Slashdot Mirror

scishop writes "Mazarin is an open-source interface to Project Gutenberg's library. Mazarin increases the accessibility of Gutenberg's 10,000+ books as it formats the books for HTML display -- providing paginations in addition to generating table of contents and other advanced markup features -- along with enabling users to carry out full-text searches on the entire library."

femto writes "The Motion Picture Association and APRA have commissioned a report from Allen Consulting into the effects of extending Australian copyright from life+50 years to life+70years. This forms the MPA and APRA's contribution to US-Australian free trade negotiations, currently underway. The report recommends that copyright terms should be extended. An extension of copyright would not be in Australia's interest. Some would argue that it is not in anyone's interest. Projects such as Project Gutenberg of Australia would be adversely affected by such an extension. Perhaps now is to time to write to your Member of Parliament, asking them to oppose any extension of copyright or patents, and shore up whatever resistance there is to an extension of IP in Australia?"

David Moynihan writes "July 4th marks the 32nd anniversary of that day in 1971 when Michael Hart first sped an all-caps version of the Declaration of Independence to anyone and everyone then on what later became the web, thus founding Project Gutenberg. Thanks to an army of volunteers and the Distributed Proofreaders, this is the last year PG will have fewer than 10,000 titles. Strangely, Microsoft picked this dual anniversary of literacy and freedom to re-launch their Reader product, with three free bestsellers a week, if you activate the new version with Passport, sign a EULA, etc. Real reason for the upgrade might be that the DRM on MS's old Reader was cracked. If you're not into giving away data, or are running a system other than Windows, maybe you could take the time to tell a friend about free books online, or even help out by visiting the Distributed Proofers and editing one page per day."

David Moynihan writes "July 4th marks the 32nd anniversary of that day in 1971 when Michael Hart first sped an all-caps version of the Declaration of Independence to anyone and everyone then on what later became the web, thus founding Project Gutenberg. Thanks to an army of volunteers and the Distributed Proofreaders, this is the last year PG will have fewer than 10,000 titles. Strangely, Microsoft picked this dual anniversary of literacy and freedom to re-launch their Reader product, with three free bestsellers a week, if you activate the new version with Passport, sign a EULA, etc. Real reason for the upgrade might be that the DRM on MS's old Reader was cracked. If you're not into giving away data, or are running a system other than Windows, maybe you could take the time to tell a friend about free books online, or even help out by visiting the Distributed Proofers and editing one page per day."

Uruk asks: "Over the last few years, we've seen what looks like the victory of copyright and business interest at the expense of the consumer. There's been The DMCA, the UCITA, all of the legal wranging over DeCSS, and so on. Copyright holders can even shut your website down without doing the research about whether or not it was appropriate. Johansen did seem to be acquited of some of what was brought against him as a result of the DeCSS situation, but that was in Norway. Does anyone know of any copyright or consumer victories on the net in the last few years? Something that limits the abilities of these laws, or otherwise acts in the copyright spirit of free use? My hat is off to GNU and EFF, even Project Gutenberg. What is the status of this ongoing battle? I'm looking for the sunny side to a situation that seems littered with defeat."

tgbg writes "We are proud to announce the launch of "Gutenberg Radio". On these broadcast channels, you can hear the Gutenberg Library and anything else the Gutenberg family cares to share with its public."

fraser_joat asks: "The other day I finally took the time to watch Starship Exeter, previously reported on Slashdot. Coincidentally, I also revisited the BBC's excellent radio adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, following the hype caused by the recent movies. The two of these got me thinking: while _Exeter_ was clearly a huge effort, it looks like they had a lot of fun making it. In many ways they are scratching the same sort of itch that generates free software. So what about audio drama? The technology needed to produce it is freely available, things like Ardour and Csound. So is it possible to produce an audio drama based on free texts such as those from Project Gutenberg in a distributed fashion, with contributers from all across the Net, just like with software? Would they even be useful as an introduction to classic fiction or just as pure entertainment?"

"While the technology exists to cut a play together, I see several possible problems:

• High-quality audio recording equipment is expensive, and homes are not ideal environments. Can source material of sufficiently good quality be generated without professional facilities?
• Since the actors could be widely separated, can they act in isolation in a sufficiently convincing manner that they can be cut together later, in the same way that film actors must pretend that the special effects exist during shooting?
• Are there good (royalty-)free sound effect libraries available?

I think the possibilities are interesting, if people can be gathered together to actually do it. Imagine the subtle horror of Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado, or the adventure of Stevenson's Treasure Island, all staying as faithful to the book as possible, without Hollywood's story-twisting and sensationalism spoiling it all.

It would need to be a real community effort - I fancy that I could produce a passable script adaptation of a book and help with the audio production and sound effects, but I'm no actor, nor do I have equipment at home that even approaches what would be required. What about it?"

Anonymous Coward asks: "We've all seen how plenty of bad examples of Internet filtering in libraries and schools, so I need not list any. After browsing the aforementioned YRO archives &c., I had an interesting proposal. Books that people *want* the public to see are submitted to libraries to be placed on the shelves. So why not come up with a similar solution of the public submitting lists of websites to be *allowed* access from the libraries. Project Gutenberg or The Bible blocked? No problem, just ask a librarian to add the domain to the allow list." Would this be a practical way around overzealous filters?

venolius writes: "The New York Times (free registration required) has an article on TextArc (created by W.Bradford Paley), a site that "aids in the discovery of patterns and and concepts in arbitrary text" (from the detailed overview at TextArc). The site serves an applet that performs the task (texts on which analysis is available include Alice in Wonderland, Hamlet, and thousands of others -made available by Project Gutenberg-). The NYTimes article reports that Paley found that "Dracula", which relies on a strong storyline had a few keywords clustered hotly at the center, and that the metaphoric "Frankenstein" generated a circle of 50 words of modest intensity that faded towards the edges. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" with evenly distributed key words produces tight and round lines and "Alice in Wonderland" produces loopier lines. Check it out! (the applet was tested on better hardware, but I did well enough with 98/IE6/550MHz/64MB)"

You asked Stanford Law professor, author and general voice of reason Lawrence Lessig some great questions about rights, law, and the electronic world. Lessig has has gotten back with some fittingly thoughtful answers -- some optimistic, some discomfiting, some biting. Read on to find out what he's got to say.

1) The question of harm
by caduguid

In round two of Valenti vs. Lessig a crucial question arose but due to the to-and-fro of debating was only addressed anecdotally. The question was one Valenti posed to you. To paraphrase it roughly: "Who cares? I would like someone to explain to me what harm is being done to the world by Mickey Mouse's copyright being extended twenty years. How does that harm anyone's ability to be creative or incentive to be creative." In the debate you only had the opportunity to present an anecdotal response. (A teacher whose class film projects couldn't be shared due to copyright infringement fears, I think.) Beyond the anecdote, however, a clear answer would be very helpful. We can all see that the copyright extension bargain was one-sided: copyright holders profited and the public gained nothing. We see the inequity in the action, we sense that the fix was in, and we resent it. But resentment over seeming corruption and the copyright holders' good fortune can only take us so far. A clear conception of direct harm to the public might be far more persuasive than the secondary harm of the copyright holders getting a really sweet deal. I kept hoping during the debate that the opportunity would come for you to address the question more fully, but it never did.

Lawrence Lessig:

Exactly right. This was a great weakness in the debate. It has been a weakness of mine for a long time. In my way of looking at the world, the point is a matter of principle, not pragmatics:

(1) Copyright law silences speech. It you want to set my book to song, you need my permission. If you don't have it, the law will banish your song.

(2) If the government wants to silence speech, it needs a very good reason. And if it doesn't have that reason, it should not silence my speech. Period. I shouldn't have to prove how valuable my speech is before I have the right to speak.

Yet this is just what Jack's question demands: Prove your speech would be better than Disney's. I see it the other way round: Prove the government has a good reason to silence my speech.

Now I do believe the government sometimes does have a good reason. And in particular with copyright, I do believe that the aim of copyright law in general is a sufficiently good reason. Copyright law gives authors an incentive to produce. By offering authors a limited monopoly, it supports their creativity. And subject to lots of lawyerly quibbles, I believe this support on balance produces more speech than it silences. The quid-pro-quo (produce speech and we'll give you a limited monopoly) functions, as the Supreme Court has said, as an "engine of free expression."

But that argument just cannot justify extending the terms of existing copyrights. Extending the term for already produced speech can't produce more speech. Even with Hollywood's help, Congress can't make causation go backwards. No matter what we do, Walt will not produce anything more in the past. Giving Disney the right to control speech about Mickey for another 20 years in exchange for nothing is just to silence speech with no compensating pro-speech benefit. And as there is no pro-speech benefit for this speech-supressing regulation, it should be struck under the First Amendment.

The weakness in this argument, however, is that most people think pragmatically, not in principles. The point for them isn't the ideal; the question for them is how much does it really matter. I've not done a great job in showing that. Others have. Check out, for example, the OpenLaw amicus briefs in the Eldred v. Aschroft case, of law professor Dennis Karjala's website.

But if I had a second (or I guess it's a third) chance, I'd say this to Jack:

First, Jack, this is not about Mickey alone. The retrospective extension of copyright reaches to all works presently under copyright (essentially work published after 1922), not just the favored few. Just think practically about what that means:

In 1930, there were 10,027 books published. Today, 174 of those books are still in print. Yet it would be illegal because of copyright law for Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg to take those 9,853 books not in print and make them available on the Internet for free - at least without tracking down the present owners of those copyrights and getting permission.

