Something good is coming out of the MP3 craze after all.
David Williams couldn't find an audio version of the Bible on the Internet that he could download, so he decided to record one himself in MP3.
Using his desktop PC and Goldwave, a shareware software-editing application, Williams began recording himself reading the Good Book. With all of the New Testament now available online and work begun on the Old Testament, he is in the process of completing the first free and downloadable Bible.
"I got to looking out there on the Web for an audio Bible and couldn't find anything," Williams said. "I thought it was ridiculous that you could find anything else in the world on the Internet but you couldn't find a free Bible."
He did find sites like audio-bible.com, which offers a streaming version, and plenty of sites selling CDs or tapes, but nothing that offered the ability to download the content.
William's audio version is currently available only in MP3 format, although he said he will be encoding the entire collection in both RealAudio and Windows Media in the near future.
When he wasn't working as a computer systems operator at an oil refinery in Hampton, Virginia, Williams spent the past four months recording all the books from the New Testament himself.
Before he could get started though, he had to find a version of the Bible that was free of copyright. Similar to the quagmire the recording industry is facing, Christian copyright holders were concerned that giving away a free version of their product might cut into their business of selling text and audio copies of God's word.
Williams tracked down a public domain volume called World English Bible, which is based on the American Standard Version that was first published in 1901.
"It's been exciting to see something that met a need," Williams said. "How often do you get to work on something that nobody else has really thought about doing?"
Williams has just completed the books of Psalms and Proverbs of the Old Testament. His goal is to continue adding one book a month until he is finished.
The work has been paying off. He says he gets roughly 500 visitors a day from all over the world and nearly 50,000 people have downloaded books from his site. Williams will sell the collection on CD-ROM for $6 in case people don't want to spend time downloading it.
Williams does wish he could change one aspect of his project, however.
"I put a copyright on it, but I kind of regret that," he said. "I don't care how anyone uses the downloads. I'm not trying to make a business out of it. People are just grabbing this off the Internet because it's free, and that is how this should be."
