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It's not an inalienable right if the government can "alienate" it at will.

That's a misunderstanding of what an inalienable right is, as far as I can tell. The concept is explained in Leviathan http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3207

If you do a text search for "alienable", the first result takes you to the following:
Not All Rights Are Alienable
Whensoever a man Transferreth his Right, or Renounceth it; it is either in consideration of some Right reciprocally transferred to himselfe; or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act: and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some Good To Himselfe. And therefore there be some Rights, which no man can be understood by any words, or other signes, to have abandoned, or transferred. As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himselfe. The same may be sayd of Wounds, and Chayns, and Imprisonment; both because there is no benefit consequent to such patience; as there is to the patience of suffering another to be wounded, or imprisoned: as also because a man cannot tell, when he seeth men proceed against him by violence, whether they intend his death or not. And lastly the motive, and end for which this renouncing, and transferring or Right is introduced, is nothing else but the security of a mans person, in his life, and in the means of so preserving life, as not to be weary of it. And therefore if a man by words, or other signes, seem to despoyle himselfe of the End, for which those signes were intended; he is not to be understood as if he meant it, or that it was his will; but that he was ignorant of how such words and actions were to be interpreted.

A few paragraphs further on:
A Mans Covenant Not To Defend Himselfe, Is Voyd
A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is alwayes voyd. For (as I have shewed before) no man can transferre, or lay down his Right to save himselfe from Death, Wounds, and Imprisonment, (the avoyding whereof is the onely End of laying down any Right,) and therefore the promise of not resisting force, in no Covenant transferreth any right; nor is obliging. For though a man may Covenant thus, "Unlesse I do so, or so, kill me;" he cannot Covenant thus "Unless I do so, or so, I will not resist you, when you come to kill me." For man by nature chooseth the lesser evill, which is danger of death in resisting; rather than the greater, which is certain and present death in not resisting. And this is granted to be true by all men, in that they lead Criminals to Execution, and Prison, with armed men, notwithstanding that such Criminals have consented to the Law, by which they are condemned.

So having an inalienable right to life, for example, does not mean the government can never kill you, it means you can't be understood to be bound to an agreement that costs you your life. It is in "CHAPTER XIV OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURALL LAWES, AND OF CONTRACTS".

1984 was on Gutenberg? Like Project Gutenberg? It doesn't seem to be there now. Or anything by Orwell. (Or Eric Blair.)

Maybe you're in Canada? His works seem to be public domain there.--sabre86

1984 was on Gutenberg? Like Project Gutenberg? It doesn't seem to be there now. Or anything by Orwell. (Or Eric Blair.)

Maybe you're in Canada? His works seem to be public domain there.--sabre86

1984 was on Gutenberg? Like Project Gutenberg? It doesn't seem to be there now. Or anything by Orwell. (Or Eric Blair.)

Maybe you're in Canada? His works seem to be public domain there.--sabre86

From my understanding, the books are out of print, not necessarily out of copyright. If they are out of copyright, you might well be able to get a free copy from Project Gutenberg, but if you you want it neatly bound and printed, Amazon will send it to you. This is the case with Notes On Nursing - you can get it here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12439. Maybe the U of Mich version is better edited, formatted, etc; there are lots of ways to improve on Project Gutenberg books. If they are merely out of print, I guess they will have some way for copyright holders to either get paid or be able to stop the printing.

Project Gutenberg?

Why does an "underprivileged" family need resources at all? We're talking public schools here.

BWAHAHAHA!

I get it now, you're joking, right?

Test results usually work pretty well in figuring out who is or is not capable of the "intellectual track".

Have a read of The Measurement of Intelligence. The system you propose isn't new, it's eugenics. Choice quote:
"Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master abstractions, but they can often be made efficient workers, able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding."

Either the kid can or can't perform, and if he can't, it shouldn't matter how much money his parents have.

Some people would regard performance in school is a poor indicator of human wholeness. Schools are essentially a factory system, with the students being the product. No matter how good you make the school, some kids aren't going to fit the mould. That is not necessarily indicating anything bad about that child, it is an inevitability based on the individuality of people and the impossibility of making a mass schooling system that caters to every individual. If you are one of the children who doesn't fit the mould, do you have a responsibility to accept your "bad" label or warp your personality to fit the factory school? Or do you have a right to set your own path if the one handed to you doesn't work for you?

