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Even better, Project Gutenberg Australia http://gutenberg.net.au/ , which has much looser copyrights. I think public domain there starts in 1954.

Collected Stories - H. P. Lovecraft - Project Gutenberg of Australia

Or here http://gutenberg.net.au/ with some worries of lawlessness depending on which country you are in, but no feelings of guilt.

...say, by emailing everyone in UK a copy of George Orwell's 1984 and a link to GnuPGP.

Yes I know, this is a fantasy. Where would you possibly get all UK email addresses?

---

jamei... is taking bets on how soon until this database is "lost", and appears on ebay :)

Relax, you can be assured that this data will be kept under "strict controls"

Or alternatively... http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

Compare that with Orwell's examples, and you will see that the English language is well used to being raped.

It's out of copyright in Australia and hosted on Gutenberg Australia's site. Fortunately it made it though before the F***edUp Trade Agreement extended copyright and the legislation isn't retrospective.

TFA mentions a larger robotic boat called the "Beagle B". This name sounds suspiciously like someone is paying homage to the Malcolm Jameson story "Children of the Betsy-B" that was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1939.

His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

I think you guys are talking about different parts of the book.

'Naughty Bob' seems to be talking about the actual appendix titled Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak, while 'dazedNconfuzed' seems ( slightly confuzedly :-) ) to be talking about Chapter XVII The Principles of Oligarchical Collectivism.

1984 Full Text

Another good site is http://gutenberg.net.au/ (the au site has some stuff the full one doesn't) I particularly like their sci-fi section, even more particularly their Robert E Howard bit. Mmm, Conan. http://gutenberg.net.au/sfproject.html

Another good site is http://gutenberg.net.au/ (the au site has some stuff the full one doesn't) I particularly like their sci-fi section, even more particularly their Robert E Howard bit. Mmm, Conan. http://gutenberg.net.au/sfproject.html

Yes, but what Universal was saying is that it's the archive's responsibility to limit access to only those scores that people are legally allowed to view.

This is a bizarre stance and I don't believe there's any possible way they could get it upheld (although maybe in the E.U. and in Canada, who knows), but it was enough to scare the site owner into taking the whole thing down.

I can think of a bunch of similarly contentious issues that never were forced to go that route: up until fairly recently, you couldn't export strong crypto out of the U.S. Thus, every site that allowed you to download strong crypto required you to click on a little form certifying that you were a U.S. Citizen or located in the U.S. As long as they did that, they could pass the buck on to the user if they got accused of distributing.

And anyone who wants can go to Project Gutenberg Australia's site and get books that are still under copyright in the U.S. and the E.U., because Australia has managed to stand up to the IP lobbies and retained a death-plus-50 copyright instead of death-plus-70 like the Disney Empire's client states.

Basically, Universal wants to somehow shift liability from the user to the distributor, even though what the distributor is doing is legal, just because it's easier for them to go after distributors. It's stupid, and it's unfortunate that Canada has such a cozy relationship with the E.U. that the site operator felt threatened by their tactics. (A U.S. court, I suspect, would have laughed at a E.U. court's judgment against a U.S. firm for doing something that was legal in the U.S., simply because it was accessible through the internet by people in the E.U.; I don't understand why the Canadian courts would have done it any differently. That a Canadian citizen would feel threatened by that is pretty disgusting.)

People should not be allowed to reference 1984 (or say "Orwellian") unless they've actually read the thing. It describes a totalitarian state that makes Stalin look like a libertarian. It's not just about a government that spies on its people (though only the upper classes). It's about people willfully changing their own memories of the past and a ruling party that claims to control reality. All of this is set in a world of permanent war and grinding poverty for almost all of humanity.

People are right to be concerned about the government spying on them. But most of the intrusions that people are up in arms about is a long way from "1984" territory. Being added to a database every time you drive into Manhattan does raise privacy concerns, but it's many orders of magnitude away from the nightmare Orwell described.

Warning: it's illegal to follow the above Gutenberg Australia link if you live in the U.S. or some other country that has effectively made copyrights permanent. That's a bad thing, but it's not "Orwellian" either.

There are several RFID blocking wallets already on the market. Will students be allowed to block the signal if they don't want to be tracked? This reminds me of those some of those PBS nature shows where a wildlife biologist has tagged a animal with a radio collar and is tracking its movements by radio. It also reminds me of the book "1984."

