The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter March 3, 2004
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 1
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News and Comment
3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
4) Mailing list information
Editorial
Hello,
Well, following a very exciting Thursday watching the Posted list to
find out just how many books and languages would arrive from DP-EU we
have the answer below, along with a small summary of one of the many
events Michael Hart attended whilst in Europe and the letter 'U' makes
an appearance. All resemblance to Sesame Street ends at this point!
We also have some reader correspondence on the Australian copyright
issue. We would be interested to hear more.
Happy reading,
Alice
Send feedback and suggestions to the newsletter editor at: news at pglaf.org
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2) News and Comment
Project Gutenberg at the European Parliament
Below we present a summary written by Arnaud Herve.
A meeting was held yesterday in H1, about the Project Gutenberg, which
is basically the main free library on Internet.
Project Gutenberg concerns litterature, philosophy, sciences works,
etc. , not exactly software, and in that sense it is more akin to the
Creative Commons license topic than to alternative exploitation
systems for example.
The meeting was chaired by MP Johanna Boogerd, and the main speaker
was Michael Hart, American founder of project Gutenberg. I was warmly
welcomed without even having to mention my political group.
Michael Hart made me reflect on how much this endeavour was
ideologically related to the first days of Internet, at that precise
dawn when the network was supposed to serve knowledge as its main
purpose, and was seen as a huge and better library. I think we should
be a bit conservative/nostalgic in that extent.
Michael Hart made a convincing speech about how the public domain for
written works is threatened by corporate interests, who would like to
extend copyrights to eternity.
He and some European counterparts mentioned another project, that of
translating a huge amount of books. I am much more doubtful about
that, I have been a professional translator and I can tell the software
solutions that were mentioned won't work. I also think they are
losing valuable time here, and should concentrate first on getting
all the public domain works published in their original language.
To put it short, I propose the Gutenberg team should be contacted in
the scope of our present efforts about software patents and that kind
of stuff, and that the Johanna Boogerd team in the EP should be
registered as a honourable contact by the Green group.
Arnaud HERVE
Mr Herve is an assistant at the European Parliament.
Many thanks to the people on the PG-EU mailing list for keeping us
informed of events.
Readers Correspondence
>From Andy Templeton
Hello,
Like most who read that the US - Australia free trade deal effectively
'steals' all of the PG Australia books from the public, starting in January, I
was disgusted! But I also remember reading a notice in the weekly newsletter
that PG Canada was soon going to start up. I believe that Canada still
follows the 50+ rule for copyright. That being the case, wouldn't it
be possible to transfer all the PG Aus. books to the new PG Can. site
once it is up and running? If so, I would like to recommend that the
PG Aus. books be somehow marked to indicate that these books were
'stolen' from the Australian public by their government at the behest
of the US government. These books should forever carry a notice of
shame for the Australian government for this crime so that it is never
forgotten.
It is very difficult to explain to the general public why the 'copyright
extension ad nauseum' practice of governments should greatly concern them. It
seems like such a hypothetical argument when you can't actually point to any
specific book that has been lost as a result of such legislation. But here we
have a very specific case of well over 300 books that will be taken away from
the public -- retroactively no less!
How can our governments shake their collective fingers at those who
illegally copy mp3 files while they themselves steal books from the public? What
nerve!
Best regards,
Andy Templeton
If you have any comments to make about this subject or Andy's idea
please feel free to forward them to the newsletter at news AT
pglaf.org
Posting by Distributed Proofreaders
The following books were posted this week to mark the end of their
testing period.
Kameno doba. Jovan Zujovic (Serbian)
Sekund vecnosti. Dragutin J. Ilic (Serbian)
Tymmmmmmiehen vaimo. by Minna Canth (Finnish)
Lehtori Hellmanin vaimo. by Minna Canth (Finnish)
Jan van Huysums Blomsterstykke. by Henrik Wergeland (Norwegian)
Juhana Herttuan ja Catharina Jagellonican lauluja. by Eino Leino (Finnish)
Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine. Edward Harrison
Barker (English)
O cancioneiro portuguez da Vaticana e suas relacoes com outros
cancioneiros dos seculos XIII e XIV. Teophilo Braga (Portuguese)
Les gens de bureau. Emile Gaboriau (French)
La belle Gabrielle, vol. 1 Auguste Maquet (French)
Travels through the empire of Morocco. John Buffa (English)
El la Biblio (Elektitaj Capitroj de la Psalmaro, Sentencoj
de Salomono kaj Predikanto. L. L. Zamenhof (Esperanto)
Diario de la navegacinnn empredida en 1781. Basilio Villarino (Spanish)
La Campagna del 1796. Eugenio Barbarich (Italian)
Vain fortune. George Moore (English)
The Lake. Goerge Moore (English)