How hard is that?

Almost impossible. There is no requirement that copyright holders register. To track down the current holder of a copyright from 1930, therefore, would require first determining whether the author was alive, and if not, then which of his or her relatives were alive, and one once you found a relative, who among the relatives received the copyright at issue, and then whether they'd be willing to let this decaying book be digitized. Bottom line: without an army of lawyers, it is impossible to imagine making these books available because of the regulation of copyright.

What justifies this? If the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (passed in 1998, adding 20 years to existing copyrights) had not been passed, then all work through 1943 would be now be in the public domain. Project Gutenberg, Eric Eldred's Eldritch Press, Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive could all make this stuff available to others for free or, as Dover Press does, for money. But as it is, because of the law, this stuff will fall into a black hole of legal regulation. As Brewster Kahle said in his Amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the Eldred case, we are at a point where we could put all human knowledge onto the net. Yet legal regulation stops us. Why?

Second, Jack, what about the new work that gets quashed by this perpetual extension? After we argued the Eldred case in the DC Circuit, a woman approached us with a story about a play she had written based on a work published in 1923. She had worked for almost 10 years writing the play, but the copyright holders would not grant her the right to publish or produce it. In 1998, the copyright was to expire; she had received a commitment to produce the play. But after the Sonny Bono Act, the underlying copyright was now extended for 20 more years. Her words were therefore silenced.

What could possibly justify this? The book published in 1923 was not even in print. Why should the government be in the business of threatening new authors in defense of a work that has all but disappeared? How many other creators will look at this reality and, thinking practically, say: "it's just not worth it. The hassle is too great. The uncertainty too high."

There are thousands of examples like this, and many times that that we could never know: At the debate, I told the story of an elementary school that had made films based in part on other film, and how it couldn't even display its work without fear of the lawyers. I told the story of Alice Randall who wrote "The Wind Done Gone," telling the story of "Gone With The Wind" from the perspective of African slaves. The Mitchell Estate told Alice Randall she couldn't publish her book. It took months of high price lawyering before she was granted the right to publish. How many Alice Randall's would simply say, forget it?

Valenti said the Randall example is insignificant. But what makes it insignificant? An author wants to tell a counter story about one of the most influential books of the last 100 years, and she can't do so without the permission of the estate of the original author. This is America, but you need the permission of a lawyer before you can criticize a favored author?

Again, there are many others who are better at this pragmatism stuff. To me, it just feels insulting. You want to tell the Alice Randalls of the world that they need the permission of a lawyer before they can speak? I want you, Jack, to justify that rule. You tell me I have to justify Alice Randall's right to speak? I want to say in response something we lawyers don't say enough: Bullshit.

2) Is Copyright law a sham?
by bw

It seems increasingly appearent to me that Intellectual Property law generally and Copyright law specifically, has become a corrupt instrument whereby campaign finance coffers are filled by metering out favors to large monied special interests. I am basing this on personal observation after having attempted to participate in the process. For example, I participated in several of the Copyright Office requests for public comment that produced easily 10X as many anti-DMCA comments as pro, only to see the Copyright Office ignore what seemed to me to be the clearly expressed objections of actual people in favor of the large corporations who lobbied for the bill. Worse, no serious attempt (in my view) was made to respond to the issues raised by the public. Congress is even less responsive, in my observation.

If and when I conclude that the deck truly is stacked, such that the political process producing copyright regulation is a sham, should I not also conclude that the best course of action is to engage in covert civil disobediance targeted to deprive the specific entities responsible for the corruption of profits? My question is not whether the DMCA is a corrupt law, but rather what moral obligation one has to obey a law that you earnestly believe symbolizes corrupt government.

After all, if push comes to shove, the anti-circumvention provisions are utterly unenforcable (to the point of being a joke) if they are disregarded in ways that do not attract attention. I'm not someone who has decrypted any DVD's or downloaded many MP3's, but I'm wondering what reason there could possibly be not to start.

LL:

I am not against copyright. I think the copyright our framers gave us, for example (a term of 14 years, renewable once; granted only if you register; for limited kinds of work; and protecting a limited range of rights) was a bit weak, but not much. I would favor a somewhat stronger right than they gave us, but for just about as long.

Yet obviously I believe copyright law has gone too far, at least in the digital age. When the power of creativity has been granted to a much wider range of creators because of a change in technology, the law of yesterday no longer makes sense. It must be changed.

The question is how will it be changed?

Disobedience is one technique. It is risky and increasingly costly. But that's not why I would resist disobedience.

The problem I have with disobedience is that it reenforces the Valenti-way of looking at the world. Copyright hoarders demand increasingly extreme rights so that they may exercise almost perfect control over how their content gets used. In response, the civil disobedience movement sends a message that they should have no control over how their content gets used at all. Between perfect control and no control, most would choose perfect control. And hence, we lose.

Disobedience makes sense when you are saying there should be no regulation of the kind you attack. When Martin Luther King led marches in Selma and Birmingham, he was not calling for a limited, or balanced form of segregation. He was calling for no segregation at all.

But we should not be calling for the repeal of all copyright. We should be calling for a balanced and limited form of copyright - much like the right of our framers - that gives artists the right to earn a living, without giving copyright hoarders the power to veto innovation.

We could make progress in demanding that right if those who got it did something. If, for example, slashdot readers weren't such political slugs, something might happen. If more of you did something about this, whether spamming your Congressman, or giving money to those who resist this regulation (like the EFF), then we could resist this extremism.

I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

3) The Judicial Branch
by lblack

I just wrote out way too long of a question, so I'm deleting and starting over.

Members of the judiciary are largely unqualified to comment or judge upon issues of a technical nature, simply because their careers do not incorporate a great deal of technical knowledge, and also because they have not sought it (and I don't blame them, probably didn't have time) on their own.

Now, they *are* qualified to comment on matters of criminality, which are supported by a huge amount of precedent, legislation, etc that has been repeatedly modified, challenged, or simply let stand.

However, there are new "crimes" coming into being, called "cybercrimes" by the buzzwordish. Our judges, lacking technical skills or a real awareness of digital culture, are passing judgement in cases that have either very loose or no precedent to be found, or that are the result of new and innovative legislature (see: DMCA).

My concern is that the judges who are making the decisions are the least qualified to do so -- that we won't have a lot of judges with a high awareness of the intricacies involved for several years. However, the judges presently seating are essentially creating a body of law to govern what they do not understand.

My question: How large of a threat will these precedents pose to the continuation or reclamation of freedoms? Will we be able to take back the ground we've alrady lost, or will the intricacies of the legal system vis-a-vis tort & precendent, ensure that we cannot?

LL:

There was a time when I thought that lawyers wouldn't do too much damage. The first Supreme Court case about cyberspace, Reno v. ACLU, striking down the Communications Decency Act of 1996, made it sound as if the constitution required that lawyers be careful before they muck up this free speech haven. Reno put a strong burden on the state to demonstrate that the state's regulation won't do any harm. That made the future sound hopeful.

All that has changed now. As the courts have shifted from porn to copyright, concern for balance, and limits have disappeared. Courts make illegal all sorts of technology because of its "threat" to copyright, without any concern about whether such regulation will threaten cyberspace and free speech generally.

This is, in part, because courts don't understand the technology. But I don't think it's because courts don't know how to code. I think the problem is that courts don't see the connection between certain kinds of technology and legal values. And this is because we've not done a good job in demonstrating the values built into the original architecture of cyberspace: That the Internet embraced a set of values of freedom; that the end-to-end design constitutionalized the idea that the network owner should not be allowed to veto content or applications; that those values produced a world of innovation that otherwise would not have existed. If courts could be made to see this, then we could connect this struggle to ideals they understand.

Sometimes when I read Slashdot debates, I wonder whether you guys get this connection either. The passion that is expended to defend the right to encrypt is wonderful and important. But just as important to the future of freedom is to assure that end-to-end values don't get corrupted by cable companies or network owners. Just as important to the future of freedom is to assure that essential parts of the network not become corrupted by copyright hoarders. And just as important to the future of freedom is to assure that spectrum remain free from the regulation and control of the state.

Yet these debates about freedom get bogged down on these pages. And this leads me to the greatest pessimism: If you guys don't get the importance of neutral and open platforms to innovation and creativity; if you get bogged down in 20th century debates about libertarianism and property rights; if you can't see how the .commons was critical to the .com revolution, then what do expect from judges?

You guys (not Howard Roark) built an architecture of value. Until you can begin to talk about those values, and translate them for others, courts and policy makers generally will never get it.

4) Leverage the knowledge of technical community
by 2Bits
A lot of obscure laws have been passed, and the majority of the population are not even aware of their existence. However, the technical community is watching the legislation quite closely. And we seem to understand the potential impact and risk on freedom and privacy. But the technical community has a very small influence on politics, and seems almost clueless in "playing political games."

How can we leverage the knowledge of the community to help educate politicians and the general population in terms of technologies, and the impact of the proposed bills? Briefly, how can we help better, not just sending letters to congress people or senators?

