[Techtalk] Copyright of Audio books

[Miriam English]

Hi Linda,

Certainly it is possible to delete or alter tags, but I have never known 
anybody to actually remove ID3 tags from mp3 files. (Except for wrong or 
uninformative tags.) Rather, many people spend a lot of effort adding 
more informative tags to existing files. I certainly do. If the ID3 tags 
(or equivalent on other file formats) are informative then people will 
want to keep them. Just make them valuable to the user.

The proof of this is the user-maintained CD databases (CDDB) that have 
sprung up to let those of us who prefer to listen to our music as mp3s 
(and put the CDs away as delicate archives) easily give our files 
detailed descriptive tags. If the information is important people will 
go to lengths to keep it.

On the topic of "protecting his investment", if the tags gently (without 
insulting or threatening) direct the person to a website where they can 
obtain more files and contribute to the maker, then you'll find a 
proportion of the people visiting the site will always want to send 
money. Most won't of course, but that is not lost money; those people 
become free advertisers and distributors. The more people the files 
reach, then the larger is the number of people who will contribute. The 
trick then becomes to spread them as widely as possible. This way 
everybody benefits.

Even better, when a certain crucial point is reached then a snowball 
effect ensures its own publicity drives itself.

Cheers,

	- Miriam

Linda de Boer wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> I am trying to copyright protect some audio files which are initially 
> purhcased from the author. If they are copied to another site and they 
> try to publish them either as their own, or just without the author's 
> permission, I would need to be able to identify them.
> 
> I have tried various methods, the best one so far seems to be using an 
> m4b with tags. I realize this can be removed. Any other suggestions? 
> There is a limit to the number of downloads from the site, but once it 
> leaves the site, it's fair game.
> 
> I am not looking at DRM at this time, just want to protect his investment.
> 
> Thoughts, suggestions?
> Thanks,
> Linda de Boer
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-- 
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Website: http://miriam-english.org
Blog: http://miriam_e.livejournal.com