Episode: 3000
Title: HPR3000: Chopin Free project
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3000/hpr3000.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 14:39:57

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3000 for Friday 31 January 2020.
Today's show is entitled Shop and Free Project.
It is the 10th anniversary show of Paul Quirk,
and is about 24 minutes long, and carries a clean flag. The summer is
an effort to produce royalty and copyright-free versions of Fred Derrick Shop and Work.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Music
Hello, good listeners of Hacker Public Radio.
Paul Quirk here, and welcome to a very special episode.
You are, of course, listening to Episode 3000.
It is an honor for me to commemorate this special occasion,
and the way I think it should be celebrated is by celebrating the Creative Commons license itself,
which is the very license this podcast is based upon.
If we go to Wikipedia, it states that a Creative Commons license is one of several public copyright licenses
that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work,
a CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to use,
share, and build upon a work that they, the author, have created.
CC provides an author flexibility, for example.
They might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work
and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work
from concerns of copyright infringement, as long as they abide by the conditions
that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.
Now, that was kind of dry.
To me, it means a little more than that.
In its purest form, Creative Commons is a license that is free of all restrictions
under copyright law, and so that work could be copied, modified, distributed,
and performed, even for commercial purposes, without asking permission.
To me, this is a special license, because it represents unconditional love
for one's fellow human beings.
It's a gift unto the world.
It's the complete opposite of the greed we often see today.
Greed that tries to extend copyright well beyond any reasonable expectations.
Greed from profiteers, that would take a great public domain work from over 150 years ago,
it continued to try to profit from it.
I would like you to keep this in mind as we celebrate Episode 3,000 of Hack or Public Radio,
because I am going to share with you a wonderful, beautiful gift to all of us
that exists under this same Creative Commons license as this Hack or Public Radio podcast,
the complete works of Frederick Chopin.
Let's go back to Wikipedia to find out who this person is.
Frederick Chopin was born on the 1st of March in 1810,
and he passed away on the 17th of October 1849.
He was a Polish composer, in virtual solo pianist of the romantic era,
who wrote primarily for solo piano.
He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era,
one whose poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation.
Now that you have an idea of who Frederick Chopin is,
I would like to tell you about a Kickstarter campaign that I've been following for a while,
called Set Chopin Free.
For that, I'm going to read to you directly from their Kickstarter page.
We are asking for your help to free the life's work of Frederick Chopin.
Why now?
It is 164 years after Chopin's death.
His music is well into the public domain,
yet most people consume it as if it were still copyrighted,
from CDs, iTunes, or YouTube videos, many of which are copyrighted.
We think Chopin deserves better.
Why Chopin?
Most public domain music is limited to the classical genre, 1920s and before,
but the goals of Muse Open are not limited to one genre,
so we want an artist that has brought appeal.
Among the most endearingly popular composers,
Chopin stands out.
He also composed an amount of music, which is manageable for us to record.
If we had chosen Mozart, our funding goal would have to have another zero at the end.
We also wanted an artist that would be versatile,
enabling many projects to make use of his music.
It doesn't hurt that he just celebrated his 200th birthday three years ago.
This is a belated gift, but one may think he would appreciate.
Our goals.
One.
To preserve indefinitely and without question,
everything Chopin created.
To release his music for free, both in 1080p video and 24 bit,
192 kilohertz audio.
This is roughly 245 pieces.
Number two.
To ask and try to answer,
how should one preserve and experience the life's work of a person?
A static list of links does not do justice to the immense gravity of Chopin's artistic output.
We have a few ideas which we address below.
Our performers, we have some incredible musicians lined up.
One or two have even placed in the most prestigious piano competitions in the world.
Our musicians are students at some of the best conservatories in the world,
professors, professional pianists and recording artists.
I'm going to place a link to this Kickstarter campaign in the show notes,
if you'd like to read more.
And now I'm going to sit back and enjoy a fine craft beer.
As I play you some of my favorite pieces here on Hacker Public Radio
and solve with no further ado, I give you Fred Rick Chopin completely uninterrupted.
Enjoy.
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