LL:

This is a great question. We need translators. We need to translate the values of the network into terms that nontechnical people get. And we need to watch for changes in the architecture or mix of technologies layered into the network, and raise warnings about how those changes will alter the environment for innovation and creativity. As one of my heroes in the law, James Boyle, puts it, we need an environmentalism for the Internet. You are the environmental experts. You can credibly show the world how changes in the ecology of the Internet will destroy the environment for creativity, innovation, and freedom that it produced.

Will you do that? Again, I am skeptical. Rather than trying to focus this debate, or agree on ways to make others understand, you guys immediately turn these questions into irrelevant bickerings. When someone reported that I had written a book described as the "Silent Spring" of the Internet, that opened up a thread about whether in fact DDT had harmed the environment. Someday, when freedom is gone, and all we've got is the right to whisper our thoughts to those closest to us, our children will look back and ask, why did we think we had the luxury to quibble?

But if you don't want to become translators, if you don't want to write environmental impact statements, if you don't want to try to convince the North in California that if it gets taken over by the South, freedom and innovation ends, then you could do as Torvalds has recommended: give money to those who are fighting the battle, in particular, EFF. I'm on the board of EFF, so blissfully biased about to whom. But whether EFF or someone else, follow Torvalds and the other christ-figures in history: Tithe. Take the cost of Internet access (whether you pay it or not) for one year; send 10% to an organization fighting for your freedom.

5) file sharing and copyright law
by stevenj

What do you think of OpenNap, Gnutella, Freenet, Morphius, and similar file-sharing systems? Do you think it is legal for a person to distribute unauthorized copies of a copyrighted recording or video that way, especially if no commercial entity is involved (e.g. excluding Napster or Morphius)? Should it be legal? (Should it matter how many copies you distribute, or to whom?)

If you think it should not be legal, what remedies should the law consider, since these systems can have significant non-infringing uses as well?

LL:

I support these technologies. More importantly, I support the right of innovators to develop these technologies. But I don't support copyright violations using these technologies.

You'd think this would be an easy distinction to understand: We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime. The law targets illegal uses of technologies, not the technologies - at least where there is a legitimate and legal use of that technology. Yet because of our extremism when it comes to copyright law, we ban technologies that threaten copyright interests whether or not they have legitimate, independent uses.

6) Microsoft settlements?
by Lumpish Scholar

What is your take on the proposed settlements in the antitrust and civil Microsoft cases? To most Slashdotters, the former seems like a slap on the wrist, the latter like a a punishment turned into a reward (increasing dominance of the U.S. education market). Is there something we're missing?

LL:

The short answer is this: the settlement is fatally flawed. There is no effective enforcement mechanism to assure that Microsoft lives up to the terms of the decree. The "technical committee" does not have the power to interpret the decree. The only entity that can interpret the decree is a federal court. We've seen how well that works: The last decree (signed in 1994) was the subject of the case that began in 1997. It took the courts 8 months to work out the meaning of 20 words.

The decree would be close-to-fixed if it had an effective special master who could monitor and enforce the decree effectively (and no, I'm not interested.) It still wouldn't be a perfect decree - I like the nine states' proposed alternative better - but at least it would have a chance.

But though I've been attacked by Microsoft as strongly as anyone, and though I completely agree with the Court of Appeals that Microsoft violated the antitrust laws, I do believe something that will not endear me to many of you: As I said in my testimony, I don't believe Microsoft is the greatest threat to the Internet. And indeed (and more controversially), there's at least one understanding of how the .NET strategy gets implemented that would reenforce the best of the Internet against the threats posed by the Time Warners of the world and cable interests. On at least one understanding of .NET, .NET would reenforce an end-to-end network. It would resist "intelligence" within the network. And except for the open source and free software movements, it is about the only strategy out there that could produce real freedom.

My claim is not that Microsoft will adopt that strategy on its own. I am not arguing we should trust the company. But I do think that an effective remedy could push Microsoft in the direction of something good, and if it did, the company could become an ally, not an enemy.

I know there are many who resist this view. Many believe MSFT is the devil. I'm not one of those people. And my concern is that if we obsess about old wars, we won't understand the nature of the new.

7) Doctrine of First Sale Dead?
by burris

Back near the turn of the last century, book publishers printed contracts on their books, limiting the ability of the customer to resell or lend his purchases. This practice was halted by the U.S. Supreme court and the consumers right to do what they wish with legitimately purchased copies (with certain limited exceptions) was eventually codified in the US code as part of the '76 Copyright Act.

Given that software is a work of authorship protected by Copyright law, how is it that software publishers get away with these old tricks of printing restrictive contracts on their works, claiming assent simply by using the software, denying people their rights under Copyright law?

LL:

They get away with it because their lobbyists have convinced Congress to change the law. So, for example, the first sale doctrine has been repealed for some content. And it is not being supported with other content.

The history is important, however, to remind people about the balance that copyright law has typically tried to draw. We have never until now understood the rights of copyright to be the right of the author (or publisher) to exercise perfect control over copyrighted material. The framers of our constitution gave copyright holders a tiny set of rights; this is not because the framers we communists. We need, as a culture, to remember that copyright is a form of state regulation. And we need, as political culture, to become, with respect to this regulation, a bit more Republican: Where is the regulatory impact statement that shows that this form of regulation does any good?

8) IP Laws of the Future
by Catiline

Rather than ask about current copyright/patent laws, or pending ones, I would like to know what you think the ideal Intellectual Property laws are (assume you could rewrite them as you wish). Also, what sort of international agreements would have to be passed alongside this?

LL:

In my book I argue for a number of changes. They include a much more restrictive term - basically 5 year renewable terms, up to a maximum of 75 years. For software, the term would be even shorter, and conditioned upon the software author depositing his or her source code with the copyright office, to be open sourced upon the expiration of the copyright.

More importantly, I think we need to restrict the scope of "derivative rights" more than we do today. Copyright owners deserve to be paid for the use of their work; they should not be allowed to veto follow on work that builds on theirs.

Finally, during a time of technological transition, we need a strong set of compulsory rights so that new content producers and distributors can get access to material to enable these new businesses to take off. Compulsory rights require that the author of the original work get paid, but the rate is either set by the law, or set by a panel to be relatively low. This will give artists more than they would have had, had there been no Internet. But it will assure that innovators can build out the future of the Internet without the control of dinosaur industries.

9) Patents, Copyright and the law community
by gdyas

Dr. Lessig,

Looking from the outside in on the legal community's response or lack thereof to the constitutionality and legal basis of recent court rulings (Napster, Eric Corley), the DMCA/SSCA, etc, I see very few lawyers taking a stand against this -- there's mostly a massive shrug. There's the ACLU, the EFF of which you're a part, and Jessica Litman, and that's all I see trying to do something about the co-opting of copyright and patent lawmaking by corporations through appeals based on the interest of business, lobbyists' dealmaking, and outright graft. By and large however there seems to be little interest even amongst lawyers and congressmen about the arcana of copyright and patent law, and thus it's left to such companies and libraries because they're the only ones who both have power and care about it. Has trying to fight this caused conflict in your professional work? Is it lonely being a "vox clamantis in deserto"? What's your game plan for beating these guys back, or do you have one? There's a certain sadness and resignation in both your and Litman's writing that's very disencouraging that would lead me to think that even our flag-bearers feel there's little hope at this point.

LL:

There are more of us than you think, but certainly not enough. Again, check out the OpenLaw page, and you'll see over 50 of the most active resisters to this expansion of copyright working together to overturn the Sonny Bono Act. These scholars and lawyer represent a critically important resistance.

That said, we still need more help. I produce lawyers for a living; I watch as many try to find jobs to do good, but find the only available work is within the system. People who understand the importance of freedom and see the importance of protecting the future of freedom on the net need to support institutions that fight for that freedom. Pam Samuelson of Berkeley, and her husband, Bob Glushko, have given an extraordinary amount of money to support clinics at law schools around the country. At Stanford, we also have a clinic that defends hackers (soon to be known officially as "terrorists"). But again, I think EFF has been the most important player in this area.

10) Will the extension of copyright continue?
by Artifice_Eternity

Do you think that the gradual increases in the length of time that works can remain copyrighted (most recently the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" of the 1990s) will continue every time that the media companies feel that they are about to lose control of some of their "intellectual property"?

Or do you think that the public interest will reassert itself and hold or even turn back some of these copyright extensions?

When a work's copyright is extended, one person (the author or the corporation that owns it) benefits. But when its copyright expires, everyone benefits by being able to copy, modify, expand on and extend it. Can we convince lawmakers with this kind of social and economic argument?

LL:

Exactly right. When Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which we've renamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," we filed a law suit on behalf of Eric Eldred and others. Eldred had threatened civil disobedience. He runs a web based archive of public domain works, and promised to publish works in violation of the CTEA. We convinced him that jail was ugly and that courts may do the work better. We've been litigating the case now since 1998, and have convinced at least two federal judges that the law is unconstitutional. Tight this moment I should be writing a reply to the government's argument against the Supreme Court reviewing the case. That reply is due in a week.

If we get to the Supreme Court, I am certain that we will win. This is not a left/right issue. The conservatives on the Court will look at the framers' constitution - which requires that copyrights be granted for "limited times" - and see that the current practice of Congress, repeatedly extending the term of existing copyrights (11 times in the last 40 years) makes a mockery of the framers' plan. And the liberals will look at the effect of these never ending copyrights on free speech, and conclude that Congress is not justified in this regulation of speech. The Supreme Court doesn't give a hoot about Hollywood; they will follow the law.

