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The circumvention must be unauthorized.

Gee, guess Dr. Felten should've just gone ahead and presented in his first go 'round, when the RIAA sent him a nastygram outlining the DMCA.

Vote counts are facts, which cannot be copyrighted.

And legal opinions are public record, which also can't be copyrighted, but damned if that doesn't stop Lexis/Nexis from going after anyone and everyone who looks like they might derail the gravy train.

It could also get Sklyarov off the hook if a significant number of classic (i.e. pre-1923) books are published in eBook form.

That would be BEAUTIFUL, but sadly, it's not the case. Amazon couldn't find enough people to con into buying encrypted ebooks for texts that Project Gutenberg makes available for free. Hell, not even AOL, with its seemingly bottomless well of cluebies could pull that one off.

He led the way accordingly to a splendid pavilion, where was
everything that royal luxury could devise. De Vaux, who was in
attendance, then removed the chappe (CAPA), or long riding-cloak,
which Richard wore, and he stood before Saladin in the close
dress which showed to advantage the strength and symmetry of his
person, while it bore a strong contrast to the flowing robes
which disguised the thin frame. of the Eastern monarch. It was
Richard's two-handed sword that chiefly attracted the attention
of the Saracen--a broad, straight blade, the seemingly unwieldy
length of which extended well-nigh from the shoulder to the heel
of the wearer.

"Had I not," said Saladin, "seen this brand flaming in the front
of battle, like that of Azrael, I had scarce believed that human
arm could wield it. Might I request to see the Melech Ric strike
one blow with it in peace, and in pure trial of strength?"

"Willingly, noble Saladin," answered Richard; and looking around
for something whereon to exercise his strength, he saw a steel
mace held by one of the attendants, the handle being of the same
metal, and about an inch and a half in diameter. This he placed
on a block of wood.

The anxiety of De Vaux for his master's honour led him to whisper
in English, "For the blessed Virgin's sake, beware what you
attempt, my liege! Your full strength is not as yet returned
--give no triumph to the infidel."

"Peace, fool!" said Richard, standing firm on his ground, and
casting a fierce glance around; "thinkest thou that I can fail in
HIS presence?"

The glittering broadsword, wielded by both his hands, rose aloft
to the King's left shoulder, circled round his head, descended
with the sway of some terrific engine, and the bar of iron rolled
on the ground in two pieces, as a woodsman would sever a sapling
with a hedging-bill.

"By the head of the Prophet, a most wonderful blow!" said the
Soldan, critically and accurately examining the iron bar which
had been cut asunder; and the blade of the sword was so well
tempered as to exhibit not the least token of having suffered by
the feat it had performed. He then took the King's hand, and
looking on the size and muscular strength which it exhibited,
laughed as he placed it beside his own, so lank and thin, so
inferior in brawn and sinew.

"Ay, look well," said De Vaux in English, "it will be long ere
your long jackanape's fingers do such a feat with your fine
gilded reaping-hook there."

"Silence, De Vaux," said Richard;"by Our Lady, he understands or
guesses thy meaning--be not so broad, I pray thee."

The Soldan, indeed, presently said, "Something I would fain
attempt--though wherefore should the weak show their inferiority
in presence of the strong? Yet each land hath its own exercises,
and this may be new to the Melech Ric." So saying, he took from
the floor a cushion of silk and down, and placed it upright on
one end. "Can thy weapon, my brother, sever that cushion?" he
said to King Richard.

"No, surely," replied the King; "no sword on earth, were it the
Excalibur of King Arthur, can cut that which opposes no steady
resistance to the blow."

"Mark, then," said Saladin; and tucking up the sleeve of his
gown, showed his arm, thin indeed and spare, but which constant
exercise had hardened into a mass consisting of nought but bone,
brawn, and sinew. He unsheathed his scimitar, a curved and
narrow blade, which glittered not like the swords of the Franks,
but was, on the contrary, of a dull blue colour, marked with ten
millions of meandering lines, which showed how anxiously the
metal had been welded by the armourer. Wielding this weapon,
apparently so inefficient when compared to that of Richard, the
Soldan stood resting his weight upon his left foot, which was
slightly advanced; he balanced himself a little, as if to steady
his aim; then stepping at once forward, drew the scimitar across
the cushion, applying the edge so dexterously, and with so little
apparent effort, that the cushion seemed rather to fall asunder
than to be divided by violence.

