LibriVox is not a political organization. We are based on some basic fndamental principles (see here), but other than that we steer clear of politics. We don’t want politics to distract from our simple objective: to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio on the internet.
However, Net Neutrality is a political issue with huge implications for everything LibriVox does. The bare bones idea of Net Neutrality is that ISPs cannot give preference to sites that pay them money, and block those that don’t. That means that under current rules of the internet, LibriVox and Disney are given the same rights and privildeges.
There is a movement afoot to change that, so that big companies could pay for preferential treatment on the network, to the detriment of stes like LibriVox. This might make, for instance, trying to get to the LibriVox site, or download our files harder and slower. In an extreme case, LibriVox might get blocked completely in favour of corporate “competition.”
Because Net Neutrality is of fundamental importance to LibriVox, we have joined the Save the Internet Coalition and we urge all LibriVox listeners and volunteers to inform themselves on the issue and act as they see fit.
There’s no doubt in my mind there are lot of big corps that would block librivox purely on the basis of a potential lost sale – if someone’s listening to a free book, they can’t be buying a Disney DVD or watching banner ads.
This is a really great project! I’m glad to see there are other people who are interested in getting this stuff out onto the web. I’ll be adding my (spoken) voice to the effort as soon as I can, though for now, just a few comments about the fear that corporations might work to squash librivox:
The audience for the recordings here on this site is very different from the audience that’s buying professionally-recorded books. We don’t mind listening to a reader who’s less-than-perfect; in fact, I think that adds something to the experience – a charming personality; the feeling that someone else is experiencing the story along with me.
That’s not the case for the person who’s willing to pay $30 a piece for audiobooks – especially audiobooks in the public domain. They’re paying for quality & consistency, because that’s what they want. (And, hey, I want that in some things too…like in the threading that holds my jeans together; or in the rubber that my motorcycle tires are made from.) That’s what they’re looking to buy; and that’s the only thing that a business offering public-domain books can offer: They’re not selling the words or the idea or the author’s creativity. (…because they don’t own it!) They’re selling whatever it is they’ve added to the product – for instance, the voice of Jeff Woodman, or Alex Scourby, or James Earl Jones. To say that we’re competing with them is like saying that my karaoke-slaughter of “Pour Some Sugar on Me” [link soon-to-come] is somehow cutting into Polygram records’ sales. I wish it were so. ;)
Also, we aren’t downloading these things instead of buying them – that’s the, “look at how much business email is taking away from the U.S. Postal Service,” argument! It’s not true in either case because the “market” for one product isn’t the same as the market for the other! The curious counterculture emohacker type that downloads an archive of 100 Aesop’s fables from librivox isn’t doing so because she was in the market for Aesop audiobooks. She was looking for something free, something that would entertain her, and possibly something that would exercise her mind. I’m sorry, Richard, but, regardless of how big & popular librivox gets, there aren’t going to be too many people out there asking themselves, “hmm, what should I do now: Listen to A Farewell To Arms, or pop in Alladin II.” It’s just not happening.
sh(A)ne
Minister of Truth for the
Bureaucrash Activist Network
sh(A)ne, you’ve got a good point, and that may be a reason that some companies wouldn’t target LibriVox directly and intentionally. However, one of the really threatening things about this legislation is that it can target the small guys unintentionally. If the bandwidth is going to the well-funded corporate site preferentially, it’s not going to the .org that can’t pay. If my neighbor is downloading something from a site that can pay, and the providers along the way are giving preference to that site, I’m going to run into choke-points through no fault of my own. It *will* affect LibriVox.
I’m also actually downloading instead of buying. I like audiobooks, but cannot afford the $30. I will, though, download that same book from LibriVox. At least in my case, it is happening.
no
Yes corporations would indeed like to shut the little guy out and use the internet as a sales tool. It is too important to let that happen. Governments also want to control it and tax it. It was designed from the first to be an educational tool ( also defense) but was to make access to information easy and fast not to sell soap?