Just make school non-compulsory. The kids who are "bad" won't go. Those who just don't fit in can go and find something else to do. No need for "bad" kids to be locked up in what amounts to detention centres in the name of school. Most people wouldn't tolerate a compulsory system equivalent to school for the adult population, it's time we woke up to the fact that just because we're doing to children doesn't make it ok.

What?

ac :)

Lone Star Planet?

The problem is not the lack of time spent on creativity, it is a lack of creativity from schooling. Most attackers find creative ways to get into systems because they taught themselves. they only have an objective and no process they have to follow. Many security professionals learned process of coding and of doing things and think they need to follow it. The professionals need to think like the attackers, in order to defend against them. It is like using a tiger team to test your network, they can fix your network the best cause they are thinking of ways to break into it first.

You hit the nail right on the head! It's like a war where one side is using traditional war tactics, and the other side are guerilla freedom fighters. The tendency of a large military organization is to see the war as a problem of engineering and management, whereas the guerilla freedom fighters are willing to do whatever it takes out think and thwart their enemy, and part of guerilla mindset is, "even though we're outmanned and outequipped, we can still win if we sit here and think of ways to beat our enemy."

Security is like war: you have to out-think and out-manuever your opponent, even if your rag-tag army of freedom fighters is out-equipped and out-manned. All security analysts should be required to run The Art of War.

The Jungle, published 1906. Boss Hog, published 2006. The meat industry is still grotesque.

What about Project Gutenberg?

Yes, it's been rotating at 7,200 orbits per minute, ever since I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg three years ago.
Assuming it's on a 3" platter (3-1/4"hard drive), I wonder how many miles it has traveled in three years?
(SLASHDOT CHALLENGE)

In any event, I still haven't gotten past chapter one. And some folk here actually suggest I move on to Finnegan's Wake! What cheekiness!

This is how sites like Project Gutenberg work; they ask people to type up the text of works that are out of copyright, and they put the words online formatted differently from any printed version.

Project Gutenburg asks you to scan in your books. That's one copy; then they store a copy on their server, 2 copies. Then when digitising they have individuals grab copies of a substantial part, at least 3 copies. They also say in their FAQ - http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Scanning_FAQ#S.21._Will_PG_store_scanned_page_images_of_my_book.3F - that they now keep image copies for reproduction purposes. So I think your analysis is wrong here.; they appear to not readily offer image reproductions simply for practical reasons. They also recommend suing Archive.org for hosting higher quality image reproductions (they certainly wouldn't do that, and not get sued, if they knew that such images were copyright).

Yes, if the packaging of the textual content requires particular skill and artistry then copyright may be granted in the manner of presentation of an expired work if that manner is sufficiently original and creative. Copyright can certainly be granted in any new "work" that is created to accompany the original text (foreword, synopsis, margin notes, etc.) - this may be the copyright that your "out of copyright" book has, the picture on the cover, etc..

I suspect the library boilerplate text wording to be subtly different to that claimed - claiming a book is still copyright is going to be plainly wrong in many instances where you order an old book. The owner of that copy of the book however may be licensing your use of _that_copy_. If I own a particular copy of a work I can license your use of that particular copy and not allow you to make a further copy from that particular one - I own the physical item after all. You don't have to agree to the license - I'll just refrain from letting you look at it then. This is not a copyright issue however. If my neighbour has the same book I can't stop him from giving you a copy of his, nor from you then printing and selling a copy.

In summary they don't have a copyright on that particular edition, but possibly through ownership are licensing it, or are claiming copyright on the "chrome" around the original work.

Congratulations; you've discovered Project Gutenberg.

Technically, you are only bound by Gutenberg's license terms if you leave the license in place. According to their page on licensing, specifically on Public Domain works, it says,--

A Project Gutenberg ebook is made out of two parts: the public domain book and the non public domain Project Gutenberg trademark and license. If you strip the Project Gutenberg license and all references to Project Gutenberg from the ebook, you are left with a public domain ebook. You can do anything you want with that.