It is not enough, however, to win in the Supreme Court. Ordinary people need to rediscover the importance of the public domain to creativity. The Internet could teach this - Brewster's Internet Archive, for example, is a great demonstration of the value of the public domain. But it will take real political action by real people (i.e., not lawyers) to get Congress to recognize what our framers understood.

11) Cyberspace Amendment
by kzinti

Many years ago, in the early days of the WWW, Laurence Tribe proposed a "Cyberspace Amendment" to the US Constitution that would explicitly extend all the rights and freedoms of the Constitution to all forms of speech, regardless of the medium. The idea was brought to many of us geeks in a Dr. Dobbs article by Michael Swaine. I know what many of my fellow Slashdotters opinions probably are, but I'd like to have yours: how have our Constitutional protections held up on the Internet, in e-mail, and in WWW publishing? Do we still need a Cyberspace amendment -- or do we perhaps need it now more than ever?

LL:

Professor Tribe's article was typically Tribe: Way ahead of its time, and right. But the sad fact is that our liberties have not been eroded because the protections in cyberspace are weak. Our liberties are weak because courts have eroded constitutional protections generally.

The more I'm in this battle, the less I believe that constitutional law on its own can solve the problem. If Americans can't see the value of freedom without the help of lawyers, then we don't deserve freedom. We should be working to help Americans recognize freedom again.

12) Activism by coding
by melquiades

It seems like a lot of judges who face abstract technology questions -- code as speech, DMCA, etc. -- just don't get it. And can we really blame them? Technology is complicated; can we expect every judge to be an uberhacker?

Perhaps it would be helpful to have some bright programmers set up some concrete examples for judges to consider, which clarify the problems we all see, and help judges refine their intuitions about code and digital information.

For example, to further the "code is protected speech" cause, we could create a full-fledged programming language which reads as plain English, then use it to implement a copy protection circumvention program (DeCSS or the like). This raises all sort of interesting questions: it's English and code; is it protected under the first amendment? Presumably it was before it could be run as a program, so does my inventing a programming language change the status of existing speech? If it's protected as only source code, is an interpreter for that language illegal? Is bundling the English script with the interpreter illegal? And so forth ...

... but that's a very thorny example. Are there examples of this kind that we programmers should be producing -- software that makes these theoretical arguments more concrete? Is there anything in this spirit that won't just confuse and/or piss off a judge? What examples do our causes need? We're ready to implement them!

LL:

Again a great question. The answer is more communication between lawyers and technologists. There is ignorance among lawyers and judges about technology no doubt. But there is also ignorance among technologists about the law.

The "code is speech" debate is a perfect example. Obviously, this is an important victory to have -- and indeed, the one good thing that came out of the 2600 appeal was a clear affirmation by the Second Circuit that "code is speech." But among constitutional lawyers, that "code is speech" is not the hard question. The hard question comes next: even if it is speech, how much power does the government have to regulate it. For just because "code is speech," it doesn't follow, under standard First Amendment law, that the government can't regulate code. Think again about copyright law. Obviously, what copyright law regulates is speech. But even though speech, under some circumstances the state can regulate it.

I think the place where technologists could do the most good is by showing the rest of the world something much more fundamental about the network. Not just how code is speech, but also:

(1) how the architecture of the Internet built a set of values,

(2) how those values are fundamentally linked to the most important freedoms in our tradition, and

(3) how changes in that architecture of the net could undermine those values.

Find ways to demonstrate how the architecture built a commons, and how that commons induced innovation: That's the stuff that lawyers, and politicians, don't get.

13) International Freedom
by bfree

We seem to be living in "Interesting Times". The events of 911 have given law-makers the impetus to have acts passed which would have been at the very least debated for a lot longer pre 911. Up until now the Internet has been an incredibly open network with minimalist intervention and legislation from individual countries governments (a few notable exceptions). It seems as if we are going to enter a new legal phase for the internet where legislators in many countries will try to enact and apply laws to take control of this wild beast. Each countries individual efforts will hamper their own citizens without overly effecting the rest of the net.

My question is how much of the above do you disagree with and why? And what body (UN, w3.org, wipo, coporation of ISPs, Microsoft) do you forsee holding the international legal legislatory responsibility for the net at large in 1/5/10/25/50 years time?

LL:

I don't disagree with any part of your description. That was the argument I tried to make in my first book - that the original freedom of the Internet could be changed by relatively small changes in the architecture, and we should expect governments to work hard to effect those changes. I made a bunch of dark predictions in that book. History has proven I was not pessimistic enough.

I don't know what body can resist these changes. I would have hoped the IETF would play a bigger role. And W3 too should see what's at stake. But the fact is that the strongest advocates for freedom are overwhelmed by those who have the most to lose from freedom. The key to our success would be if a strong commercial actor became deeply invested in freedom. Except for its patents, I would have said IBM was that commercial actor. But we'll need more than Big Blue.

14) DMCA
by Amazing Quantum Man

What, in your opinion, are the chances of getting the DMCA declared unconstitutional?

Given the recent court defeats in both the Felten and 2600 cases, do we even have a chance?

LL:

The DMCA as a whole won't be struck down - ever. But I continue to believe that at least the parts that disable the use and deployment of technologies to protect traditional fair use will eventually fall. At least they will fall if litigation about them could continue. But notice again: the only group out there supporting this litigation (Felten and 2600) is EFF, and EFF's resources are, surprise surprise, limited.

Skeptical on both, though as I've said, I do think there is a way that .NET could get implemented that would reenforce freedom on the Internet. That's not to say Microsoft would on its own follow that path. But it is important to see that if it did follow that path, its architecture could reenforce freedom.

The same could be said about the Liberty Alliance. Nice title, but Sun has never quite resolved itself to the idea of open and free networks, so I'm not convinced Liberty is what it calls itself. I do think we as a community need to develop a much better authentication architecture - one that is not controlled by any one single, or group of companies, but instead a platform upon which authentication services could be built. I hear whispers from Red Hat that they would be interested in such a future. I hope that's true, but its too soon to tell.

The dangers in both .NET and Liberty could be better resisted if we would only develop a consistent and clear message about the importance of neutral platforms to innovation and freedom. When we built the highway system, we didn't say to GM: "if you build the highways for us, you can build them so that GM trucks run better than Ford trucks." When we needed a passport system, we didn't tell Chase Manhattan bank that they could develop the passport system in exchange for a piece of every transaction. In both cases, there was a recognition of the importance of neutral, commons-like, infrastructures upon which others could build neutrally.

We need to relearn this lesson - in general, and in the context of the Internet. You guys could help teach that lesson. Indeed, only technologists have the credibility to speak reason to this idiot power. But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.

15) .NET-enabled futures?
by Nikau

What is your opinion on things like Microsoft's .NET or the Liberty Alliance (I believe that's what it's called - the one being developed by AOL and other companies to counter .NET)? Do you see these as a potential problem in terms of a free online world?

LL: p>Skeptical on both, though as I've said, I do think there is a way that .NET could get implemented that would reenforce freedom on the Internet. That's not to say Microsoft would on its own follow that path. But it is important to see that if it did follow that path, its architecture could reenforce freedom.

The same could be said about the Liberty Alliance. Nice title, but Sun has never quite resolved itself to the idea of open and free networks, so I'm not convinced Liberty is what it calls itself. I do think we as a community need to develop a much better authentication architecture - one that is not controlled by any one single, or group of companies, but instead a platform upon which authentication services could be built. I hear whispers from Red Hat that they would be interested in such a future. I hope that's true, but its too soon to tell.

The dangers in both .NET and Liberty could be better resisted if we would only develop a consistent and clear message about the importance of neutral platforms to innovation and freedom. When we built the highway system, we didn't say to GM: "if you build the highways for us, you can build them so that GM trucks run better than Ford trucks." When we needed a passport system, we didn't tell Chase Manhattan bank that they could develop the passport system in exchange for a piece of every transaction. In both cases, there was a recognition of the importance of neutral, commons-like, infrastructures upon which others could build neutrally.

We need to relearn this lesson - in general, and in the context of the Internet. You guys could help teach that lesson. Indeed, only technologists have the credibility to speak reason to this idiot power. But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.

Reader samjam sent in an interesting piece about his dream handheld PC, sort of a cross between a subnotebook and a wireless web pad, with the kitchen sink thrown in. Mmmmm, light-emitting polymers. I can't decide if this kind of thing is right around the corner or just a fantasy - after all, normal notebook computers sell, and at a nice high premium - and web pads are less than successful - why would anyone spend the money to develop a device like this? samjam writes: "My dream handheld is not available though some things come close. The technology is becoming available.

Though it may take a few months, here is what I would put together if I had the chance. Including Bluetooth, IButtons, solar panels and light emitting polymer screens...

For links to other linux handhelds, try linuxdevices.com.

My ideal handheld is the size of an A4 pad of paper, so I have to hold it on my left forearm with the fingers of my left hand curled over the end. A4 gives me plenty of screen space for watching real TV, reading real books, writing real emails, browsing real web pages and doing some real showing off.

The front cover is a solar panel, but I can't decide if the cells should be on the inside or the outside to help charge it while I use it or while I'm not using it. Hard one that.

