Hello. II just joined LingQ because I was alerted that our content is used here without permission. My name is Carolina Guerrero and I am CEO and cofounder of Radio Ambulante, a Spanish Language podcast distributed by NPR. I just found many of our episodes chopped into pieces, with such lack of respect and consideration for our work- I never saw anything like that. Maybe you don’t know but creating high-quality audio journalism is very expensive and really challenging. We are a non-profit organization. We work very hard. Producing each episode costs us around $30K, and takes us between 4 and 12 month. I just asked LingQ to remove Radio Ambulante’s episode from this website. But I also want to ask you, the community, to understand that it’s very unfair to steal content with no permission, modify it and use it. It’s very hard to see your craft work destroyed like this. This content is trademark by Radio Ambulante, and exclusively licensed to NPR. If you really appreciate our work, please respect it. We work very very hard. We have sacrificed a lot to be where we are. I am happy to reply any question you have here, or on Twitter: @nuncaduermo.
We warn people not to post content that is copyrighted to someone else. It is impossible for us to police every item of content that is uploaded. The minute we are made aware that there is content in our libraries without the permission of the copyright holder, we remove this content. We are sorry for any inconvenience. We hope that our learners will be motivated to look for more excellent content from Rado Ambulante, but just for their own use, and in a way that respects Radio Ambulante.
$30K per episode… Damn, you must be the Peter Jackson of podcasters. The quality must be amazing. Thanks for reminding us that not all of the great free content here is available with permission, and we should be more mindful of the work that goes into them. I am grateful that people are willing to work hard to produce this content. I can’t wait to check it out. I’m not an American taxpayer; can I listen to you on NPR or is that stealing too?
Hi Carolina,
I love Radio Ambulante and have learned a great deal about the beauty and richness of the Latin American cultures and peoples, as well as the Spanish language, through the episodes of your invaluable program that had been posted here at Lingq.com. The episodes have served as an extraordinary resource that has allowed me to improve my capacity to utilize the beautiful Spanish language and to appreciate many aspects of my heritage to which I previously had little access. I am sure that having access to episodes of Radio Ambulante here at Lingq has benefited others similarly. As learners of the Spanish language, many of us would not be able to comprehend Radio Ambulante without the assistance of the learning environment provided by Linq.
With great appreciation, gratitude, and respect for all those who contribute to the creation of Radio Ambulante, I hope that you will consider allowing this learning community to continue to benefit from your program. By doing so, you will allow many to understand and appreciate Latin American culture through its own language when otherwise they would be unable to do so.
Thank you very much for your work - learning via content from Radio Ambulante has already made a meaningful difference in my life and has helped me to develop my abilities such that I am far better equipped to assist native speakers of Spanish in my professional life.
Sincerely,
Tony A
Is there any chance that you would be interested in making your wonderful content available at LingQ as paid content. We welcome high-quality content. I am sure you have acquired many loyal potential subscribers here at LingQ who would be willing to pay to continue using your material integrated with the LingQ learning functionality which makes it so much more accessible. We have arrangements with other publishers. If you are interested please let me know. I am sure we can work something out that is of benefit to you and to our users.
Hi Carolina, first I want to say thank you for all of the work you and the team put into Radio Ambulante. It’s my favorite podcast. PLEASE keep up the good work.
Is there any way that the episodes could be posted on LingQ while respecting the work you guys do? Spanish is a second language for me and I get a much deeper understanding of the stories when I can review them on this platform. The fact is, you just can’t catch everything when listening casually as a podcast. When I’m listening on here I’m not also doing dishes, driving, or cleaning my room; I am 100% focused on the story you guys have created. I would be really excited to see Radio Ambulante podcasts available on LingQ.
Me han servido mucho los podcasts de Radio Ambulante y ya que tengo un nivel bastante alto me encanta esuchar los audios en el carro y cuando me estoy relajando en la cama… mi familia es mexicana y a ella también le encantAron los podcasts, especialmente los de Mexico.
Espero que hagan trato con LingQ para que los podcasts se puedan quedar y continuar siendo útiles.
Thank you Steve. I appreciate that you took action. I suggest that you improve your metrics because I saw a lot of interactions to our content, so knowing a bit a bout technology, I imagined that LingQ was aware of the use of it. Mostly because I received a recent email from Eric Roberts asking RA permission to use our content for free in exchange of exposure. I didn’t reply that email, since exposure is not a way to start a conversation with any creator. So moving forward, I also recommend that you consider offering payment to creators when you are planning to use sell the access to their content to your end users.
It would be nice to be able to fully police our library and check all content to make sure it’s not copyright but we have over 80,000 lessons in 25 plus languages in our Library and this simply isn’t practical for us. When alerted to specific content being in library that shouldn’t be there we take it down immediately and warn those users not to share copyrighted content.
Eric contacted you unaware that some of your content had been shared by our members and was already available in our library. He had separately found your podcast online and thought it would be a nice addition to our library. If you are not interested in the exposure, that’s fine. We do not sell most content on LingQ, it is available freely to all members. It is our functionality that they pay for if they want to.
It is worth pointing out that while our members may not share content in our libraries which or not free of copyright, there is no reason not to import content for individual use by a member. I have bought many ebooks which I have imported into LingQ, not to mention newspaper articles. By all means continue to learn using Radio Ambulante’s material. Just import it from their site. Just do not share it in the library.