 years of legislation. Imagine what could be done if the public domain were larger! The Audio Public Domain Grows
If you don't understand what Kara and Joe are referring to then you have much reading to catch up on; feel free to get started here.
I also happened to come across this clip while hanging out at Odeo [via Ev]: The Scala Girls Choir singing the Divinyls I Touch Myself.