"It is a juggler's trick," said De Vaux, darting forward and
snatching up the portion of the cushion which had been cut off,
as if to assure himself of the reality of the feat; "there is
gramarye in this."

The Soldan seemed to comprehend him, for he undid the sort of
veil which he had hitherto morn, laid it double along the edge of
his sabre, extended the weapon edgeways in the air, and drawing
it suddenly through the veil, although it hung on the blade
entirely loose, severed that also into two parts, which floated
to different sides of the tent, equally displaying the extreme
temper and sharpness of the weapon, and the exquisite dexterity
of him who used it.

You know, that's a damned good idea. Gentlemen, Herman Mellville's masterpeice Moby Dick provided for your reading pleasure by project Gutenberg.

• censorship-resistant publishing systems, why they are important
• Freenet, vs. Publius
• Gnutella, vs. Publius
• HTTP, Publius implemented over protocol
• Publius, documents, deleting/updating
• Publius, implemented over HTTP
• Publius, vs. Freenet
• Publius, vs. Gnutella
• Publius, why it is important
• Publius URL, tamper-check mechanism
• tamper-check mechanism (Publius URL)

There has been some recent public criticism of Gnutella because it might give child pornography a place to thrive. I am happy to report, however, that those who traffic in child porn will be no safer using Gnutella than they are anywhere else. That's because the users are not anonymous.

Gnutella requires IP addresses in order to make a connection between a site with a file and a site that wants a file. The host IP address is shown as part of the search results in Gnubile, and probably in other clones as well. Ergo, anyone offering files with names that identify the files as child porn is bound to attract the attention of the authorities

Now bear in mind that Google couldn't even come up with the phrase, however much I +'d it to death, on its top ten list. If I only have that one phrase in memory on Google, I can't find it.

The problem is that you +'ed it too much. If you search for +"+but +that +the +dread" you'll notice that it gives you some warnings. Google's ignoring all of the +'s you added, because you're using some of them incorrectly. ("dread" is not a stop word, for example)

Instead, try searching for "but +that +the dread". Then you'll get what you're looking for.

Now bear in mind that Google couldn't even come up with the phrase, however much I +'d it to death, on its top ten list. If I only have that one phrase in memory on Google, I can't find it.

The problem is that you +'ed it too much. If you search for +"+but +that +the +dread" you'll notice that it gives you some warnings. Google's ignoring all of the +'s you added, because you're using some of them incorrectly. ("dread" is not a stop word, for example)

Instead, try searching for "but +that +the dread". Then you'll get what you're looking for.

Katz sezs: These changes have made meatpacking -- once a highly skilled, well-paid trade -- into the most dangerous job in the U.S. ...

Ever heard of a little book called The Jungle?

You know, I don't want to jump on any anti-Katz bandwagon, but this illustrates his worst propensities: grandiose generalizations with no backup. Look, if your column is only available on the web, dammit, how about using some of that new-fangled hypertext to provide us with a link or two? There are two differences between journalism and unsupported opinion: the first relies on facts, and the second is worthless.

question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes

The Hacker Crackdown is a great text that is relevant still today, umpteen internet years later.

Just last night I was goofing off, looking through the list of eTexts available at Project Gutenberg. I was very pleased to see a partial copy of Hacker's: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Stephen Levy listed there. I looked at the eText and it seems to be only the first two chapters. Hopefully, that's just the beginning of what will one day be a full electronic version of this great book.

Also you might want to check out the Baen Free Library and read through the introductionary letter by Eric Flint, First Librarian ;-)

It's a bit long, but has excellent arguments in favor of free books online.

Offcourse, there's also the Gutenberg Project, but I don't really like that one myself...

He used a funny example though, that the invention and use of writing caused people to stop memorizing stories.

You can read about that here. It's not a new idea.

There are many books in project Guetenberg that are under copyright but the author has agreed
to allow limited free distribution. One of the first ones I recall doing this was "The Online World" by Ode de Presno ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext93/o nline11.zip but there have been many since then, including one of their Shakespeare collections from World Library (an example is ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext97/1 ws3210.txt)

There are many books in project Guetenberg that are under copyright but the author has agreed
to allow limited free distribution. One of the first ones I recall doing this was "The Online World" by Ode de Presno ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext93/o nline11.zip but there have been many since then, including one of their Shakespeare collections from World Library (an example is ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext97/1 ws3210.txt)

Download the text. Do with it what you like.

