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  • From: Danyl Strype <strypey AT disintermedia.net.nz>
  • To: Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand discussion <cc-nz AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Cc-nz] Community access radio and speech recognition software
  • Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 17:11:40 +1200

Kia ora koutou

As their name suggests, community access radio stations exist to give
special interest groups access to the airwaves, so their unique voices
can be heard in broadcast media. They are heavily subsidized by public
broadcasting funding, and their programs aren't expected to have
commercial potential. Whenever these programs are rebroadcast, both
the program producers and the public who subsidize their production
get more bang for their buck.

Having audio programs made for community access radio stations
released under a CC license has always seemed like a no-brainer to me.
In fact, even before I set up the cc-nz list I was contacting access
radio people about the potential of CC licensing, as part of my work
with the Aotearoa.Indymedia.org network.

Over the last decade or so, access radio stations have been building
up the infrastructure to digitally record programs, so they can be
made available, like podcasts, on sites like this one:
http://www.accessradio.org/

Student radio stations have also been experimenting with recording
their shows and turning them into podcasts:
http://www.mixcloud.com/radio1/

What I notice in both cases though, is no sign of CC licenses yet. I'm
guessing one issue is legal confusion and risk aversion. If I want to
CC my radio program, what about the copyright songs I played during
the program? Radio stations and rebroadcast sites can pay a fixed fee
to collection organisations like NZRIA and APRA for permission to play
the songs, but they can't pass on that permission to anyone who
rebroadcasts the program. What can we do to convince community radio
stations that CC is a good fit for their organizational mission, and
help them negotiate the legal minefields around copyright?

Having all these recordings of New Zilndr speech available under a
libre license would have benefits beyond just sharing the information
covered in community radio programs. It would also be tremendously
helpful to people working on getting free code/ open source speech
recognition software to recognise New Zilnd accents. The same would be
true for other languages that are spoken regularly on community radio
programs.

Douglas Bagnall gave a great talk about free code speech recognition
engines at PyCon 2012, and one of the main non-coding challenges is
the lack of suitably large corpus of spoken speech with which to
'train' the software (the interesting bits for non-coders starts at
about 3:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6BGLrLXm3c

Hei kōnā
S

PS Matt, if you're interested, I could tidy this up a bit, as a guest
blog for cc.org.nz.

--
Daniel Strypey Bruce
Community Developer
Disintermedia.net.nz/strype

"Geeks are those who partake in our culture."
- .ISOcrates

"Voting... is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The
last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will
get a version of it through a dessicated question, and then will
submerge it in a Niagra of similar opinions, and convert them into -
what else? - another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of
impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which
you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you
can do nothing."
- Neil Postman, 'Amusing Ourselves To Death'



  • [Cc-nz] Community access radio and speech recognition software, Danyl Strype, 04/28/2014

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