So, where exactly does Project Gutenberg come into this "stealing the public domain" thing? No modification to the work has been made save to prefix it with a trademark and license--and without internal changes to the document no further copyright is granted. For the full legalese please see section 1.E of the license.

Clueless. Read this essay by Michael Hart, who founded Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is all about ideals and idealism: making public domain works infinitely available for anyone who wants them for all time. Combating things like this is definitely falls within these ideals.

What we need is for someone to create a program, open source of course, where people can create text files of public domain works, submit said works and then those who have the program, can download those works they want and forever have access to them.

Too bad no one's ever thought of that.

.

Meat packing? Do you really think government regulations has made food safer, or market forces?

Required reading for anyone who wants to answer this question: The Jungle, the book that was probably responsible more than anything else for the creation of the present-day FDA.

When the library of classic works available so dwarfs what you can expect to complete in a mere few years anyway?

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Because not all literature is also good to read ;)

It's not a textbook, and it's not meant to be. So why are you comparing the two?

Read Workaphobia's perceptive comment again because I think you missed the point and we might in fact agree. W's comment, along with Bradbury's opinion of the Internet, is what lead to the comparison of Wikipedia (a tiny subset of the Internet) with books (though not just textbooks).

You're succinctly correct, an encyclopedia is not a textbook (though I'd say Wikipedia, even with its shortcomings and sometimes biased articles and moderators, still beats many dead-tree encyclopedia articles written by biased editors and some textbook chapters in quite a few ways). The minor point was a comparison of reading for a length of time, and choosing between disjointed articles and a sustained-topic book--with which one do you learn more? This question, interesting as it is, is too broad to answer generally; unless you consider "sometimes one, sometimes the other" an answer.

The main point is the world needs curious-minded people whom pursue their interests in a variety of ways, including Internet haters (e.g. Mr. Bradbury, if he really is so) whom exclusively prefer libraries and books even though the Internet includes many books, and some who prefer the Internet, and some who prefer both. And to add another group, some use neither (I have a friend who refuses to read anything except what's required for work; and not unlike /., she can be interesting, insightful, and trollish).

When the library of classic works available so dwarfs what you can expect to complete in a mere few years anyway?

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Except that the old saying was originally to do with physical possibilities and team effort.

The old saying is attributed to GB Shaw, from "Maxims for Revolutionists" (1903). The original quote is "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches," and it originally had to do with "Education."

You cite no source for your claim, which seems to be cut out of whole cloth.

Well according to Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, "If, however, a contraceptive is not used and the sperm meets the ovule and development begins, any attempt at removing it or stopping its further growth is called abortion."

So, even she admitted that what they would be doing in this situation ought properly be called an abortion.

Chemistry would work the best since there are so many obvious constants.

Rather than spoil the ending of the classic sci-fi short story Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper, I'll just post a link - it's a short read, like the label says. (A team of explorers on Mars find a dead civilization, complete with an utterly untranslatable library of books....)

The purpose of copyright according to the US Constitution is: [emphasis mine]

to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to inventors the exclusive right to their respective discoveries

-USPTO US Constitution Article 1, Section 8

So: if copyright is extended why is it extended in the past tense to the benefit of licensees who create nothing rather than creators? They have paid for the right to the work or creation as it was and they'll pay no more for the increase - what is the social benefit of increasing their monopoly on it? Why do the extra years of protection not by default fall to the creators? This does not increase the incentive of an author to create -- the creator of the work or invention since licensed profits not at all from the extension. This isn't about motivating the creative to create. It's simple theft of the common wealth of culture for the benefit of people who had nothing to do with creativity or invention.

If copyright is extended then assigns and licensees ought to be excluded as a matter of course. To increase the benefit of ownership of their non-created libraries adds absolutely no motivation to creation or invention. And perhaps that's the point -- they intend no invention, creation or innovation. They only mean to increase the value of their intellectual property holdings. They have stolen from us a hundred years of culture and intend to provide nothing in return. That's not the purpose of copyright or patent.

I'm all for divesting these criminals of their ill-gotten goods immediately, and apparently the Internet is with me here.

