Project Gutenberg News

The latest Project Gutenberg Grand Total figures have just passed 37,500 titles this past month and will have 40,000 eBooks during our 40th year celebration, 1,000 a month over 40 years doesn’t sound like much, but we are on track right now to do 5,000 this year.

We are currently giving away about 100,000 books a day, just through the one single site:  http://gutenberg.org. About 3 million eBooks per month or 36 million per year.

In 2000 USB flash drives were just getting started with 8M “IBM Memory Sticks” available for about $60 and also 16M and 32M size were available.

Today 1,000 times as much memory, 8G, is available from over the counter stores for $20.

I just bought a somewhat larger “terabyte pocket drive” for $75 over the counter.  Larger is a relative term in this case, it’s still pocket-sized, but just requires a doubly larger pocket and the weight is noticeable and a “wall wart” power supply is required, so I should NOT think the term “pocket-sized would be appropriate but I bought it anyway, sight unseen, due to misunderstanding
or being misled by the advertizing.

Still, it’s no larger and not much heavier than a book, and it will hold 2.5 million such books in .zip format.

Think for just a moment about how much a terabyte would cost you back in the year 2000, how much power it took, and how hard it would be to fill it up.

Google wouldn’t even announce its “invention” of eBooks for about 5 more years, Project Gutenberg wouldn’t have 10,000 titles for another 2 3/4 years, so just think of the changes we have in store by 2020, the next decade.

We should all be considering getting petabytes if we do have them already by then, and all of the findable book titles that are public domain should have been put into at least some eReadable formats, if not most or all.

It should be simple to hold each word ever published, a billion books of a million pages each, uncompressed and 2.5 billion such titles, using compressed formats which should be the default by then.

However, the rules will likely have been changed again, and perhaps yet again, to stop the public domain and to insure that copyright is more and permanent not so much for the additional few percent in sales, but mostly for the purpose of preserving and protecting:

“The Digital Divide.”

[A minor edit to the opening paragraph has been made by the PG News Editor]

One of our newest projects is to solicit suggestions as to where Project Gutenberg should be in it’s 50th year.  The current suggestions are:

1. Make it more obvious that PG wants error messages–how to write them, where to send them, etc.
2. Make it more obvious that PG will send DVD’s so the people who have to pay by the megabyte can use PG.
3. An extensive library of human read audiobooks.
4. Please make it more obvious how to do PG eBooks for Kindle, Sony, nook, and other eReaders.
5. More current books under Creative Commons licenses. More apps for cellphones.  A model to encourage new writers to share their work in the same spirit. Showcase how people who used to be on the bad sides of various digital divides enjoyed and benefitted.
6. Please add more bookshelves, particularly one to do eBooks from each country and make sure each one has at least one eBook to show how it can be done.
7. Proofread the Top 100 or so downloaded books to the point where we they approach perfection.

As part of the last point above, we are right now looking for volunteers to fine tooth comb the PG eBooks of Alice In Wonderland, Through Looking-Glass & Hunting Of The Snark for errors. So we need as many volunteers as possible to let us know if you would like like to proofread Top Tens.

Continue Reading »

The 5th Annual World eBook Fair hopes to hand out 1 million to 2 million eBooks every day from July 4 to August 4 for a total of 50 million eBooks in a single month.

Once again The World eBook Fair has added over a million new freely downloadable items in a single year to offer you many new items in many new formats, errors corrected, etc.

About a million of these bear smaller resemblance to today’s average eBook, as they have been proofread and formatted for easier reading, search, and research, and many are available in various formats that include cellphones, PDA’s, etc.

Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of eBooks with us July 4th to August 4th. . .Pick Up A Personal eLibrary from 3.7+ million eBooks, not to mention music, movies, artwork, etc.

All you have to do is visit the portal (www.worldebookfair.org) and follow the pointers to the following collections, etc.

The 40th year of eBooks will start on July 4 with 3.5+ million FREE eBooks available.

These books run the range from light to heavy literature and a host of other subjects and have been made available for you by hundreds of eLibraries around the world from extreme polish of The World Public Library’s 750,000 titles to Project Gutenberg with over 100,000 well proofread eBooks to the 2+ million from The Internet Archive.

eBooks will be available in over 100 languages!!!

Continue Reading »

Life+50 Duration Retained

The basic Life+50 copyright term is safe in Canada, at least for now.

There has been considerable pressure from foreign governments for Canada to extend its copyright term, but the Copyright Act revisions unveiled in June left the basic term of copyright unchanged. For this, the government deserves our thanks and congratulations. They have upheld the public interest.

Copyright Extensions for Some Photographs and Audio Recordings

However, harmful copyright extensions for some photographs and audio recordings are proposed in the new Bill C-32, making an unwelcome return. These provisions had been part of Bill C-61, a copyright bill introduced before the last election, but never passed. Now these provisions are back. For an explanation of these changes, and why they are harmful, see the Project Gutenberg Canada submission to last summer’s government-sponsored Copyright Consultations:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/008.nsf/eng/01390.html

Nothing Done to Protect the Public Domain

My submission to the government dealt largely with the issue of works where the life dates of the authors are not known. Such situations are very common, but the Copyright Act makes no provision for them. The preposterous result is that such works have to be 140 years old before we can treat them as being in the public domain. We proposed that specific provision be made for such works, so that they are treated as being part of the public domain after 75 years. It is unlikely that such a provision would have encountered significant opposition had it been proposed. Continue Reading »

Although the iPad has been out in the U.S. for several weeks, today finally sees the day when it’s released in Europe and Australia. Taking a looking over the news sites it seems there’s been a lot of people queuing up to get hold of their own iPad which I guess now makes it big hit everywhere.