• RFID Blocking Wallet
• RFID Blocking Passport Billfold
• Stainless Steel Wallets

Can someone explain why copyrights and patents should expire? I'm being serious.

Congress shall have Power
...
To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; ...

Ah, fear is such a good way to control the population, I can see why dictators use it as well. But at least they don't pretend to do this in name of "preserving your freedom", nor do they try to hide that they've placed themselves above the law (watch the video).

Oh yes, it's fun to NOT live in such a democracy..

The effect was that of a Cyclopean city of no architecture known to man or to human imagination, with vast aggregations of night-black masonry embodying monstrous perversions of geometrical laws. There were truncated cones, sometimes terraced or fluted, surmounted by tall cylindrical shafts here and there bulbously enlarged and often capped with tiers of thinnish scalloped disks; and strange beetling, table-like constructions suggesting piles of multitudinous rectangular slabs or circular plates or five-pointed stars with each one overlapping the one beneath. There were composite cones and pyramids either alone or surmounting cylinders or cubes or flatter truncated cones and pyramids, and occasional needle-like spires in curious clusters of five. All of these febrile structures seemed knit together by tubular bridges crossing from one to the other at various dizzy heights, and the implied scale of the whole was terrifying and oppressive in its sheer gigantism. The general type of mirage was not unlike some of the wilder forms observed and drawn by the arctic whaler Scoresby in 1820, but at this time and place, with those dark, unknown mountain peaks soaring stupendously ahead, that anomalous elder-world discovery in our minds, and the pall of probable disaster enveloping the greater part of our expedition, we all seemed to find in it a taint of latent malignity and infinitely evil portent.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

It is on Gutenberg.

No, I am more libertarian.

CC

Bacteriophage has been known about for a long time — long before it was identified as viruses. There's a novel written in 1925 that has a doctor using bacteriophage to fight bubonic plague. So I have to wonder why it's taken this long to develop such an obvious application.

Clicky
Clicky, too

"I thought again of the eldritch primal myths that had so persistently haunted me since my first sight of this dead antarctic world--of the demoniac plateau of Leng, of the Mi-Go..."
-- H.P. Lovecraft,AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

While the Mi-go phone is extremely cool, you might want to wait for the DeepOnes® waterproof model, or the exceptionally cute Tcho-Tcho® version

Then the violence of agitated water ceased; the low trample of hoofs ceased...

Hmm its The Thundering Herd by Zane Grey.

You know, it's kinda-sorta fun to google up where they get the anti-hash text from.

So, what you're telling me is that Apple is NOT really the enemy of Big Brother, but Big Brother in disguise? I'm so confused. How can there be so many truths? The Ministry is supposed to protect us against such confusion by telling us ONLY the truth! If you'll excuse me, I think I need to go watch my telescreen now. Perhaps the truth is there.

Down with Goldstein!

(For those lacking context: Commercial | 1984)

Intrigued by the Sinclair Lewis quote? Check out the Project Gutenberg copy of It Can't Happen Here, his speculative novel about the election of a fascist as U.S. president.

"Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by [the telescreen], moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. "

--George Orwell, 1984

Anyone see a parallel here? A black box that watches everything you do, with no way to know whether what you are doing is ThoughtCrime or not. Way to safeguard my privacy and rights.

You forgot the killing detail: people resurrecting the dead without any independent source confirming this little detail. We're talking Hellenistic Near East here, an educated world with Greek-speaking scholars in every borough. And none of them cared to take note that there was this guy going around, and the blind saw, and the dead lived. Josephus, who could almost count the lice on the head of Cyrus, barely mentions the guy as Yet Another Religious Agitator.

I'm all for religious poetry or art (cf the amazing "Lazarus" by Khalil Gibran), but as far as my left hemisphere is concerned, the BS detector is reaching Himalayesque levels.

Oh, BTW, lest we be accused of Christian-bashing: did you know that apparently Muhammad is supposed to have cut the fscking MOON in half at some point ? No mention of this little trick in any contemporary account either - Persian, Chinese, Indian, Hellenistic (including Egyptian) and Western astronomers apparently went on a collective strike just that night.

Thomas-

Nonsense. Books are far less fragile than any of this digital crap. Drop a book, and nothing bad happens to it (unless you drop it into water). Drop a hard drive, and it's dead. All in all, it is more likely that digitally stored information will be lost forever than a book.

Ok, let's have a contest: which one of us makes a backup of this book faster? You use a physical copy of the book, I'll use the digital version.

