Tag: copyfight

The Public Domain: Enclosing The Commons Of The Mind

SFFaudio Online Audio

A BoingBoing post that links to a podcast lecture nicely explains why caring about intellectual property is so important…

The Royal Society PodcastThe Public Domain: Enclosing The Commons Of The Mind
1 |MP3| – Approx. 69 Minutes [LECTURE]
Podcaster: The Royal Society Podcast
Podcast: March 11th 2009
Is the public domain as vital to knowledge, innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights? James Boyle thinks so and visits the RSA to call for a new movement to preserve it. If we continue to enclose the “commons of the mind”, Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.

A paperbook, The Picture Gallery Of Canadian History Volume 1 (copyright 1942), that I picked up just today, is a great example of what Boyle talks about. While I listened to Boyle speak I was flipping through the book and imagining all the uses I could put it to. Today I’ve only used them to illustrate this post but when it’s public domain, you can do ANYTHING you want. What would you do with these pictures?

Page 61 from The Picture Gallery of Canadian History Volume 1 (1942)

Page 62 from The Picture Gallery of Canadian History Volume 1 (1942)

Vikings in Ontario. Cool huh? Incidentally, there are plenty of images from The Picture Gallery Of Canadian History Volume 1 on the web already but no-one has done a complete scan of it yet. It is clearly in the public domain in Canada (has been since 2001). Incidentally it won’t be PD in the USA until 2021. I found that fascinating, and utterly retarded. Here’s a 1938 Time magazine article that relates the story that goes with the scans above. If you liked these pics please have a listen to the lecture.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Conan: The UNCOPYRIGHTED – The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio News

So, just because the folks at BROKEN SEA are sitting on the CONAN AUDIO sidelines that doesn’t mean there isn’t any other FREE CONAN AUDIO coming straight from the legitimate source (ROBERT E. HOWARD). If the Robert E. Howard story is PUBLIC DOMAIN in your nation, why make your own audiobook?

Conan: The Uncopyrighted - Robert E. Howard fiction in the PUBLIC DOMAIN

“Indeed, at the moment there are no works of REH published prior to 1963 that I can point to with absolute certainty as being owned by Paradox Entertainment, with the possible exception of the works that appeared in Argosy and the poems that first appears in Always Comes Evening.”

-Paul Herman (editor of Robert E. Howard books @ Wildside Press and author of Another Thought)

Here are two Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales we’ve already told you about…

Conan SHORT STORY:

LibriVox Fantasy - Gods Of The North by Robert E. HowardGods of the North
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
A winter war in the mountains of Vanaheim and a bit of gossamer are all that stand between Conan of Cimmeria and a frosty beauty who spurns him. First published in Fantasy Fan, March 1934. Alternate titles include: The Frost Giant’s Daughter, The Frost King’s Daughter. |WIKISOURCE|

Conan NOVEL:

The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. HowardHour Of The Dragon
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Morgan Saletta
Podcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcast: Dragon Hour / The Hour of the Dragon
Podcaster: November 2008 – ????
Chapters 01 |MP3| Chapters 02 |MP3| Chapters 03 |MP3| Chapters 04 |MP3| Chapters 05 |MP3|
Follow Conan and his struggle to overcome the dark necromancy that has cast him from the throne he won! Quake at the dark and evil arts wielded against him in this chapter by chapter audiobook production of Robert E. Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon. The original work was published in four parts in Wierd Tales from December 1935 to April 1936, and later appeared as Conan the Conqueror (1950). |WIKISOURCE|

Podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheHourOfTheDragon

For more Robert E. Howard stories in the audio format check out our ROBERT E. HOWARD page.

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC Radio One’s Q talks RIP a copyright manifesto and WATCHMEN

SFFaudio Online Audio

CBC Radio One - Q: The PodcastThis morning I got a phone call.

My mom: “Jesse turn on the radio.”

Jesse: “I’ll get the podcast.”

And here it is Q: The Podcast for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009.

Do newspapers need public funding?* ‘RIP: A Remix Manifesto‘, Canadian doc about mash-up culture* Jesse Wente on comic-inspired movies* Watchmen illustrator Dave Gibbons.

Download |MP3| or subscribe:

http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/qpodcast.xml

Here’s the trailer for RIP…

On Watchmen: Everybody’s talking to artist Dave Gibbons (Q included) because author Alan Moore isn’t involved with the WATCHMEN movie. Moore has sworn off a lot of big corporations in fact. In the case of one deposition he’d had to give with regards to his dealings with the big corps he said – he would have been better treated had he “molested and murdered a busload of retarded children after giving them heroin.”

Which leads me to point out that the latest WATCHMEN merchandise, a DVD that turns the DC Moore/Gibbons graphic novel into a quasi-audiobook/animated movie. The credits for it do not include Alan Moore.

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. CBC, please FREE Apocalypse Al!

The SFFaudio Podcast #027

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #027 – Jesse and Scott are joined by Rick Jackson (The Time Traveler). Today we talk about new audiobooks, the ongoing CONAN situation, and libraries. Should libraries be renting Zunes to patrons?

Talked about on today’s show:
Ted Chiang, Eclipse 2, Blackstone Audio, The Green Hills Of Earth by Robert A. Heinlein, Apollo 8, Brotherhood Of The Wolf by David Farland, Bellewether by Connie Willis, Corsair by Clive Cussler, James Bond is fantasy?, Quantum Of Solace, Sahara, coming from Wonder Audio… The Fabulous Clipjoint by Frederic Brown, Tantor Media doing Robert E. Howard audiobooks, Conan Properties International versus Broken Sea Audio, New Zealand’s new copyright legislation, reductio ad absurdum, copyrights and trademarks, Clark Ashton Smith, downloading audiobooks through libraries, WMA format, Overdrive vs. NetLibrary, PC Gamer Podcast – ‘X-Box 360, Wii and Playstation 3 are giant DRM keys’, libraries rent DVDs?, ‘government shouldn’t be doing what business can do’.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Tantor Media doing Robert E. Howard audiobooks

SFFaudio News

Meego ConanA February 28th, 2009 Paradox Entertainment press release (in Swedish), indicates that Random House/Del Rey has signed a deal with Tantor Media to release the “CONAN” licensed Del Rey’s series of paperbooks by Robert E. Howard as audiobooks. Paradox is the parent company for Conan Properties International.

I expect Tantor to do a terrific job with these. Tantor already has many other public domain texts in its audiobook catalogue, including works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Of course this whole situation still smells godawful coming as it does less than a week after Paradox’s subsidiary sent another bogus legal threat to Broken Sea Audio Productions (a non-profit fan audio group). Hopefully the horrific stink CPI’s put on the CONAN brand won’t rub off on Tantor’s R.E.H. productions.

Posted by Jesse Willis