Poject Gutenberg has reached Goal

[Edlin]

Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/) announced yesterday that it had reached its long-standing goal of releasing 10,000 free titles to the Internet, and that it would soon also release a DVD of most of these titles.
Founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and built and maintained by hundreds of volunteers, Project Gutenberg is the longest-running project producing and distributing online books. It's also one of the Net's largest and best-known such projects. Its mission, according to its stated history and philosophy, is to "make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search."

Gutenberg's output has expanded greatly recently, with half of the 10,000 titles released in the last 18 months. Much of the surge has been due to the work of the Distributed Proofreaders project, the Gutenberg Radio project for computer-generated audio editions, and Gutenberg Australia, the first of what may be several non-US-based Gutenberg branches. (The surge has been strong enough that The Online Books Page has fallen a few months behind in listing Gutenberg titles, but we hope to close this gap before long.) Along with new releases, Gutenberg has also re-released a number of older titles with new formats and corrections from volunteers, which the project is always interested in receiving.

Michael Hart, still directing the project after 32 years, also announced that nearly all of these titles would be released on a single DVD shortly. (The only titles left off would be the human genome data and the audio books, for space reasons, and the Gutenberg Australia releases, for copyright reasons.)

With its original goal now met, Gutenberg has no intention of slowing down. Michael Hart ultimately hopes that all public domain books (and as many copyrighted books as possible) will eventually be available through Gutenberg, and is now contemplating what milestones to aim for next.

Congratulations to Project Gutenberg and all its volunteers! And I look forward to seeing title #1,000,000 someday.

Go Gutenberg!

[bryus]

Very cool! :cool:

Now if we can just stop congress from continuing to grant unlimited copyright extensions we can possibly increase the number of books available for conversion to Gutenberg. :mad:

[vegheadjones]

Now if we can just stop congress from continuing to grant unlimited copyright extensions we can possibly increase the number of books available for conversion to Gutenberg

You hit the nail on the head. I don't see why decendents and strangers should hoard the literature that affects us all.

[bryus]

Originally posted by vegheadjones
You hit the nail on the head. I don't see why decendents and strangers should hoard the literature that affects us all.

Because they pay congress to make laws that continue their stranglehold on intellectual property they have no moral right to hold onto.

Here (http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/editorial/copyrights_and_wrongs.php) is a little info on the subject

[vegheadjones]

You're exactly right, Byrus. I should rephrase what I wrote to, "I don't see why we allow decendents and strangers to hoard the literature that affects us all."

Copyright extensions are an outrage!

[Omnitron]

Blame it all on Mickey Mouse.... He'd be public domain if it weren't for the extensions.... and Disney can't have him going free...

[bryus]

Originally posted by Omnitron
Blame it all on Mickey Mouse.... He'd be public domain if it weren't for the extensions.... and Disney can't have him going free...

Absolutely. One of the most vocal opponets of the Sonny Bono extension has a sort of "Free Mickey" campaign.

I just think it is fair for a creater of his works to retain the rights to those works until their death. I also think it is fair for their heirs to retain those rights for a few years, say, 20-40. But, beyond that, forget it.

It is really just a bunch of greedy corporations who own the rights to things they did not produce and want to profit from them. Yet, most of Disney's popular animated stories are based on expired copyrights. They just do the story and suddenly Cinderella, Snow White, etc are "Disney" stories. :rolleyes:

[Edlin]

Interesting read.
I have a lot more sympathy for the descendants keeping the copyright a bit longer (ie if I wrote a famous figure, I like to know it would help my daughter out after I died). But my grandkids should learn how to cope by themselves ;) 70 years after death is too long imo.

I think its a real bugger that companies keep the copyright so long (ie mickey). Man, that mouse should be public domain by now.

I agree with that article re it stiffling copyright. Hard to imagine what would happen if Disney had to get imaginative.
(ps for an interesting sidetrack on the dark side of Disney <http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Disney.html>)

[rfox]

Bahh....if you look at the copyright information on books, you'll find most copyrights are granted to the publisher, not the author.
The history of the American copyright laws were first established to protect the publishers' interests, not the authors' rights.