I have no hope that our publicly-funded-campaign politicians will achieve the goal of restoring reason to copyright and patent. What's left is the anarchy of an oppressed people: they will take what's theirs, regardless of an unfair law. So it is that the only effect of the ??AA is to push us further toward anarchy in their pursuit of profits.

Somebody is going to reply that I want to divest the creator of his creation immediately, but I don't. I want to restore the respect that innovation and authorship used to have -- where the common man paid for his book or movie to the benefit of the creator, rather than evading the dire requirements of his publisher and hence escaping his due fee.

There's a graph here somewhere. It's probably a complex 5D curve.

What is the value of Beowulf? As a part of English literature it's a priceless treasure. As a movie plot it seems to be worth a good bit. As a secret? About the $0 you refer to.

Art is supposed to become culture. That's its job. Laws like this one prevent prevent our culture from being useful to all of us when stuff like this happens.

There's a graph here somewhere. It's probably a complex 5D curve.

What is the value of Beowulf? As a part of English literature it's a priceless treasure. As a movie plot it seems to be worth a good bit. As a secret? About the $0 you refer to.

Art is supposed to become culture. That's its job. Laws like this one prevent prevent our culture from being useful to all of us when stuff like this happens.

It's an illegal restraint of trade under US antitrust law. It's not "monopoly", which is sell-side, it's "monopsony", which is buy-side.

Farmers classically face monopsony situations. This was much worse when most farm products moved only by rail. When there was only one buyer with a rail loading facility in an area, farmers were really screwed. That's why there are so many farmer's cooperatives in the US, and USDA efforts to control monopsonies. For what it was like before that, see "A Deal In Wheat", from 1903.

They have long looked upon the US mainland with envious eyes.

... and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

With 2Gb to play with, you could even go audio-book.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Audio_Books_Project

Maybe put some books on them?

I checked, Dickens' A Christmas Carol is on there ;-)

I'm sure they'd appreciate a donation if you do. They do a great job.

Sure, no problem. It's plenty worthy. I guess I'll just answer the questions first, make a couple of clarifications, and then express how I feel about the whole thing.

The book I was talking about was The Jungle, which this conversation has inspired me read again: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/140/140-h/140-h.htm. The "leader" thing was me being snarky about Ron Paul (sorry if that was a rhetorical question).

The government-funded research comment was actually in response to your statement about government's role in science. I have personally been affected by private interests trying to shut off data from citizens, for the privilege of selling it back to us. Btw, getting government out of research would have some pretty dramatic consequences. They don't just provide a lot of dollars for research in general, they do the type of research that business can't: research without short-term reward.

Regarding media ownership: Yes. I was actually alluding to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which killed off ownership rules for good (they had been slowly eroding since the 1980s anyway). The reasoning from proponents of the "Regulatory Relief" (Title IV) was that there would be more competition (and with it more diversity of opinion), better local coverage, and better prices in a freer marketplace. Of course, the opposite happened; there was massive consolidation. The ownership rules had served our country really well, and it's hard to look back and say we did the right thing with the deregulation.

I think my first response to you was to demonstrate that fears about the free market can be rational. Each item was either an example of people resisting a free market doctrinaire force to positive effect, or an example of a free market initiative turning out badly. Historically, arguments from business have sometimes been eerily similar.

That I disagree with your premise may not tell the whole story. What I was really saying was that the premise was too broad to be strictly true.

My feelings about the role of government are pretty moderate from a global perspective. All it requires is a step back from the belief that the free market solution is always preferable to a governmental one, or that smaller-scale solutions (Federalism) are always better than central government solutions.

This is where I get to the most heretical of my opinions. Ron Paul and Antonin Scalia are probably technically correct about the commerce clause. But to me, that doesn't make a difference because I do not believe that the Fathers were magic. They were, however, wise enough to establish amending the Constitution; and they were wise enough to set up the judicial branch of government to interpret the Constitution through changes in history, culture, and language.

(Btw, they're probably right about the 2nd Amendment, too. But consider that the rifled barrel was cutting-edge technology at the time.)

Federal agencies such as the EPA, CDC, FDA, NIH, FEMA, while technically not described by the commerce clause, are no longer optional. Technology's changed, understanding of disease has changed, the scale of manufacturing has changed. NOAA (DOC), DOE, SEC, DOT and FTC, though they actually deal in commerce, probably also have activities that the Founders didn't intend.

