Cory Doctorow recently gave a talk about DRM (Digital Rights Management) to Microsoft Research. He dedicated the text of his talk to the public domain using a Creative Commons public domain dedication, which means:
Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
Using GarageBand and the built-in microphone on my Powerbook, I recorded an audio version of Cory's talk. Andy is hosting an mp3 version of the talk (mirror) and a Bittorrent of the file is available here. (Thx Patrick and Sverrir for mirrors).
It's 36.4 MB and 40 min long. If you want to mirror the mp3, let me know and I'll put a link up. The audio is covered under the same dedication as the original text. If you'd like to do something with it, go nuts. Also, listen for a little easter egg about 8:20 into the audio.
Sort of disclaimer: I make no claim as to the quality of this recording. It may be too quiet or contain too much background noise. You may hear fast-talking, mumbling, my cracking voice, or flubbed pronounciations of difficult names. I do not do justice to Cory's animated passion about the subject...at times, I sound like I'm reading James Joyce on NPR rather than enthusiastically arguing for the hopeful future of media and technology.
But it's out there. You can put it on your iPod, you can listen to it while you have breakfast tomorrow morning, listen to it on your shower mp3 player while scrubbing your bits and pieces, or you can burn it to a CD and listen to it in your car on the way to work. Or whatever. It's not a high-quality professional recording, but as Cory says in his talk, it doesn't have to be because it's got other things going for it.
ps. I'd love to see someone other than Cory give this talk at a conference. Now that would be "exploitation by anyone for any purpose".