Catalanisches Streitgedicht zwischen En Buc und seinem Pferd
Statistical roundup
11711 Total 03/03/04 Week #8 (57/302)
138 New This Week
138 New Last Week
100.50 Weekly Average
492 New This Month
804 New This Year
14.11 Average per day this year
4658 Projected Total for this year
69 New this week last year (02/26/03)
249 New this month last year (Feb)
491 New this year last year (2003)
$ 0.85 Trillion dollar cost/book
$ 1.38 Trillion dollar cost/book last year
7234 Etexts This Week Last Year
8 Production Weeks this Year 44 to go.
57 Production Days this Year 302 to go.
2 Production Months this Year
2384 eBooks in last 6 months (09/03/03 - 03/03/04) 26 weeks (35 - 8)
13.17 Daily Average for the last 6 months (181 production days)
2093 eBooks in the prior 6 months (02/26/03 - 08/27/03) 26 weeks (8 - 34)
11.50 Daily Average for the prior 6 months (182 production days)
5841 eBooks in the last 18 months (09/04/02 - 03/03/04) 78 weeks (35 - 8)
We passed 1/6 of the way from 10k to 20k this week!
-----------------
Also this week, entering a new promotional drive, our very own Brett
Fishburne has created a Project Gutenberg group on the SETIhome
website (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu). Anyone interesting in using
their screensaver to search for aliens can go to the website, join the
effort and then JOIN THE GROUP! Thanks to Brett for this.
Radio Gutenberg Update
www.gutenberg.net/audio
channel 1 - Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four"
channel 2 - Robert Sheckley's "Bad Medicine"
Both are high quality live readings from the collection.
Testing of Radio Gutenberg audio books on demand is currently taking
place.
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3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
A to Z - U
A possibly overlooked letter of the alphabet, 'U' presents us with
some of the most informative and popular choices from the Project
Gutenberg catalogue under the authorship of 'United States'. Here you
can find titles such as 'Copyright Law Of The United States Of America
And Related Laws Contained In Title 17 Of The United States Code,
Circular 92', which is probably mandatory reading for everyone
here. But there are lighter items such as the 'LandSat Picture Of
Washington, DC' and a MPEG Animation 'Motion Picture Of Rotating
Earth', one of our most popular, and probably larger items, is the
'Motion Pictures Of The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing'. This is a really
facinating section of the catalogue so I will save some of the good
bits for further investigation, although in passing I will say if you
want etext 1 this is the place to find it.
You will also find another of those strange authors, 'Unknown'. This
presents us with a real cross-section of books such as '365 Foreign
Dishes' which has been featured in the newsletter cookery club
previously. Many religious texts: New Testament: The Common Edition;
Dhammapada, a collection of verses; being one of the canonical books
of the Buddhists; The Qur'an and Sri Vishnu Sahasranaamam
Sanskrit. Also housed here are a pile of maths texts: The First
100,000 Prime Numbers; The Golden Mean Or Ratio[(1+sqrt(5))/2]; A List
Of Factorial Math Constants; The Number "e"; Second Story of Meno, The
[A Socratic Dialogue Proving the Square Root of 2 Irrational]; The
Square Root of 4 To A Million Places - for which I still await part 2.
Historic tomes are also here: 'Ancient Poems, Ballads, And Songs Of
The Peasantry Of England', The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Codex Junius
11 amongst others. For a little musical entertainment you could do
worse than Moonlight Sonata, by Bellini Ensemble Unique.
Now to book titles and it is impossible to get past 'U' without
mentioning Uarda : A Romance Of Ancient Egypt by Georg Ebers, a ten
volume epic described in the introduction thus "A narrative of
Herodotus combined with the Epos of Pentaur, of which so many copies
have been handed down to us, forms the foundation of the story.
The treason of the Regent related by the Father of history is referable
perhaps to the reign of the third and not of the second Rameses. But it
is by no means certain that the Halicarnassian writer was in this case
misinformed; and in this fiction no history will be inculcated, only as a
background shall I offer a sketch of the time of Sesostris, from a
picturesque point of view, but with the nearest possible approach to
truth. It is true that to this end nothing has been neglected that could
be learnt from the monuments or the papyri; still the book is only a
romance, a poetic fiction, in which I wish all the facts derived from
history and all the costume drawn from the monuments to be regarded as
incidental, and the emotions of the actors in the story as what I attach
importance to."
Also here, amongst classics such as 'Ulysses' and Uncle Tom's Cabin,
we find intriguing titles such as 'Umboo, the Elephant', 'Umbrellas
And Their History', and 'Uncle Remus, his songs and his
sayings'. Finally, a well known author well worth a look 'Utopia Of
Usurers And Other Essays' by G. K. Chesterton. Compared to some
letters 'U' has a smaller niche in the catalogue, but it's well worth
the time to investigate and find some real treasures in here.
Having missed the obvious last week in V is for volunteers, I'll take
this small opportunity to exercise artistic licence and finish with U
is for 'You' and all that 'You' do.
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Credits
Thanks this week to Brett and George for the numbers and the
booklists. The PG-EU mailing listers, Greg, Michael and Larry Wall,
plus the newsletter backroom staff. Entertainment for the workers
provided by BBC 6Music, best wishes to Andrew Collins who has the
'flu.
pgweekly_2004_03_03_part_1.txt
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