So, summary about the Constitutionalism: The process of amending the Constitution has been problematic. As a nation, we deviated from the doctrine only because we had to. At several points in history, it was either do that or let people die. This pragmatism extends to our central bank...er, I mean Federal Reserve :). Strict Constitutionalism takes us back to at least 1860, which wasn't a particularly fun time to be alive (especially if you were black).

Regarding the special role of government, I believe it is much less of an issue than some claim. As long as we remain a

If you want to see what BO really thinks about the military, see what Tommy has to say about it. It's just as true now as it was when it was written.

It is difficult to imagine how the text-only English translation of the Kama Sutra could be considered porn by anyone who has not spent the last 20 years in a Skinner box.

skinner box...now that sounds like porn.

It is difficult to imagine how the text-only English translation of the Kama Sutra could be considered porn by anyone who has not spent the last 20 years in a Skinner box. Today, it is probably best understood as an interesting piece of history, since its contents are neither especially informative or titillating.

Of course, if some of the reviewers at Apple have spent the last 20 years in a Skinner box, that would explain a number of the bogus rejections.

Sure it was the prevailing opinion of the day. Look at Darwin's own racist views:
    here and here, too

By the way, if you look at Wikipedia on Darwin, whomever wrote this takes a biased, opposing view. However, it is well known (and well documented) that Darwin was a racist who believed that these were lower species of humans that must be exterminated! Today's spin doctors, however, want this issue of Darwin's racism to go away.

How many know today that Darwin's original title to Origin of the Species was On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life? You can read it, here.

His views were even clearer in The Descent of Man.

On the other hand, he didn't believe in slavery, which is good.

It has also been said that Adolf Hitler used Social Darwinism to exterminate millions of people in WWII. While that's not Darwin's fault, Hitler was being consistent to Darwin's viewpoints.

What makes you think substituting meanings/definitions for terms isn't part of logic or proof? In doing a mathematical proof, substituting definitions/equivalent conditions is often half the battle.

Since progress has to be progress towards something,, an increase in something which is good, it makes no sense to talk, as so many over the past century and a half have, about universal progress unless we have a clear idea of what is good, i.e. unless we have answers to the moral questions.

He's not saying that anything is subjective (much of what enters into our modern (mis-)use of that term is the hardened byproduct of centuries of philosophical confusions since Descartes, a kind of dental tartar of thought- see Wittgenstein or Heidegger for more on that). He's complaining that society has (partly by dismissing questions about what is right or moral or just or true or beautiful as "subjective") given up on understanding what is good but persists in priding itself in being "progressive." I'd really recommend reading through the first two sections of Heretics and its conclusion (Gutenberg text here) for more on ideals, progress, and art.

Nor should our goal be "satisfying a larger portion of the population" - nobody's interested in becoming a nation of lotus-eaters, nor would we think much of an artist who churned out filth because people were buying it.

You ask "show me a work that is not, in fact, an improvement over something that has gone before" - but so many derivative works are obviously inferior to the original work that again I don't know what makes you ask that.

I've not heard anything about poisoning cats, but green tea sourced from China sold in the west contained the toxic pigment Prussian Blue, as discovered by Robert Fortune on his expedition to collect tea plants to start plantations in India. This was at a time when foreigners were forbidden in China, and he risked death by going.

Mr Fortune witnessed the process of colouring them in the Hung-chow green-tea country, and describes the process. The substance used is a powder consisting of four parts of gypsum and three parts of Prussian blue, which was applied to the teas during the last process of roasting.

'During this part of the operation,' he says, 'the hands of the workmen were quite blue. I could not help thinking, that if any green-tea drinkers had been present during the operation, their taste would have been corrected, and, I may be allowed to add, improved. One day, an English gentleman in Shang-hae, being in conversation with some Chinese from the green-tea country, asked them what reasons they had for dyeing the tea, and whether it would not be better without undergoing this process. They acknowledged that tea was much better when prepared without having any such ingredients mixed with it, and that they never drank dyed teas themselves; but justly remarked, that as foreigners seemed to prefer having a mixture of Prussian blue and gypsum with their tea, to make it look uniform and pretty, and as these ingredients were cheap enough, the Chinese had no objections to supply them, especially as such teas always fetched a higher price!'