The screen is not heavy-breakable LCD but LEP (brief technical primer, more on Google) or perhaps Xerox Electronic Paper seemingly available under the name Gyricon, pictures here and slight details here.

The choice of processor doesn't bother me much; I'd like to think there are many versions available of my handheld by many manufacturers (to drive the price down) and so many processors will be available but let's pretend the first release will run on a Transmeta just to keep excitement running high.

60 GB or so should be plenty of disk space, 2.5" IDE to keep weight down.

Input via stylus or sticky finger of course, with support for Graffiti, as used on the Palm and many others, also Quickwriting as featured on Slashdot as well as regular handwriting recognition (take your pick) and other pluggable input modules with popup keyboard for those times when you just can't manage to input a tilde (~) or backtick (`) properly.

Connectivity will be provided via a multitide of USB ports (where real keyboards can be plugged), Bluetooth (useless link) in action (good link), wireless ethernet as well as perhaps as many as 4 PCMCIA slots for things that change a lot like GPRS adaptors &c, or radio and TV tuner cards. Yeah! Why not add some Compact Flash while I'm at it? And boring 100 base T ethernet.

In fact I'm going to use the mobile phone card, along with my sound system to make the whole thing into a mobile phone for voice, not just data access. Talking of phones, the built in web cam can be used for video conferencing with (for example) Gnophone.

Better stick some firewire ports on there, too, for good measure, along with a few IRDA ports pointing in a few different directions for those more subversive inter-classroom networks as well as controlling my grannies telly to show off. And talking to my old non-bluetooth mobile which I can't afford to upgrade cos I spent it all on my handheld.

It will have integrated Ibutton support for security and authentification, maybe even built into the BIOS.

What more do I need? Oh yes, an Operating System. Pick your own.

I shall be running Linux with Ximian Gnome because it looks cool (and Bill Gates was nearly right, eye candy counts for a lot if only not to distract you by means of ugliness). I will be running redhat because I find up2date (or redhat channels of RedCarpet) invaluable effort-free way to remove those exploits, and I will finally get round to playing with Rebol.

The first thing I will need to develop is some network scavenging software to grab internet connectivity where it can for syncing imap folders and news, updating "offline web pages" [yikes! MS concept there]. Code to hi-jack available SMTP relays (*cough*). Does this smell a bit like Jini or something like it? I'll need to register my changing location for Gnophone so callers can find me. Perhaps the first thing for company visitors in the future will be to checkin their Ideal Handheld to the company network.

I will load all my favourite books into it as well as the entire classical Mormon works, copies of conference talks Doctrines of Salvation, Journal of Discourses etc, along with the Bible, Book of Mormon, and all of Project Gutenberg.

What will you do with yours? Have I missed any gizmos out? Or gadgets even?"

What started as something that looked simple -- a "double" interview with Michael Hart of the huge and venerable Project Gutenberg and Jimmy Wales of the brand-new Nupedia open content encyclopedia project -- turned into a series of interesting dissertations on the nature of copyright and online publishing, among other things. You may want to bookmark the page below and return to it a few times to grasp all that both gentlemen (especially Michael Hart) had to say.

Q1) For Mr. Hart by ContinuousPark
(cp@strangedomainname.com)

I've noticed that the Project Gutenberg site has a rather straightforward interface, you get the database queries you need but I've noticed that's not very friendly for some users; computer illiterate users that I've recommended your website to and children, for instance.

Hart:

We started so long ago that at that time all our readers were incredibly computer literate. . .so we are working from the wrong end toward the right end of the user spectrum. . .what we really need are brand new users to tell us how to make things easiest. . .our people are way too experienced to be able to see how things look to new users. This is why we request that our readers send us messages on how to improve both the sites and the Etexts.

This sort of thing has always been a problem for "new" computer users, even back 20 years ago. . .the manuals NEVER MAKE ANY SENSE until you already know what they are trying to tell you. . .and then, and only then, can you understand what they were trying to tell you in the first place.

I have been [in]famous for saying over the decades that anyone who could write a manual even HALF the people could understand would make millions. I think the DUMMIES people are at least trying in that direction. . . .

SO. . .PLEASE BE *ENCOURAGED* TO SEND US SUGGESTIONS FOR OUR INTERFACES, as well as suggestions and corrections for our Etexts and Web pages.

More of Q1)

I've also noticed that all texts are available as text-only and I understand your decision behind this.

Hart:

Actually, more and more of our Etexts are available in more formats, it's just that very often those who reformat them want the be the ONLY places to get those formats, and thus don't share back with us.

It's a little sad that way, but we have tried to honor the requests from other Etext sites that want to be the ONLY source for our Etexts in various formats. . .though we disagree with that philosophy. Some day, when I am older and crankier, perhaps I will just raid their sites against their wills for conversions that are non-copyrightable: though these days people even claim copyrights on the most trivial conversions. Someday that older and crankier me may even take them [some are major universities] to court for "misuse of copyright."

But that's hopefully a decade down the road. . .I want to concentrate on the more positive for now.

More More Q1)

So, my question has two sides: Are there any plans to build a front-end for PG that is more user-friendly; by this I mean, for instance, profiles of major authors and new acquisitions,

Hart:

My own personal goals are just to try to do two books per day, and the copyright research, and go through 100+ emails, write the Newsletters, train new volunteers, and things like that. . .I have never been very directly involved with the front-ends. . .those are all handled pretty much by the various volunteers who create and run them. I make some suggestions, and only once in a great while actually insist that the Project Gutenberg philosophy requires that certain things actually be done. . .or not done.

Some of the volunteers don't think I am bossy enough. . . .

However, we have 1700 volunteers, and some of them are ALWAYS working on new front ends, indexes, catalogues, etc. We did try doing profiles and/or synopses, but the response was pretty grim, so we probably won't try that again for a while.

More of Q1)

...featured writings each week, a section for children, personalization features so that the site recommends books for me, and so on. Are there any plans to, while always having text-only versions, also have automatically generated versions in other formats (pdf, postscript, and especially some of the new formats for eBooks or PDAs)??

Hart:

I would be happy to forward your suggestions to our volunteers, if you would like. . .we do plan on more formats, that can be automated, but the rest of your suggestions would take real human beings. . . .

Please send me anything you would like them to consider.

Yet More of Q1

I think some of these changes, just having a front page that changes everyday with new reading suggestions and lures the visitors to go and read (in the same fashion that makes people go to BN or Amazon to buy books) could make your site much more popular than it already is but how high is this on your list of priorities, if at all?

Hart:

Well, I've never been into the flashy changing front pages that require you to log in every day. . .even though we do post two new books on the average day. . .do you think we should try to announce things every day instead of every month?

We have actually been considering making a kind of electronic billboard that shows the latest handful of books, what day they were posted, etc. and eventually trying to put up similar physical billboards, if we ever get some real funding to get some real public relations going.

Until then, we're really still just a basement operation, and can only do what we can do with no money. . .which is still quite a lot. . .just not as flashy as those with billions of dollars of PR budgets. . . .

Q2) Project Gutenberg file format
by rodentia
(possum@UNSPAM.haarman.net)

I have been an avid fan of the project for as long as I've been aware of it.

Hart:

I will pass on your kind words, too!

More Q2)

My question has several parts pertaining to presentation technologies.

We're a long way from 1970 when ASCII was the only viable lingua franca for a network; is there any discussion of updating the file format for the project?

Specifically, something *ML-ish which would allow for presentation in multiple output formats. I am thinking of the spread of e-book readers and the like and increasing the potential readership. With a proper infrastructure, project texts could even be rendered to adaptive browsers with VoxML or other technologies.

Hart:

As I mentioned above, many, perhaps even most, of our titles are available in multiple formats around the world, but those who create them have not been willing for us to post them on our own sites, and I won't post them without their express permission. . .at least not yet.

More Q2)

Secondly, if the project doesn't choose to modify its longstanding ASCII formatting standards, are there efforts afoot to programmatically apply some structured tagging on-the-fly to allow for easy translation by other tools? Is this an itch I'll have scratch for myself?

Hart:

Yes, I figure we can create something like an XML file that will create other formats on the fly. . .but we try not to help create format standards, so XML might not be the one, but I plan to encourage XML experiments, and then see how our readers like it. If we get good responses, we will do even more.

I hope we can eventually support virtually all formats, though we recently tried the new .lit format [Microsoft Open Book Reader] and were pretty soundly thrashed for even posting the files one of our volunteers made without us even asking.

You should be aware that our volunteers choose 99% of what they do, totally on their own, and that they actually have to pester me to get me to give them anything like an assignment or even suggestions.

I am not so egotistical as to present this as "Michael Hart's List of the Great Books in the Formats You Should Read Them In. . .."

But I am will to try nearly all formats to see how they fly.

Wales:

At Nupedia, we are using the TEI-Lite XML dtd (or, we try to, although we need technical help) to markup the articles in a fashion that will make it easy for people to reuse our articles in all kinds of formats, from plaintext ascii to paper publishing, to hypertext, etc.

Q3) Appropriate Copyright Length?
by coldmist

Originally, copyright length was 12 years, with the option to extend it on the last year for another 12 years.

Currently, it's up to 95 years (if memory serves).

