On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 03:45:15PM -0500, Aaron Cannon wrote:
I had an idea today on how we might be able to substantially increase our collection of human read audio books. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (a division of the LOC) has recorded thousands of titles. They are (obviously) a governmental organization. As such, the audio recordings would not be copyrighted. The only part of the production which may be copyrighted would be the underlying books which were read.
So, let's say that, for example, they have the book Dracula. However, the book which they read from was copyright 1981. Would it still be possible to add the audio book to the collection if the text in our public domain version was so similar to the audio recording as to be indistinguishable?
Like I said before, I realize that this is a complicated question, but I feel it's worth investigating, as it could add great value to our collection.
Hi, Aaron. This is a good idea! I would want to do a little more research to make sure there is no copyright on the audio performances, but it sounds like they're probably public domain in the US. As long as a public domain performance matches a public domain text, we could clear it. -- Greg