Read the section called The Tea Countries of China in the file below for more of the story. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20792/20792-8.txt

Artists don't believe they're entitled to be paid until death + 70 years. They believe they and their children ought to be paid if their work continues to be valued.

If it isn't valued, then are entitle to nothing and they get nothing.

But if it is valued, then why can't those that value it give something back in return?

So if I want to perform this little piece should I pay Haydn's estate? In 300 years will our children be able to freely perform and share our music the way I can Mussorgsky or Vivaldi or any of the other pre-RIAA artists I enjoy and value? The way things are going it doesn't seem so.

If I create a popular composition should my descendants in 300 years each get a check for a penny every time someone wants to play it? Copyright has no business lasting longer than the average life expectancy: anything more just leads to absurdity. It may even not be a bad idea to limit it to 20 years, maybe 50 at most.

Disclaimer: Most of the music I like was made before 1980.
Disclaimer for the disclaimer: I actually prefer to purchase quality CDs and create my own FLAC rips rather than bittorrent everything.
Disclaimer for the disclaimer for the disclaimer: I wouldn't have found interesting things like ELP's Pictures at an Exhibition (which I bought two weeks ago) if not for bittorrents/Gnutella/Napster/etc, and ELP's "remix" may not even exist if there were a Mussorgsky Estate. Who knows whether the original Pictures at an Exhibition would have just gone down in obscurity if our current copyright laws existed in 1874. YMMV

A link would be nice.

When are they going to figure out that there are rich text formats that are more accessible to more users than plain text files?

They already did. Search this edition for "How can I have done that".

I expect that Bloomsbury will indeed make a small profit.

There are many books that are sold profitably even though their contents is available in its entirety online and is redistributable. Project Gutenberg has the complete works of Shakespeare online, a text in the public domain that anyone can print. Yet thousands of print copies of these works are sold through bookstores every month. The same can be said of other classic works now in the public domain, as well as some editions of the Bible, and most classical music scores.

I believe this situation is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Unlike audio and video recordings, which by their nature require some type of playback device, books are self-contained and offer certain advantages over even the most advanced and unrestricted reading device.

I expect that Bloomsbury will indeed make a small profit.

There are many books that are sold profitably even though their contents is available in its entirety online and is redistributable. Project Gutenberg has the complete works of Shakespeare online, a text in the public domain that anyone can print. Yet thousands of print copies of these works are sold through bookstores every month. The same can be said of other classic works now in the public domain, as well as some editions of the Bible, and most classical music scores.

I believe this situation is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Unlike audio and video recordings, which by their nature require some type of playback device, books are self-contained and offer certain advantages over even the most advanced and unrestricted reading device.

Robert Hooke's Micrographia. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm

Should be required reading for any student of the sciences.

The Gutenberg project is a good resource for free texts:

http://www.gutenberg.org

Though strictly not a classic "science" book, I'm currently reading Pascal's Pensees, written by one of the great mathematicians in history.

The Gutenberg project is a good resource for free texts:

http://www.gutenberg.org

Though strictly not a classic "science" book, I'm currently reading Pascal's Pensees, written by one of the great mathematicians in history.

C'mon.. from the best selling Author of the Golden Rule. "The Critique of Pure Reason" Immanual Kant

It is not the easiest read, but the discussion of the nature of scientific thought is provoking.

How do you know when it is really science? How can you be so sure? Slash-dotters are so sure.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4280

1. Nicolaus Copernicus "On the Revolutions of [the] Heavenly Spheres" (1543)

2. Galileo Galilei "Dialogues [or Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations] Concerning Two [New] Sciences" (1638)

3. Johannes Kepler Book Five of "Harmonies of the World" (1618)

4. Sir Isaac Newton "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (1687)

5. Albert Einstein "The Principles of Relativity: A Collection of Original Papers on the Special Theory of Relativity" (1922)

I am not certain how easy it is to "capture" HTML to read on the Kindle later but here are some decent translations in English if you want them.

Einstein's relativity paper is free:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5001

Tom A. Swift and his Electric Rifle