A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

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daniel1234
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A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby daniel1234 » Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:08 pm

There is a Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo. com called "Lingua Libre": :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_Libre

Forvo.com is a great resource for language learners. The website began in 2008 with a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 License. More than 5 million recordings were submitted with that "Open" License. However, recently they decided to suddenly change their License and make all the audios their private property with a new license that is incompatible with the “Commons License” principles.

Forvo.com basically "revoked" the Commons License and made everything proprietary and closed sourced.

Fortunately, there is a new FOSS alternative called "Lingua Libre" but few people know about it. It is a great resource for Language Learners ! Many pronunciations from Lingua Libre are automatically added to Wiktionaries (e.g. French).

Please visit Lingua Libre and record your native language ! ;)
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby Querneus » Sat Nov 20, 2021 10:54 pm

I remember noticing Forvo didn't make it easy to download pronunciations during its CC era, which was already pretty suspicious...
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daniel1234
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby daniel1234 » Sun Nov 21, 2021 12:40 am

Querneus wrote:I remember noticing Forvo didn't make it easy to download pronunciations during its CC era, which was already pretty suspicious...


Now Wikipedia describes how Forvo restricts users from downloading pronunciations: :(

Image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forvo
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Nov 21, 2021 3:44 am

daniel1234 wrote:There is a Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo. com called "Lingua Libre": :D


This looks good (I haven't tried it out yet). Thank you for sharing!
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SpanishInput
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby SpanishInput » Mon Nov 22, 2021 12:58 pm

daniel1234 wrote:Forvo.com basically "revoked" the Commons License and made everything proprietary and closed sourced.


I can't comment on this, but I do find it odd when companies charge you to use crowd-sourced content. Today I was reading a TV review site to check other user's opinions, when I suddenly hit a paywall after reading 3 reviews.
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby alaart » Mon Nov 22, 2021 4:00 pm

Just wanting to add, if somebody wants to use Forvo, it works.

I have been using Forvo for a year now, mostly for Korean and Japanese audio samples, and I can mostly download everything (and add them to Anki cards). Occasionally, when I want to download something I get logged out, which I until now assumed is a bug. In that case I just play the audio (which works) and record it with audacity in the background, then save it. It's just a small work around.

I've had a quick look at Lingua Libre. Looks good, I might use it too, but it seemed there were not that many samples for Korean yet. Anyway thanks for the information.
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby Iversen » Mon Nov 22, 2021 10:51 pm

I know one possible parallel: I have placed my music at the IMSLP site under a licence that basically allows anyone to copy and play it (under my name), and the licence pages expressly stress that once any works have been made public under such a licence this can't be revoked - not by me, and (as far as I remember) not by IMSLP. However I have the same rights to distribute my music as as anyone else.

IMSLP works under Canadian law, but I would really doubt that forvo works under another set of rules. It would however take something with a proper juridical background (!!!) to judge whether they really are allowed to revoke the licence that was valid when those users uploaded their contributions. But it doesn't matter because there is a practical problem: I haven't used forvo myself, but as far as I can seee from Wikipedia all their materials are short sound clips provided by volunteers - and without the search system that allows you to hear those clips they are just meaningless noise. So apart from the doubtful moral of a company that asks for contributions from unpaid volunteers and then place them behind a paywall I can't see that the company has promised anyone to keep the look-up system free UNLESS that was expressly stated when those contributions were handed over.

I remember the discussions about the rules of HTLAL when LLORG was started. By submitting things there you gave FX (the owner and administrator of HTLAL) the right to use and distribute them, and it was not allowed to copy and distribute a copy of the site itself - but it was not written anywhere that the individual authors couldn't use their own contributions, and the 'author's rights' were not transferred to FX. So if anyone should feel like copying anything I wrote there they can do so - just not accompanied by the setup or design of the HTLAL site. And in the case of Forvo: I don't know under which conditions people uploaded their pronunciation clips, but unless they expressly transferred their author's rights then they can still use them as they please. The snag is of course that it wouldn't serve any practical purpose.
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby Cainntear » Tue Nov 23, 2021 12:10 pm

Iversen wrote:I know one possible parallel: I have placed my music at the IMSLP site under a licence that basically allows anyone to copy and play it (under my name), and the licence pages expressly stress that once any works have been made public under such a licence this can't be revoked - not by me, and (as far as I remember) not by IMSLP. However I have the same rights to distribute my music as as anyone else.

The issue here is probably one of dual licensing.

It may be that Forvo's contributors' agreement gave Forvo the right to use the files as they saw fit, and that Forvo then released them under CC-BY-SA. This is subtly different to the users granting Forvo CC-BY-SA rights, because it means that Forvo are legally able to rerelease them under a different license.

They can then object to anyone distributing them if they downloaded them after the change of licensing, but any downloads that were made before the change of policy are still legitimately licensed to be redistributed indefinitely.
(And arguably if they haven't genuinely updated the files since, you'd still be able to download them and redistribute them -- if the file metadata says it was created before the revision of the license, it's still technically the same file, so whether or not there's a practical problem isn't 100% certain.)

So they may well be legally in the clear, but f*** 'em and the horse they road in on... that's a hell of a scummy move.
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby luke » Fri Nov 26, 2021 2:30 pm

There are a few Ankiweb decks that use the audio:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/forvo

Also curious if there's been any collaboration between https://tatoeba.org/ and https://lingualibre.org/ ... The projects seem to have some common goals and having more than one project may help keep things open and independent for all going forward, as they both use the Creative Commons license.
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daniel1234
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Re: A Free and Open Source alternative to Forvo.com (Pronunciation)

Postby daniel1234 » Fri Nov 26, 2021 3:40 pm

luke wrote:There are a few Ankiweb decks that use the audio:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/forvo



There are at least 2 add-ons for Anki 2.1 that can download audios from Forvo. One of them was able to batch-download sounds for many cards. Hence,if someone had a collection of 500 cards, the person was able to automatically add all the pronunciations.

However, Forvo began to BLOCK PERMANENTLY the IPs of those who used the Bulk-function of the add-on.

How can Forvo.com ask volunteers to record their voices and then block their IPs if they wish to add their voices to Anki cards ? :evil:
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