Go to a Project Gutenberg page with the entire text and read that aloud, being sure to yell "Fuck you Adobe!" at the end of every other sentence.

Perhaps a bunch of pissed-off geeks should hold a "read-in", where books are read aloud. In a very public place. Then they should dare to be arrested for "broadcasting" a copyrighted work.

The stupidity, I tell ya....

Go to a Project Gutenberg page with the entire text and read that aloud, being sure to yell "Fuck you Adobe!" at the end of every other sentence.

Perhaps a bunch of pissed-off geeks should hold a "read-in", where books are read aloud. In a very public place. Then they should dare to be arrested for "broadcasting" a copyrighted work.

The stupidity, I tell ya....

In a more general sense, copyright (and now license agreements) are to blame. There was a lot of talk in the "early days" about getting lots of stuff online, and it's slowly happening with, for example Project Gutenberg and alt.binaries.e-book. But currently this is slow; OCR technology isn't good enough to process things without an editing pass, and sharing the original scans currently requires institutional resources. That, combined with the periodic extension of copyright terms to cover almost anything created in the 20th Century has put a damper on volunteer efforts.

One would think that libraries would be a great place to start with this at the institutional level. Even without scanning, a lot of recent journals come with electronic versions as part of the subscription. And they're bought and paid for, so copyright isn't an issue (as long as you belong to a subscribing library). But...restrictive license agreements to the rescue! This article on oss4lib describes a situation where librarians are required to scan paper copies of journals they have electronically for interlibrary loan purposes.

Fundamentally, the movement to put a fence around information and charge for every view is at odds with aim to preserve it. If we want hardcopy to be available electronically, or electronic documents to be preserved at all, we have to change the rules, or ignore them. In the meantime, start a private collection in the hope of publishing it someday. Historians will thank you.

Between efforts such as Project Gutenberg and the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, and countless other sites that provide resources not previously available to most libraries, it is fairly evident that internet access greatly enhances the purpose of the public library.

Another situation is finding which books to look up. Your average Librarian will be clueless when asked which of the 50 books on C++ is best for a beginner, but searching on google for the C++ faq will provide several good answers almost immediately.

The other questions do merit thought.

Project Gutenberg redistributes only public domain etexts, but thanks to Disney, nothing written in the US on or after January 1, 1923, will ever enter the public domain.
<O
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XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

Neither George Orwell's 1984 nor anything else created on or after 1923 will ever be added to Project Gutenberg because anything created on or after 1923 is under perpetual copyright. This is at first glance unconstitutional (the Constitution mentions "for limited times"), but Congress gets around it by simply retroactively extending copyrights when they are about to expire.

Fuck you Walt Disney Company.

As of July 31, there were 150,000 downloads of Stephen King's new work, of which 116,000 paid the $1 fee. He's made these $116,000 just because of his high reputation, but, he spent more than that just to market that book.

For a multi-million-seller like a platinum album or Harry Potter book, the "please donate a dollar" scheme just isn't going to work. On the other hand, if you look at the recent furor over the Harry Potter book, and all the pre-sales, and so forth, you can easily see that it would have been very easy to ask people to pay upfront, and very lucrative.

Also, I hate to say this, but most of the music being produced for free is worth every penny---i.e., it's just not that great. (Especially in the classical genres. The MP3 artists in the classical genres completely suck. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true.) At some point, certain artists are going to become more popular than the others, and are going to be allowed to demand more.

If your next song gets you $400,000, rather than $400, then I know you'll start thinking to yourself, "Hmm, now that I've got a reputation for quality...."

A lot of people confuse my opinion that "prepay is inevitable" with the fact that I think "prepay is good". I don't think anything is good or bad. I download free things all the time. I started using linux in '94, when 0.99 was made official, and my experience with the 'net goes back way before then. I know all about free. I was a regular user of Gutenberg even before there was such a thing as the Web; and more recently, you could say I made a major contribution to the HTTP logs of the free book section of ebooks.barnesandnoble.com,due to my clever use of curl. :-)

But I'm also a grown-up, and I know all about the world works, and how bills need to get paid. My opinion is that prepayment is inevitable, not that it's good or bad, and that once an artist becomes famous and/or popular, they will start thinking "do I devote myself to this full time, or not? Do I get paid for it, or not?", and at that time, they will decide to convert from a donation-only model to a prepayment model.