Hart:

Something like that, it might have been 14 and 14, and since they count to the end of the last year, it might have gotten close to an extra year. Now closer to 96 years. . .as per the 1998 [Sonny Bono] US Copyright Act, and no renewal is required under the new laws, so even copyright holders who have NO interest in perpetuating their monopolies still do, without cost and without effort. I think we need more "sunset laws". . .those that require things to be renewed. . .to keep us from drowning in a sea of unrequited paperwork.

More of Q3)

According to the Constitution, it was supposed to be for "limited times," but 95 years is longer than most people's average lifespan. To me, it seems that the copyright protection is effectively "forever" since odds are an average American would never (legally) get the chance to apply creative talent to make a derivative work from the Star Wars universe, for example.

Hart:

If this weren't so serious, I would be laughing [rotflol] because you could be using my own exact words here!. . .I nearly listed YOUR words as part of MY reply because they look so much like what _I_ would have said in reply!

So. . .I couldn't agree more!!!

I am inserting the quote from the US Constitution here, on copyright & patent:

"to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8).

Hmm, do you notice it doesn't say to publisher or manufacturers. . .I wonder if there would be a possible lawsuit for the cases in which the publishers get the first copyright. . .even on "works for hire". . . ?

Sadly to say, the US Supreme Court just ruled against the case I was supposed to be in [Eldred vs Reno]. . .but at least it was mostly on technical grounds. . .which leaves me possibly to still bring another totally separate case. . .but the lawyers would never let me get a single word into my own case [Hart vs Reno] so I made them take my name off of that case, which then became Eldred vs Reno].

More of Q3)

What do you consider to be an appropriate copyright length, balancing the need to pay content creators, versus the Public Domain and society's claim on it? And, if you think it should be considerably less than it is now, how does the US's Berne Convention agreement effect/influence what can be done?

Hart:

According to the librarians I know, the average book they choose to put in their libraries is out of print in only five years. Thus a five year term of copyright would be of use to only half of the materials deemed to be of great enough value to be put in a library, not counting the infinitudes of materials that never get that far.

If you continue this equation for another five years, you would protect only 1/4 of all those materials chosen for libraries, not to mention the vast majority of works NOT purchased by libraries.

After 15 years it would be 1/8.

After 20 years it would be 1/16.

This would mean that almost 95% of the materials being protected by a 20 year copyright wouldn't derive any benefit from it, while only those who had already made the most profits would benefit, at the cost of removing those 93.75% from the public domain.

This is NOT a great "cost/benefit ratio" for the public domain.

In 1900 half of all previously copyrighted information was public domain, since the copyrights had expired in about 15 years, and hardly any were ever renewed, because they were out of print.

In 2000 the rule is that there is no longer any requirement to renew copyrights, even if they went out of print six weeks after publication [which happens far more often than one might think].

If you get out a calculator, as I am doing here, you will see that 95 years gives 19 of these 5 year periods, and if every 5 years half of the remaining books in print go OUT of print. . .that would leave. . .

99.9998% of those books once selected for inclusion in libraries being out of print before their copyrights expire.

This is FAR too much copyright protection, even for Hollywood.

Do you really think even the best selling movies of this year are going to be making any real money in 2097, when their copyrights would expire even if not further extended?

Under this kind of copyright term, the Wright Brothers' plans for the first airplane would only just have become public domain, even though the patents expired around 1920....

We have laws that encourage the copying of inventions but not the copying of ideas, artwork, music, or movies.

Why is it so much more important that we have supersonic toasters than supersonic minds???

I think we should choose a copyright term that expires when mathematics tells us that 90% of the profit has been made. . .and I do NOT think that copyright terms should have been changed in mid-term.

The date a copyright expires should be set the day it is issued by the government. . .that is the ONLY way contracts can be properly made as to what authors are selling when they sell their copyrights.

All the people who made "Gone With The Wind" were paid off in 1939 based on a 28 year copyright, with a possible 28 year extension. . .and yet that copyright, which was supposedly going to expire no later than 1996, is now making untold millions of dollars more every time it is on TV, or released in a new medium, such as DVD.

Without the extra copyright extensions of 1976 and 1998, anyone could be making DVDs of "Gone With The Wind". . . and the price would be negligible. . .and so would the "windfall profits" caused by lobbying the government to void a contract with the public and replace it with one that adds another four decades to every copyright in existence in the US, and two decades in many of the other countries of the world.

I have lots more to say about copyright, if you would like me to continue in a later session.

The main thing is that four times we have had "Information Ages"

1455 Johannes Gutenberg
1900 Steam and Electric Presses
1970 Xerox
1995 Internet/World Wide Web

And each time the response has been to KILL THE "INFORMATION AGE" FOR THE MASSES by telling them that NOW THAT THEY *CAN* MAKE CHEAP COPIES. . .

WE WILL MAKE IT ILLEGAL. . . !

So, the fact that you have your own personal computer and desktop publishing system, complete with CDROM and/or DVD burner does NOT mean you can republish "Gone With The Wind". . .as anyone should have predicted in 1939. . .other than perhaps George Orwell and Aldous Huxley for the Brave New World of 1984 or the "Handicapper General" of Harrison Bergeron.

Wales:

First, I think it is fairly clear that the current situation is absurd. No one (other than some powerful publishers) is going to argue that. What's the exact right number of years? I don't know. But let's say 12-20 years, or life of the author plus 12, for starters.

As for the Berne Convention and how that might constrain the US -- well, I don't want to sound too flippant, but we're the US and we can do whatever the hell we want. We should negotiate with other countries for a sensible reduction in the length of copyrights.

Q4) Project Gutenberg acceptance in schools
by Mendenhall

I ran across a very interesting phenomenon recently with Project Gutenberg and the local public school district. My son needed a copy of "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall" for school, and it was not available without a long lead time from bookstores. I looked at Gutenberg, and found it, and printed him up a neat copy. I also printed an extra for him to give to his teacher, so students could copy it and not have to buy the book. I made it quite clear to the teacher that this was a legal operation, etc. However, my son says the teacher shelved the copy, and indicated little interest in providing it to students to copy.

Hart:

Yes, there are still many places that have a "not invented here" attitude, I have had the same thing happen when I tried to give Project Gutenberg Etexts to libraries in person. Some won't even take them, while others do as yours did, accept them, and then just take them out of circulation. However, I am happy to report that more and more libraries are just fine handing out Project Gutenberg Etexts, and other kinds, as well.

More of Q4)

It seems that free texts such as this would be the perfect thing to use in history courses, where students often buy a book, read it once, and never use it again. School systems could save the students a _lot_ of money this way, and with very little effort on the part of the teacher. Many copy places (such as Kinko's) even will handle distribution and sale of such copies to students, with no effort on the part of the teacher, and a lot more cheaply than buying a book for one use.

Hart:

It's kind of funny how many people think something is of value only if you actually paid over the counter for it.

Even the media thinks this way. . .there are many who would interview me if I had made as much as AOL or Amazon.com [hee hee], but they won't, just because I don't deal with money.

Sheesh. . . !

Just because we have given away nearly a third of a trillion Etexts is the same kind of reason to give Project Gutenberg publicity as it would be if we had made just one penny for each one we handed out. . . and had thus made $3.33 billion and were scheduled to move past The Donald in the coming decade and past Bill Gates in the next decade.

No. . .THAT would be REAL NEWS. . . .

But doing this free of charge is not the same kind of news.

More of Q4)

Do you have any idea how to convince school systems of the value of this approach? Given the large number of historical texts available, it seems that it would open the doors to teachers use of a lot more original material in classes without much effort or expense.

Hart:

Sorry, I have given up trying to "convince" anyone of anything. . . .

Unless I am asked to. . . .

The fact is that those of you who use Etexts will take a cosmic leap ahead, and leave the rest behind like Neanderthals.

Any school, city, county, state or nation that adopts the "Unlimited Distribution" model for school and other media is likely to far outstrip those of us who lag behind. . .their books will surpass all others in a matter of a few editions. . .as all the readers correct mistakes and make suggestions for improvements. . .and then write new books based on the materials in what will then be listed as the "old, first generation" Etexts they first used in schools.

The papers written in these schools will be either 10 times better, or 10 times more prolific, since it will only take 1/11th the time to do the library research. . .leaving 10 times as much time and energy to actually use in the grey matter between the ears.

Of course, the fact that the masses could get a REAL education. . . without it being spoon fed to them by bureaucracies is one of the real fears "the system" has about such free flowing information.

I mean, do we REALLY want a "well-educated population of poor people?"

Do we REALLY want a "Third World" who can defeat us at debating tables?

Or even stand on their own???

I wish I could say, or do, more on this question....

Wales:

At Nupedia, one of the things we hope to do is to make sure that we can make our information available in _many_ formats for schools. CD-Roms? Paper books? It's easy to transform XML into any of those, and so surely someone will do it, and cheap.

Q5) Commercial offshoots
by CarrotLord
(richardrussell at mail dot com)

A question for both gentlemen: Is there likely to be commercial offshoots of the Nupedia and Gutenberg Projects, similar to the way the various Linux Distributions have grown from

Linux and GNU? Are there any ways planned or envisaged for companies or individuals to profit from these open projects?

PS: note that I consider profit a good thing in general, and this is not a troll or trick question. I would like to see profitable businesses built on the free exchange of knowledge.

Wales:

One of our fondest hopes at Nupedia is that Yahoo, Google, and other major websites will license our encyclopedia and redistribute it on a massive scale. If they make money off of it, that's fine. It's the freedom that matters.

