I donated a bit of time and voice to what looked like a good idea - reading audio books for Librivox.

Trouble is, it turns out that anyone can sell our work.

From the rules:

If you volunteer to record for LibriVox, you must agree to release the audio files you make into the public domain. This means that anyone can use those audio files however they wish.

What does “however they wish” mean, exactly? People may use our recordings to profit; they may remix them into other projects; they do not need to give credit to the individual reader/writer/creator or to LibriVox. Anyone may do all kinds of things that you would prefer them not do - and you have no recourse to change that. For example you might see:

• CDs of Romance of Rubber sold as a fundraiser for a charity you don’t like;

• Origin of the Species as background atmosphere for a pornographic film;

• Fables for the Frivolous sampled into a violent rap song;

• The summary of Frankenstein used to promote a major motion picture;

• Your recording clipped apart and rearranged as a ransom note, signed with your name and city.

Screw that! Turns out that people are selling our work on ebay and other places.

The other thing that bothered me and a couple of others is…what’s the point in trying, when they seem happy to accept anything and everything, quantity over quality every time.

How do you know you’re not downloading something like this:

while missing out on something good like this:

There seems to be no peer review or rating, in fact, it’s actively discouraged. It’s a real shame, and this ridiculous and unnecessary Public Domain nonsense means they’re missing out on some good recordings.

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