I think that only time will tell, but I'm pretty confident that prepayment will arrive, one day or another.

P.S. Microsoft killed Netscape because they are a zillion-dollar company, and can afford to put out IE as a "loss leader". Also, because they were able to develop IE5 while Netscape spent their money on plastic dinosaurs and Corporate Headquarters With Waterfalls. There are lots of little software companies, but there's only one M$, and it's the M$s of the world who will demand the prepayment.

People think that artists like Van Gogh were "starving artists" who never sold their art. That's pure baloney. Van Gogh was the son of a rich industrialist, and had a brother who supported him. The "starving artist" is a myth. There isn't a one on the planet, and there never was.

Finally, unlike Mozilla, the various forms of artwork like music, art and literature absolutely do not lend themselves to open-source collaborative development. You can't "fix a bug" in a Picasso or "add a feature" to a Nirvana tune. It still takes unique people with unique visions, and some of those visions are going to be worth more than others.

If you put up a form saying "Prepay a required $1 for the next release of Metallica when it comes out", or "Pay a volutary $1 for Anonymous Artist to download their new music", I think Metallica will get plenty of $1 payments, regardless of the extreme vocal opinions on the subject at places like slashdot.

But hey, let's not argue. Let's test the theory. We're all scientists, right? Let's see if we can get a high-profile artist to try it. I really think people will be surprised.
--
Orlando, Paladin of Charlemagne

so what, you can't trade pop music, but you can't trade most of the stuff on project gutenberg either due to the 100kb limit. this is an intentionally crippled system for the weak christian masses.

"It is isolating. It is a lonely thing." In contrast, "libraries are places, a community thing."

What a CROCK. I don't know about you, but in my community, I'm allowed to talk to other people at a normal volume. Libraries, as a rule, are pretty spartan in terms of their level of social interaction. Even if you stay there to read your book, instead of taking it home with you -- libraries let you do that, you know -- you're still there to read a book, not chat with your neighbor. Especially not if she's doing research for her term paper and can't spare the time to converse. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against libraries. I was raised by librarians. But how can anyone say with a straight face that they're not just as "isolating" as the internet? (And at least on the internet, you *can* chat with others while you read.)

Anyway, the real issue is not the ability to socialize, but rather the freedom of information. And James Billington's opinion about how people shouldn't be able to choose to be isolated, or that "There is something about a book that should inspire a certain presumption of reverence," is definitely not the issue. (Reverence? Is he suggesting we revere the book's physical presence, or its content? Because the latter will not change one iota by the book's being published in electronic format.) And make no mistake, the only reasons Billington gives in the TLJ article for never wanting to put books online are strictly born of personal beliefs.

I suspect that, despite Billington's reluctance to promote electronic media, people will continue to read books, and to use the internet, in preference to real human interaction. He's just making it less easy to do both at once. I guess it's up to Project Gutenberg.

The text I found at Project Gutenberg

(...gee, where did all my Karma go?)

2. Waterproof (at least not rendered unusable by water damage)
ha, ya right, ever tried to read a paper book thats been in a flood??? Pages 'melted' together....

3. Flexible/foldable
Inconsequential, ever tried to fold an encyclopedia??

4. Unharmed by throwing, dropping, smashing, etc..
again- ha, ever tried to read a book blown around by a tornado??

5. Cheap enough to be disposable
Try Project Gutenberg Everything is disposible.

These guys know all about free texts.

http://www.gutenberg.org

Vik :v)

fuck this government.



to be enlightened, read ayn rands "anthem" thanks to my boys at project gutenberg.



After that if you've got extra time spend a few bucks and buy fountainhead or atlas shrugged... you can see where our sad little government is taking this country. pathetic.

fuck this government.



to be enlightened, read ayn rands "anthem" thanks to my boys at project gutenberg.



After that if you've got extra time spend a few bucks and buy fountainhead or atlas shrugged... you can see where our sad little government is taking this country. pathetic.

fuck this government.

to be enlightened, read ayn rands "anthem" thanks to my boys at project gutenberg.