::bookworm::

I wonder if they'll be hosting anything in Canada, where the copyrights are only Life+50, instead of Life+70 (Europe) or worse (USA). Last I knew, someone was trying to start up PG Canada...

Project Gutenberg of Australia posts some books that may violate U.S. copyrights.

I wonder if they'll be hosting anything in Canada, where the copyrights are only Life+50, instead of Life+70 (Europe) or worse (USA). Last I knew, someone was trying to start up PG Canada...

Project Gutenberg of Australia posts some books that may violate U.S. copyrights.

I wonder if they'll be hosting anything in Canada, where the copyrights are only Life+50, instead of Life+70 (Europe) or worse (USA). Last I knew, someone was trying to start up PG Canada...

Project Gutenberg of Australia posts some books that may violate U.S. copyrights.

I just looked and easily found it on http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html.

Specificly http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200161.zip

I just looked and easily found it on http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html.

Specificly http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200161.zip

he threat is being made because Project Gutenberg of Australia (link not provided)...

Project Gutenberg of Australia

PGoA's libarary

Gone with the Wind

he threat is being made because Project Gutenberg of Australia (link not provided)...

Project Gutenberg of Australia

PGoA's libarary

Gone with the Wind

he threat is being made because Project Gutenberg of Australia (link not provided)...

Project Gutenberg of Australia

PGoA's libarary

Gone with the Wind

BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ is not under US jurisdiction? It's under australian jurisdiction.
You can see at the adress that you are in an other "country".

If the US are so eager to push their laws into other countries maybe they should join the International Crime Court [ICC] and not avoid it like some vampires the sunlight! I think the ROI at WIPO is better than at the ICC!

Get Gone With the Wind from Gutenberg Australia:
as txt (2.3MB)
as zip

Get Gone With the Wind from Gutenberg Australia:
as txt (2.3MB)
as zip

Are here

You'll find the illegal contraband on this page.

And here are some nyud.net cachelinks to the ebook in question:

Margaret MITCHELL (1900-1949)

• Gone with the Wind (1936)--Text (2.3 mb)--ZIP

Please spread this work far and wide. Also remember that this is the same greedy estate that killed off a great derivative work entitled The Wind Done Gone . This sort of extreme Intellectual Property protectionism is counter-productive to the intent of copyright, and we must put a stop to it.

(posted anonymously to preempt karma-whoring whiners.)

Next ...

Surely the availability of "Mein Kampf" serves as a historical record of how screwed up Hitler really was, thus strengthening human rights? I would like to think that more people will be repelled by the hatred in "Mein Kampf" than will be attracted by it. This majority will then keep the minority in check.

Maybe the French being pissed off with Hitler's writings have more to do with revenge for the German army making them look like fools, when they walked around their Maginot Line, than any real concern for human rights?

Banning books is what one does when one is too apathetic to put the effort into refuting them.

It basically comes down to the French couldn't give a shit about human rights but want to look like they do.

Do not download or read these books online if you are in a country where copyright protections can extend more than 50 years past an author's death.

Among other things you can download Orwell's complete works and The Great Gatsby.

The University of Adeliade has a slicker version of the same texts.

Do not download or read these books online if you are in a country where copyright protections can extend more than 50 years past an author's death.

Among other things you can download Orwell's complete works and The Great Gatsby.

The University of Adeliade has a slicker version of the same texts.

Do not download or read these books online if you are in a country where copyright protections can extend more than 50 years past an author's death.

Among other things you can download Orwell's complete works and The Great Gatsby.

The University of Adeliade has a slicker version of the same texts.

George Orwell said it best in his Politics and the English Language essay. You can find it on Project Guttenberg and other sites, here is the Australian link : http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200151.txt

Personally, when I see such buzz-word-infested langiage, I imagine an avalanche sliding down the mountain valley, long stripped of vegetation to stop it. That is the purpose of such a language - to get you in a programmed channel of thought.

Our australian friends can read Orwell's 1984 at Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Us poor sods in the USA have to wait, what, another 70 years or so? Who knows anymore. It's safer and easier to assume we can't do something than it is to assume that we can...

-Adam

Our australian friends can read Orwell's 1984 at Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Us poor sods in the USA have to wait, what, another 70 years or so? Who knows anymore. It's safer and easier to assume we can't do something than it is to assume that we can...

-Adam

Hell, its public domain (at least in Australia). YOu could erad it right here --> http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt