From a classic discussion of self-interest as applied to shared grazing-land:

Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
– The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin (1968)

This is quoted at The Cornucopia of the Commons by Dan Bricklin (2000) who further says, in regard to the peer-to-peer music sharing network Napster, but it applies to LibriVox too:

What we see here is that increasing the value of the database by adding more information is a natural by-product of using the tool for your own benefit. No altruistic sharing motives need be present, especially since sharing is the default. [...] In our case, we find the Cornucopia of the Commons: Use brings overflowing abundance.

More information, in our case, is more recordings. A reader benefits by having fun in contributing, and sharing is implicit in the LibriVox model — it’s made effortless (for non-admin readers, at least.) All the work is in activities such as recording, editing and proof-listening. Also, the act of sharing (cataloguing) has been refined over the years to be as easy as possible for admins, though it still remains a non-trivial task.

In a follow-up piece, Dan says:

Instead of making you feel bad for “only” doing 99%, a well designed system makes you feel good for doing 1%. People complain about systems that have lots of “freeloaders”. Systems that do well with lots of “freeloading” and make the best of periodic participation are good.
– Blog post by Dan Bricklin (2005)

In this sense, recording one short poem is as welcome as a full solo of War and Peace, because the most important consideration is the happiness of the contributor. LibriVox, as it is strictly defined, is a community around readers, so I don’t think it’s possible to have freeloaders as such. However, if one equates “freeloader = listener”, the system still benefits from them, in that it can provide a source of fun for some readers to see how many listeners they have (as measured vaguely and unreliably by archive.org, one of many file distribution methods) and also sporadically by feedback via the forums or other contact methods. Many contributors start as listeners, so here, success breeds success: more recordings, more widely distributed, bring in more people wanting to participate.

This is, in my opinion, also part of the reason not to have any sort of direct reviewing system. It’s largely meaningless within the “have fun” framework! By the time a file reaches a listener, the initial fun has already been had, and it’s just an (enormous!) added bonus when subsequent audiences also “have fun”. A Cornucopia indeed.

Download audio file (shortstory049_07_valleychildishthings_cs.mp3)
(13:48)

In the introduction to another of her short story collections, she wrote:

“To a generation for whom everything which used to nourish the imagination because it had to be won by an effort, and then slowly assimilated, is now served up cooked, seasoned and chopped into little bits, the creative faculty (for reading should be a creative act as well as writing) is rapidly withering, together with the power of sustained attention; and the world which used to be so grande a la charte des lampes is diminishing in inverse ratio to the new means of spanning it; so that the more we add to its surface the smaller it becomes.”

Little pieces, yes, deliberately so, and beautifully-written. Hopefully they’ll be as fun to listen to as they were to read.

The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may “level up” by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from protracted application.

(Part III, Letter VIII of The Intellectual Life by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. archive.org free book link)

http://piratelibrary.com/library.htm

This is a bit of a hotchpotch at the moment, since contemporary and modern works are mixed, as are fact and fiction, and sea pirates with thieves of other stripes. I’ve simply labelled books according to source. So it will evolve over time, and I hope it proves of use / fun to someone somewhere along the way.

Collections included so far:

Project Gutenberg
LibriVox
The Internet Archive

To come:

Google Books (the public domain ones, anyway)
Other free online sources of piratical text & audio as I find them

I’m signed up to the One-Book-a-Week challenge again, but knowing the pace I normally read at, I’ve had a binge this month on short novels, and am currently have completed 10. Ha!

I also spruced up this website a little, adding actual widgets and Gargle Analytics. I’m not completely happy with them yet, I can feel a little tinkering with the CSS coming on, but still, close enough.

And finally, it was suggested to me that it might be much fun to Wordle the recordings I produce when I announce them here. Which is definitely a plan. I’ve already made the picture for the next (very short) piece I plan to record, which I know will have an audience of about one, assuming I listen to it myself. But perhaps that’s what Posterity is all about. Talking to ourselves and hoping mebbe someone else will want to overhear. We shall see.

‘Fair cousin of Lancaster,’ said the King, ‘you are very welcome’ (very welcome, no doubt; but he would have been more so, in chains or without a head).

Get edumacated here: http://librivox.org/a-childs-history-of-england-by-charles-dickens/

From Bartleby.com:

By departing from conventional meaning, grammar and syntax, she attempted to capture “moments of consciousness,” independent of time and memory.

Or to put it another way, in Stein’s own words:

A steady cake, any steady cake is perfect and not plain, any steady cake has a mounting reason and more than that it has singular crusts. A season of more is a season that is instead. A season of many is not more a season than most.

It’s my cake day.  I’m hoping my present to the world is going to be catalogued in time.  It’s being proof-listened against the clock right now …

http://librivox.org/tender-buttons-by-gertrude-stein/

One other thing, this is where people adding to the public domain are doing such an amazing service.  The translator here has produced various other Kafka stories too (mostly also in the LibriVox catalogue) and they’re recent translations which makes them very readable and accessible.  Without him, I’d know nothing about this story, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to read it into the public domain myself.  Many thanks, Ian.

Listen below … or visit the link above to download a higher-quality recording.
Download audio file (hunger_artist_kafka_cs_64kb.mp3)
64kbps, 29mins

In the Articles of War established for the government of the English Navy, in Art. 32, after providing with respect to this offence [sodomy] and other species of impurity that they “shall be punished with death” it is added without mercy. [...] Of all the offences of which a man in the maritime service can be guilty, burning a fleet, betraying it to the enemy and so forth, this is the only one which it was thought proper to exclude from mercy. The safety of the fleet and of the Empire were in the eyes of the legislator objects of inferior account in comparison with the preservation of a sailor’s chastity.

Offences against One’s Self by Jeremy Bentham (c. 1785) The passage above is from the section of notes for the essay.

(No offence intended to modern sailors of any leaning.  Note, the essay is entirely concerned with the suggested decriminalisation of homosexual acts a very long time ago - and has nothing to do with children, its subtitle not withstanding.)

“The diminutive oaths, mentioned at the close of [a previous quote], were, unfortunately, considered as ornaments of conversation, and adopted by both sexes, in order to give spirit and vivacity to their language; a shocking practice, which seems to have been rendered fashionable by the very reprehensible habit of the Queen [Elizabeth I], whose oaths were neither diminutive nor rare; for it is said, that she never spared an oath in public speech or private conversation when she thought it added energy to either. After this example in the highest classes, we need not be surprised when Stubbes tells us, speaking of the great body of the people, that, ‘if they speake but three or four words, yet they must be interlaced with a bloudie oath or two.’”