After that if you've got extra time spend a few bucks and buy fountainhead or atlas shrugged... you can see where our sad little government is taking this country. pathetic.

To an extent, Slashdot itself is a good example. This site provides technical information and commentary and is contributed to by a large community. In this case, copyright probably prohibits redistribution in a purely open source sense, but everyone has free access to the site.

The Educational Object Economy (EOE) is a global community for web based learning tools in Java. They have a collaboratively maintained repository of links, so this is an open source database (even if the tools linked to may not all be open source).
http://www.eoe.org

The EOE site has many great links to related efforts and related papers, such as the Open Library for creating and distributing educational course materials.
Open Library

Project Gutenberg is a collection of free electronic texts, contributed by many people, and so is an open source repository of electronic texts.
http://www.gutenberg.org

Another effort is Open Content, a site created to "facilitate the prolific creation of freely available, high-quality, well-maintained Content."
http://www.opencontent.org/home.shtml

The Open Source Community on Manufacturing Knowledge (OSCOMAK) is a project I've started. It is intended to create a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products. The idea is ultimately to allow cooperative groups to design and simulate anything from a pre-industrial farming village to a self-replicating space habitat.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak

-Paul Fernhout

I have to agree with you on this, because I have tried it. One of the first things I tried with my Pilot (palm pro) was reading some of the Gutenberg Project's E-texts and I found the experience to be less than enjoyable. The interface is perfect for storing and recalling small, discrete snippets of information and longer reference documents (which you really only access in discrete snippets). But for "stream-oriented" data such as a lengthy novel, I want a much higher resolution than the Pilot's offering.

I also found that I went through batteries much faster, probably because I often preferred to use the backlight to read the books.

. . . the author really can write. It's way cool, and the tone is right, but not the language. He's missing a lot of alliteration, and those weird circumlocutions like "wave-walker" for ship and "whale-road" for ocean. Hey, it's damn nice anyway, and to be perfectly frank, Beowulf often reads more like a tongue-twister than poetry. It's rough going if you're not in the right mood. Tuxowulf definitely flows a lot more smoothly. See below.


This is in translation, obviously:

. . .
This heard in his home Hygelac's thane,
great among Geats, of Grendel's doings.
He was the mightiest man of valor
in that same day of this our life,
stalwart and stately. A stout wave-walker
he bade make ready. Yon battle-king, said he,
far o'er the swan-road he fain would seek,
the noble monarch who needed men!


See Beowulf at the Gutenberg Project.


"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"

This is where I learned about the Internet, and I think this has been a special resource for many:

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet by Ed Krol

We want Microsoft to keep doing what it's doing -- go ahead and make MS Office as incompatible as possible and slowly and surely people will throw more support into cleaning up web document standards and forget about using MS Office formats.

Proprietary formats make it increasingly difficult for historians and people in general. Have you ever wanted to read your term paper you wrote in 1986 on MacWrite? Chances are you threw out the paper copy knowing you'd have the file on hand.

Project Gutenberg (for those who aren't aware, it is an effort to make copyright free texts such as Edgar Allan Poe's writings freely available) has considered the implications of any format into consideration.

Excerpt from Project Gutenberg:

"Suggestions to make them less readily available are not to be treated lightly. Therefore, Project Gutenberg Etexts are made available in what has become known as "Plain Vanilla ASCII," meaning the low set of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange: ie the same kind of character you read on a normal printed page-- italics, underlines, and bolds have been capitalized.

The reason for this is that 99% of the hardware and software a person is likely to run into can read and search these files.

Any other system of etext storage is going to fall short of an audience of 99%.

This does not mean there are not other valid mean of doing the etext business. . .after all, over half the computers are DOS, so one could address a wide audience by just doing DOS. Plain Vanilla ASCII, however, addresses the audience with Apples and Ataris all the way to the old homebrew Z80 computers, while an audience of Mac, UNIX and mainframers is still included.

Even an open standard poses a problem in regards to usability -- especially in the future -- more devices, programs, and a loss of backwards compatibility. What will ever be as universal as plain old text on paper?

And from a historian's point of view, reading what people wrote 15 years ago is becoming increasingly difficult.

I think I've opened a big can of worms...with a few more tangents which could be addressed.