Hart:

My apologies for not giving a more detailed answer, but the truth is, if I had waited either for approval or money. . .you would never have heard of me. . . or of Project Gutenberg.

I find it VERY hard to just stop doing what I am doing right now, to try to do something that involved paperwork and money. . .just not my thing. . . .

I hope/think/believe that the world will take care of me for doing my work, but I have had little or no reason to feel the commercial world will ever make me any but the same kind of offers they always have. . .offers that overall have not been worth the time to read and reply to them.

I don't mind profit either, as you may glean from my reply to the question below about my favorite books, etc., but it is much more important, and. . . "profitable" to me in the coin of my own realm, to change/save the world, rather than spend my efforts trying to fur line my nest. . . .

So, the answer is. . .No. . .I won't be spending a lot of time trying to make a profit from Project Gutenberg. . .as I said before. . .I would be pretty happy just to make enough to pretend I had received the average salary for the past 30 years. . . .

Someone is probably going to make a billion dollars from my work, but I doubt if it's going to be me. . . .

Q6) using text in other works
by po_boy
(amoore at openschedule dot org)

It is often claimed that GPL'd code is not used in some projects because it would force the authors of the project to be more open with their code then they would like.

In short, I would like to know how you two believe this concept carries over into the content world. Is their an analogous effect, and is this type of work better or worse off than software in overcoming this effect?

More specifically, I see that the works in Project Gutenberg are primarily (all?) public domain, so they may be referenced, altered, and distributed in quite a few ways with few problems. The content in Nupedia, however, is held under a licence more like the GPL. Do you feel that this restriction will cause that content to be used less by people since it would place restrictions on the way in which they could release and distribute derivative works? As the amount of content released under the Gnu Free Documentation Licence increases, do you think that it will have as easy of a time becoming accepted and used as software released under the GPL, or do you think that the restrictive nature of the license will have a more deleterious effect on the works released under it?

Wales:

Well, I don't think there is much to be gained by giving people the opportunity to take our articles and make the proprietary. Indeed, one of the most powerful incentives that high quality academic authors have for participating in Nupedia is _precisely_ that no one can take the content and make it proprietary. It's free, and variations on it will be free.

At some point in the very near future, Britannica is going to face a whopper of a build versus buy decision. On the one hand, they can write new articles from scratch, in the old-fashioned proprietary way, which costs a lot of money. Or, on the other hand, they can use Nupedia articles _for free_. The only price is that they will have to keep in the invariant sections (crediting the Nupedia project) and that they will have to make any modifications/improvements free too.

This may cause them to not adopt as quickly. But eventually, the price becomes so high that they'd be foolish (and unprofitable) if they didn't accept our content.

Hart:

I don't get into fine print and licenses. . .I think that what we have at the top of Project Gutenberg files is way too much, but lawyers would say it is just barely enough. . .I am not a lawyer. . . .

Again, I'm sorry it's such a short answer, just not my cuppa tea. . . .

As above:

I am out to change/save the world much more than to profit from it.

If I get the median or average salary for where I live, I will be happy. . .of course. . .the back pay for that would be about a million dollars, even without interest. . . .

But I don't see how licensing our products rather than just giving them away is going to help things rather than hurt them. . . .

For NEW works one wants to share under copyright [and a few dozen of our Project Gutenberg titles ARE done this way] we have our own header. . .which is must more palatable to me than the GNU license, which is so legalese I can hardly stand to read it.

So I try to keep it as simple as possible. . . .

7) Top-10 Copyrighted works you want if you could.
by DG
(trog@SPAM-ME-NOT.wincom.net)

For Mr Hart:

If you could pick any 10 currently copyrighted works, and have them placed in the public domain (specifically for inclusion in Project Gutenberg) what would they be?

Hart:

Ooof!!!

I have avoided questions like that for 30 years. . .but since my previous few replies were so short. . .here goes. . .probably won't be 10, though.

The top three would be:

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand [Probably with Anthem and The Fountainhead] [We have already done Anthem, with the permission of the publisher.]

Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury [but he told me, face to face, that he HATES Etexts, as he signed my copy of Fahrenheit 451 after I chased him down after one of his great speeches, so don't get your hopes up.]

The Man in the White Suit [Movie, 1951, Ealing Studios/BBC, starring Alec [Obi-Wan or Old Ben Kenobi] Guiness. I would PAY to get the rights to put that on the Net, if ANYONE will help me!!! Pleeeeeeeze!!!]

Well. . .anything else I would add to that list would probably be a diminution of the quality of that list. . .so I will stop there, having given away so much I have kept secret for all these years.

I never thought _I_ should choose the books for Project Gutenberg, I have always STRONGLY encouraged our 1700 volunteers to choose their own.

Wales:

Clearly, at Nupedia, we would love to see *more recent* encyclopedias hit the public domain. Some old versions of Britannica are out there -- but they are *so old* that they are practically useless as starting points for new articles.

But imagine if we could start from a "merely" 30 year old encyclopedia, and update it. It would surely make our work a lot easier.

Q8) Integration of the two projects?
by Squirrel Killer

To Jimmy Wales: How tightly to you see integrating Project Gutenberg's materials? Will you cut-and-paste sections from PG into Nupedia? Will the entry on Shakespeare link straight to PG's texts of his work?

To Michael Hart: I'm well aware of your desire to keep PG e-texts as clean ASCII with nothing linking to other projects and the like, but would you link from the PG website (not the text themselves) to the Nupedia project?

Wales:

Well, most of PG is classic books. Classic books don't really belong directly *inside* an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is not a library. But, yes, we will certainly seek to link to as many free texts as makes sense. We might even host them on our site at some point.

Hart:

The trouble with linking is link-rot. . . .

There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people who have asked us to link to them, but the trouble is that most links don't last a year.

I don't know if the readers here know, but Project Gutenberg is the biggest and longest "shoestring project" in all history. . . . We just don't have anyone to monitor the links and keep them up to date. The truth is that I am sitting here in my basement, after blowing $2 on lunch for the latest Hardee's special, and answering this on a keyboard and monitor that are about 20 years old. Of the seven drives I had on this system, three are still working. . .they are all still here physically. . .it's a funny looking homebrew machine that I have to tinker with.

I have become what I always wanted to be. . .a basement inventor.

hee hee.

So. . .back to the answer. . .I don't have ANY secretary, assistant, etc., here, though our Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has hired a 1/4 time assistant for our Trustee. I do have people who just help me when I ask, but I still answer all the phones, emails, do 99% of the copyright research, put the books online, fix the errors, and all that stuff. . . .

They will never realize how much I am doing until they have to get a dozen people to replace me. . .hee hee!

More of Q8)

As in the previous example, while browsing the various Shakespeare works, will I see a link to his biography on Nupedia?

Hart:

Nope. . .not until we have real money. . .just too much work to keep the links in working order.

More of Q8)

Personally, I think that this kind of integration is what will really add to Nupedia, as well as giving PG more value in that you can easily find out more about an author. I had been thinking about doing something like this, but just haven't had the time to do it right or the self-confidence to release what crap I did have to the outside world.

Hart:

I have the kind of self-confidence that allows me to release all sorts of mistakes to the outside world. . .I am dyslexic, but if you think I am going to run this through a spellchecker, sorry. . .I would rather work more with that time and energy on the books. . .that's my REAL goal. . . .

Well, due to the way this worked out, now three weeks later, I might run this through the spellchecker, since I had to download it to play with some of the formatting problem. . .I originally just wrote all these replies "on the fly" as I do with virtually all my email.

More Q8)

Without biasing your answers, I really think that this kind of integration would really be a boon to both projects, and show the benefits of open projects working together to create something greater than the sum of their parts.

Hart:

I LOVE interdisciplinary stuff, and would encourage this for someone who is into cross-linking things. . .it would be great.

We are making some new experimental web pages, and if I can encourage YOU. . .and anyone who would like to help you. . .I would be ***PROUD*** to give you the space to try it out. . .all you have to do is put:

***UNDER CONSTRUCTION***

and then no one can complain that it's not perfect.

I learned a LONG time ago to stop trying to be perfect.

Most of the academic world never seems to learn this.

When I was a perfectionist, my grades were just a low B+, A's in math and science, B's in nearly everything else, a few C's in Latin and German, one in art. . .I love art, but it was years before I had the patience to be good at it.

Before then my best semester in school was half A's and half B's, and that was only because half my classes then were math/science, where I could PROVE I was right. . .hee hee.

Once I decided to just BARELY get the A's, I not only got straight A's, but graduated from one of the great universities in only two years, and since I learned this before I got any grades there. . .I was #1.

Hmmm. . .it's important to know that trying for perfection is not very efficient. . .so I have to leave this in, but it's another thing I have kept out of the public eye for nearly 30 years.

I wonder if you realize how open I am being with my answers?

I have never put any of the personal things in ANY of my interviews before.

Q9) problems?
by Xeo2

are either of you worried about possibly erroneous submissions, whether it be a made up encyclopedia article, or badly translated public domain texts?In addition, what will the final forms of both of your products be? CD/DVD or internet? If internet will there be some kind of registration required?

