Lenny's history and why he isn't Creative Commons (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Lenny's history and why he isn't Creative Commons (2017)

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76 pointsTomte21 comments

For totally unsolicited sales calls, there's also "the worst hold music in the world", beware, headphone users:

https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call-abyss

I downloaded this and converted it to an appropriate wav format/bitrate for use with asterisk and a g.711 incoming SIP trunk, it's extension 666 on my voip system. Easy to transfer.

Thank-you. I've just updated the sound file that is played to black-listed phone numbers.

Unforunate n00b question here: how does one download the audio from Sound Cloud? Would love to do the same.

I used the youtube-dl command line utility.

Google is your friend for other alternatives.

awesome, thanks! Use youtube-dl all the time, didn't realize it support sound cloud.

Worked like a charm.

Awesome, thanks

Hmm, I don't think those creative commons licenses require you to 'identify' yourself, at least not in any way that can't be kept mostly anonymous. The creator of Lenny could publish the recordings under a pseudonym and host it on a website dedicated to the 'Lenny Team' or something similar, and it'd allow him to both use the license and keep his privacy.

No need to put out any information that allows him to be identified there.

No association with them, but the folks at Jolly Roger Telephone Compnay (https://jollyrogertelephone.com/) have an interesting approach to the problem. It's subscription based, but their bots are more advanced than Lenny and you get the conversations emailed to you after the transfer.

If just a few percent of callers used services like this, or wasted a few minutes time of the telemarketers, mass spoofed calls wouldn't be a viable business strategy.

So, he has nothing against Creative Commons licenses in general, but he doesn’t want to identify himself.

So, what happened? Was Lenny left with an unfortunate misconception about CC licensing?

Any kind of copyright claim (and, thus, license) must require identification of the copyright holder. If one believes the TFA (and I see no reason not to), then Lenny's isn't going to come after anyone for infringement. But that's not good enough for some corporate lawyers. They need to know who owns it and under what precise terms it is licensed before they'll indemnify their clients to use the content.

I would suggest to Lenny that he get a lawyer himself to register the copyright to the law firm on his behalf, and have the firm license under CC. But that would cost money. I don't know how much. And I don't know if Lenny would think it's worth the effort.

Who or what is “Lenny”?

https://toao.net/595-lenny

In this context it helps if Lenny is confused with Lemmy. Lemmy was a rock and roll legend who was into that lifestyle primarily because he liked sleeping with female groupies. There are many people out there wondering if Lemmy was their father. Sadly Lemmy has passed away, however, if I was a telemarketeer then I would spend a lot longer on the phone with Lemmy, learning of his exploits, than I would with Lenny who seems a nice enough chap but rather dull in comparison to Lemmy.

I hope this has helped answer your question.

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

Of course I know who Lemmy is! :the horns:

Its actually one of my hobby goals for 2019: “this is Benny” and “this is Penny”. A male and female voiceovers (already found suitable voices) and a simple website with bunch of buttons you click to play when you get a marketing call. With ability to record as well and upload to youtube ;)

I feel like somehow Howard Stern should be getting some credit here. He's been using recorded drops from his show to make prank calls in this manner for years. Lenny seems at least partially derivative of that.

Howard or one of his goons would be at the control board though. The beauty of lenny is how seamlessly his responses tie together with no human interaction.

Give "AI" development some time and we'll have digital telemarketing boxes attempting to sell anything to digital anti-telemarketing boxes.

2017 should be added to the title.

Added. Thanks!

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