So then, you’ve dug deep and forked over hundreds of pounds/dollars/euros for your brand new toy, but you’ve now nothing left in your pocket to go buying books with. Well, no fear, why not go download some free books.

Although iBooks comes with an option to download PG books directly, I wanted to tell you about another eBook project called epubBooks.com, that I’ve been working on.

I’ve taken titles from Project Gutenberg and created some very fine quality EPUB books, many of which include images (when available) and I’ve made all footnotes (endnotes) clickable, so you don’t have to go searching through the text for the appropriate entry. Another click sends you back to the last page you were at.

I spent a lot of time working on the conversion tools so the book coding is very clean and tidy, which means they render very nicely under the iPad iBooks application as well as any other E-Ink reader (Sony Reader, Cybook OPUS, BeBook, etc.) and Apple apps such as Stanza.

As well as free EPUB books, I have a number of eReader reviews and also a resource for finding places to buy EPUB eBooks from (none work directly in iBooks but may do via 3rd party apps).

Transfer EPUB eBooks from epubBooks to the iBooks App

At the moment it doesn’t seem possible to just click a link on my site and have the book load directly into the iBooks App. Therefore, you’ll first need to download the book to your computer. Once you’ve done this just drag the file onto iTunes and then hit the “sync” button. The book will be available in iBooks on your iPad.

I’m constantly adding new titles to the site so hopefully everyone will find something they enjoy.

[Posted on behalf of Marc D'Hooge as requested in the PG Newsletter]

We have two new Project Gutenberg web sites up for testing. I think you will find some interesting additional searching and expanded lists of other eBook sites worth trying out:

http://gutenberg.trulymail.com

and another new effort at:

http://domainunltd.weebly.com/

Details

The goal I’m aiming at with this initiative is twofold.

I’d like to provide as much useful information as possible about e-books (freely) available on the web, where to find them.

And secondly, to offer people the opportunity to help out, producing e-text for PG, in first instance by doing a first round of proofreading on texts I deliver.

People who want to do more are welcome to and can count on help in going through the process from start to finish.

Experienced proofers who enjoy working on a complete book are also very welcome.

[If you wish to get in touch with Marc please contact me and I will forward any messages--MC]

40th Year Special Project!

Improved Support For Our Project Gutenberg Volunteers

As a tribute to our volunteers we would like to make an extraordinary effort to thank them for all their effort over these four decades with a program to make the work less onerous and more easy to do.

If you, or anyone you know, has any suggestions, of how we can make the work go more smoothly, more easily, and improve things for our volunteers in any manner, please answer this article and let us know.

As one particular part of this program I would like for us to create a new kind of “Blue-washers” group for the specific purpose of helping our volunteers with problem areas specific to them. i.e. some volunteers just have one or two specific production areas at which they balk at certain procedures that are insisted upon and that’s all the prevents them from being perfect volunteers. Continue Reading »

ONGOING U.S. COPYRIGHT EXTENSIONS

U.S. COPYRIGHTS TO BE EXTENDED TO 115 YEARS, DECADE BY DECADE FROM THE ORIGINAL 14 YEARS!

THE SUPREME COURT SAYS IT NEVER HAS TO STOP!!!

Suggestions are more than welcome how to publicize this upcoming event before it even starts to happen!!!

Apparently everyone is keeping silent about the various copyright extensions coming up in Canada and the U.S.

In just a few years yet another bill will be introduced in the U.S. Congress to extend copyright that has quite literally been extended from 14 years to 115 years.

Read the previous article on why we need to start before the issue arises.

PG founder Michael Hart and PGLAF CEO Greg Newby will be on the panel for the upcoming symposium, Fifty Years of Public Computing at the University of Illinois, held on the University of Illinois campus. The registration is free but there are limited spaces so if you want to see both Michael and Greg then you’ll need to register quickly.

Participants will discuss the meaning and legacy of ten Illinois projects that shaped public computing, beginning with PLATO in 1960. The innovative founders of these projects, as well as prominent scholars in the field and early users, will discuss Illinois’ special place in the history of public computing, reflect on current and future projects such as the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband (UC2B) proposal, and discuss how to extend this culture of innovation into the future.

These Projects Include;

• PLATO (1960)
• Project Gutenberg (1971)
• Urbana Free Library on the Internet (1984))
• CCNet (1993)
• Mosaic (1993)
• PrairieNet (1994)
• U-C Indymedia Center (1999)
• C-U Wireless Network (2001)
• eToysIllinois (2004) and other recent K-12 teaching projects)

The Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the Department of Computer Science are working in open collaboration to coordinate this event. Participation and support are welcome!

Can anything be done to stop the next U.S. extension or If not stop them, at least publicize them a little?

I should add that this is probably a losing battle even if it looks as if we are winning.

Here’s why:

When the last Australian Copyright Act was discussed in Parliament, they passed a resolution stating they would not extend copyrights.

Really.

However, just three years later, under economic warfare from, shall we just say, outside sources, they crumbled to the pressure and gave in.

The Canadian Parliament is currently in that position–and while some tell me they have enough signatures from those against any extensions, I will bet you lunch that they, too, crumble before it is over.

I would gladly lose every one of those wagers!!!

Further Information Continue Reading »