Wales:

Nupedia is an open community. We welcome anyone to join our mailing lists and to pitch in to help out. We have an open review process in which _anyone_ can engage in the process of forming a community consensus about an article. This process really works well -- we're very proud of the articles that we've produced so far. It is certainly more rigorous than that applied by any conventional proprietary encyclopedia.

Hart:

We get error messages all the time that help us create better products, and we LOVE getting them. Most of the time only one person has to spot an error and it's fixed before another runs into it.

THAT's one of the GREAT things about Etexts.

And with comparison programs, you can EASILY see the differences between two Etexts, so you know something is going on, and exactly where it is. . .even if only a period is changed to a comma.

I'm sorry, but I'm a "seat of the pants" kind of professor. . .a "street" professor. . .as I often call myself. . .my only real goal is to get the most books to the most people. . .I'm not going to be the one arguing about whether Hamlet is saying:

"To be or not to be."
"To be, or not to be."
"To be; or not to be."
or
"To be: or not to be."

To me that is just arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. . .or was it on a pinhead?

You'd be surprised how many great thinkers were tricked into years of speculation on that question. . . .

Q10) Opposition from the 'For Pay' industry?
by Bonker

Have you had any overt opposition from the 'For Pay' publishing industries? If so, what is it like. Do you expect legal challenges?

Hart:

We have had several legal challenges, from some famous publishers, but since we do our copyright research VERY carefully, we were able to send them packing without much effort.

Some of them, including Merriam-Webster, were VERY kind, as was Caxton, about Ayn Rand's "Anthem," as mentioned above.

We have had several hostile takeover attempts, but since we don't legally exist as an entity, it's hard to take us over. We are all volunteers. It's equally hard to take over our non-profit foundation that hopefully will be supporting us soon.

Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in: Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa, Indiana, and Vermont. As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. These donations should be made to the "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" and mailed to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109

International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are ways.

Wales:

We think they are ignoring us, hoping we'll go away. We won't. :-)

11) Encyclopaedias are obsolete
by JCCyC
(j[CUBAN-DICTATOR'S-SURNAME]@ap[3.141592].com.br)

What do you think of the idea of Open Textbooks? For example, books on World History, Biology, Math, Physics etc. that can be used in high schools and for which no copy restrictions are in place? Schools and/or parents and/or students would be able to print the book themselves at a fraction of the cost. Maybe the result wouldn't be so nice-looking, but it would be effective.

Hart:

_I_, personally, think all textbooks should be contracted as "works for hire" so they would be government documents free of copyright. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if I used exactly the right term. . .but I think textbooks should be contracted to become public domain when they are written. . . . This would stop all that silliness about changing the page numbers and a few words here and there so the old editions are hard to use alongside the new ones. . . . I'm sure you know what I mean, but if not, let me know, and I will try a few examples.

This would also eliminate the need for millions of students to sit down at the start of every year and put in the same corrections as millions have done for years before, when the answers in the back are wrong. . .which they seem to be. . .all too often.

Etextbooks can be corrected all at once, you just put in your disk and get the corrected copy. . .saving the old one as insurance against 1984ism.

More of Q11)

Think schools in poor neighborhoods, or in the Third World. Think cheap, fast inkjet printers. Think a central repository (or a number thereof) whose contents is certified as "Good For Schools" by some reputable academic body, govt-ran or not.

Hart:

Actually, inkjet printing is still way to slow and way too expensive, I prefer the $13.88 reader I described above. . .why bother with "dead tree editions" at all. . .the new generations will think that flipping through thousands of paper sheets per year is silly when you could just search them ALL in one single minute. . .and then quote them perfectly in one second. . .leaving all the time and energy for the REAL WORK. . .WHICH GOES ON BETWEEN THE EARS!!!

However, I do recognize that many people still find paper easier, but just as with cellphones enabling Third World countries to start a GREAT phone system without the billions spent on wires, I think they could also start GREAT publishing empires without the millions spent on paper printing.

Why not Etext readers as ubiquitous as cellphones?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Wales:

I'm all for it. Indeed, the Nupedia encyclopedia might be viewed as one cornerstone of a more global Universal Encyclopedia, which would include textbooks, etc.

At Nupedia, we've decided to _not_ be idle visionaries and dreamers. We view what we are doing as being similar (in the content side) to what the FSF did many years ago with the beginnings of GNU software. We tackle just what we can actually accomplish _today_. You don't start out writing an operating system from scratch. First you write an editor. You write the 'ls' command. You write a mail program. And so on like that.

We're starting with a goal that can actually be accomplished and have a major impact in just 3-5 years time! After that, we surely expect that the energy of the project, and the lessons we have learned about software, etc., to generate dozens of spinoffs in all directions.

------

[Jimmy Wales also "asked and answered" two questions of his own about Nupedia - ed.]

-1) "What's the deal with Nupedia and 'Gnupedia'?"

Hector, who started the 'gnupedia' project recently wrote this on his mailing list:

"Now, the FSF's plans are give all the support to the Nupedia project. So Nupedia will become the official GNU encyclopedia."

-0) "Nupedia seems to be too centralized and slow moving for me. I understand the need for quality control, but wouldn't it make more sense to have a more bazaar-type free encyclopedia project?"

Maybe so! People who want to get started _today_ on contributing free texts to the world can do so at Wikipedia. All the content is released under the GNU FDL, and it already has over 1000 articles. Short, and maybe not the high quality of Nupedia, but with time? Who knows...

------

Michael Hart's answers are (C)2000 by Michael S. Hart

Andy Tai writes: "In sharp contrast to the music and movie industries' attempts to control access to content, the Internet Moving Image Archive aims to keep movie content freely available to the public. It provides 359 movies online and will add 642 more. The content is encoded in MPEG2 format and can only be converted to Open Source MPEG4 formats. The content is either public domain or owned by Prelinger Archives. So come and get your free movie now!" This reminds me of Project Gutenberg - anyone else know of good repositories around the Web? Post 'em below.

This is a "double header" interview. Our guests are Jimmy Wales of the recently-started Nupedia open content encyclopedia project and Michael S. Hart of Project Gutenberg, which Hart started in 1971. The two projects are very different -- Nupedia is creating an encyclopedia, while PG is creating an open-ended database of public domain and out-of-copyright texts -- but they are similar in that both projects' primary goal is free (beer and speech) access to information. Post questions (one per post, please) below for Wales and/or Hart about their creations (or any related topic). We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to them tomorrow, and will publish their answers as soon as they get them back to us.

This is a "double header" interview. Our guests are Jimmy Wales of the recently-started Nupedia open content encyclopedia project and Michael S. Hart of Project Gutenberg, which Hart started in 1971. The two projects are very different -- Nupedia is creating an encyclopedia, while PG is creating an open-ended database of public domain and out-of-copyright texts -- but they are similar in that both projects' primary goal is free (beer and speech) access to information. Post questions (one per post, please) below for Wales and/or Hart about their creations (or any related topic). We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to them tomorrow, and will publish their answers as soon as they get them back to us.

The property struggle of our generation will be fought not in the streets of Matewan but in the tiny print in license agreements. Glassbook is Adobe's attempt to e-books, but they have a few details yet to iron out. Take Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for example -- check out the permissions you acquire when you "purchase" this "book." Thanks to Art Medlar and TBTF for this one. Update: Curiouser and curiouser. Apparently I misinterpreted the meaning of "this book cannot be read aloud"; Glassbook tech support tells me this refers to its capabilities, not, as labeled, permissions. I apologize for that. But I don't understand why, after this story was posted, they decided to change this. Now if you download Alice, you'll find it can be read aloud.

Incidentally, Adobe is using the text of Alice as transcribed by the awesome Project Gutenberg, whose entire purpose for existence is to bring reading material to as many people as possible. One of the first things I did when I got a laptop was to download a couple dozen of their books. In ASCII format. Say what you like about vi, at least it doesn't tell me to shut up.

shiwala writes: "id software is auctioning the SGI Origin 2000 used to process all of the map data for Quake II and Quake III Arena." Hemos and I have been debating auctioning off the case that was the 2nd Slashdot (for a six months). I've been trying to find the alpha that was Slashdot for the first 9 months of its life (it served the first million pages: if I only knew that we would serve that many pages every day). Probably donate the $ to the FSF or Project Gutenberg or something. Anyway this id box amuses me: opening bid is $7500.

A reader wrote to us about a project that deserves a lot of goodwill Project Gutenberg which is having a hardtime getting attention. Click below to read a letter from the head of the Project.

In an email from Michael Hart, the head of Project Gutenberg, he says:
"Getting the Etexts to twice as many people is just as important as creating twice as many Etexts. . .but without MAJOR publicity it is not likely to happen. . .we constantly get messages from readers who tell us they have been LOOKING for Etexts for years and just at that present time FINALLY FOUND US. . . . That means we cannot get to a major part of our audience with the kind of publicity we have, we need something more. . . . For example, we were the first in an entirely new column: "People To Watch" in the November 8th edition of TIME magazine, but we have received less than a dozen emails per that article. . .what we really need to do is get on Oprah Winfrey, and hopefully add something to her book club. Those of you on AOL, perhaps you could email the show and request they invite us. . . ! We should undoubtedly also try the other talk shows, and "magazine" shows, etc. All the press we receive is from them contacting us, I have had no luck "generating" publicity. . .which seems to be easy, for those who have the knack. . .it's just not MY knack. . .help!!!"

So, if there's anything that you can do to help - do it!