Slashdot Mirror

irc://us.undernet.org/#bookz
'Nuff said.
I can search and download any book I want in an instant. Perhaps not the very latest bestsellers, but everything else. And for classics/creative commons stuff, there's always Project Gutenberg, Manybooks and of course, Baen.
To me - these sites (and aforementioned IRC channel) are like an enormous virtual library. I'm a scifi/fantasy fan, and these books seldom are single stories- they tend to run into dozens or more books.
While enjoyable to read - I don't think I could ever go back to reading the whole thing from the beginning. Hence I've read Discworld, Stephen King's Dark Tower series, Star Wars' New Jedi Order, to name a few.
If I actually went and bought these books, I'd run out of space to keep 'em. But I can quite conveniently carry them on my hard drive, or read them on my phone with Mobipocket Reader, or on my dedicated ebook reader (Infibeam Pi, a rebadged ). No DRM, no remote control shenanigans by the manufacturer, no bullshit.
As far as I'm concerned, if downloading ebooks off an IRC channel or a torrent is piracy, then so is borrowing physical books from the local library. In neither case do the publishers get paid. Show me an ebookstore that charges a reasonable price (cheaper than the physical version for starters and adjusted to local market rates depending on country rather than just directly converted from USD), and has no DRM. Baen offer their books like this, it's a pity Amazon won't.

Don't forget that there are not just libraries of book metadata online, there are libraries of complete books:

• Project Gutenberg
• Newton's Library
• Bartleby II
• Electronic Text Center at UVA Library
• Tech Books for Free
• etc.

While these libraries are by no means as extensive as something like Amazon, it's nice having the full text of the books themselves.

Actually, since modern copyright starts at 1925, I would think MOST would be more than a century old.

I do hope they're not duplicating efforts... and whether they even know about Project Gutenberg. http://www.promo.net/pg/>

I expect their scans to be sumbitted to it.

Hey, wow, that is completely original. Nobody else could have possibly thought of this idea before.

I am, of course, not a lawyer, but I know a bit about copyright law.

Unfortunately, I replied to a previous post before getting to yours, so I will have to repeat myself somewhat. On the other hand, since you are a lawyer, it will be easier to summarise my point as you are already familiar with the issues involved.

First, let me say that although I agree with your legal assessment, I disagree with your moral assessment. Whether or not Google is going to profit by its actions is irrelevant. The fact that they are going to digitize so many books should be applauded. What they have already done would take publicly funded programs decades or centuries (if it were to happen at all). If you do not believe me, just take a look at Project Gutenberg. It took them from 1970 to 2001 or 2002 to scan a mere 10,000 books. The public library systems of the world have scanned zero or close to zero (considering the number of works in the public domain, you should be asking yourself if the public libraries are doing their job at all). Google is going to manage millions in a few years. This is a good thing, whether or not you like Google personally.

Now, on to the legal issues. Technically, Google is in massive violation of copyright. Of that, there can be no question. The question is the relevancy and enforcability of those provisions in copyright law.

Technically, by the fact that you are viewing this comment, you are violating my copyrights. I have written this comment. It is stored in a fixed and tangible form. You have copied it into your computer's memory (Mai v. Peak) to view it. I have not given you written permission to view it (which, legally, is the only kind of permission that matters). In the mean time, you have also created infringers of all of the intermediary ISPs between yourself and Slashdot, so you are also liable for contributory infringement. I could sue you and win.

Why does this not happen every day? It does not happen because society has already accepted that these forms of copying are acceptable. Call them fair use. Call them your right to access the materials. Call these forms of copying whatever you want. No matter how you look at it, the Internet itself is responsible for massive (technical) copyright infringement. In fact, if copyight were enforced as the lawmakers wrote it, you could not even use the web without calling every admin and asking for a written contract before you accessed that given site.

So, the question, as I just put it is:

• Are the copying portions of copyright law still enforceable in the age of the Internet? (Or is copyright now limited to distribution only?)

As I pointed out in my earlier post, the RIAA, the current, undisputed king of copyright lawsuits does not even sue for copying. They sue for distribution. If they really wanted to, they could sue anybody with MP3s of any music over which their sponsors had rights. In fact, they could even sue anybody using a CD player because the player has to load the data into memory and convert it into an analog signal before a given person can listen to it. From the standpoint of copyright law, then, it is impossible to even listen to music without violating copyright.

In such an age, how can Google be taken to task for violating copyright in the same way that everyone does?

Many public foundations employ "copyright" and "licenses" -- also known as "legal restrictions" -- that prevent you from doing things like reproducing or distributing their works. Forget about breaking the license with a copy machine. Breaking the license is a violation of the law and could expose you to prosecution.

The EFF says:
"EFF is a nonprofit group of passionate people -- lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries -- working to protect your digital rights."

But buried in the source to this very article is the following secret code:
License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc/1.0/"
requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attributi on"
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduct ion"
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribut ion"
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Derivativ eWorks"
prohibits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Commercia lUse"
requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice"

This "code" restricts your rights to use the article. Even worse, each article might have a different license! Future articles might change their license at any time!

The facts: you read it, they still own it. Sounds like 1984? Read on.

Additional EFF article restrictions:
- Prohibits commercial re-use or re-mixing into a new article.
- Requires that the license and copyright be reproduced with the article.
- Requires that you credit the copyright holder and/or author.

Other articles using this same "licensing" could be even more restrictive!

Looking for alternatives? Here are some sites that don't use restrictive "copyright" and "licensing".
- Project Gutenberg http://promo.net/pg/
- Public Domain Music http://www.pdinfo.com/

Fictionwise sells ebooks, but they also have free novels, short stories and audio books from time to time. Currently they have 26 items available for free, including a lot of sci-fi.

Audible

Audible sells audio books, but they have some free items also. There is a new free item every week or so for subscribers.

ereader

ereader has a few free ebooks. During December last year, they had a different free ebook each day for a few weeks.

Audio Books for Free

AudioBooksForFree has free audio books, but in a very compressed format. You have to pay to get better quality, but for $100 you can buy everything.

Baen Books

Baen Books has a free library with sci-fi books.

Project Gutenberg

This one has been pointed out a few times, but it is the biggest. It is here and here. I think the first one is the official site.

I have been doing this for over a year and a half on both my P800 and my A780. They both have Opera, and I just strip Project Gutenberg eTexts or other books down and break them into chapters. As long as the HTML formatting does not specify width, the page should display fine on any small screen. (The script I use is at SourceForge).

This can be done on any phone or PDA that has any kind of web browser. Even PocketIE can handle simple pages (although it cannot use CSS and it loads pages slowly). This is not a technological advancement. Practically every cell phone with a color screen and web access can do this.

It is nice to be able to carry a library of 10 or more books in one's pocket, as well. It is too bad copyright limits the books one can carry to approximately 100 years old or older.

I'd just like to point out that they http://www.promo.net/pg/ have been making available full texts of out-of-copyright books for a much longer time than the current web darling. And I suspect they will continue to do so well beyond the time when nerdly zeal for Google has waned.

Many or most librarians are behind the times regarding Internet and online resources. Sure most have their catalog online and perhaps have cabinets of microfilm or microfiche.

I find many are unaware of Gutenburg or other online resources and are even hostile to my posting their books and materials online. Special Collections Librarians typically want a royalty fee of $50 or $100 a page to use public domain materials (they can do this as they have physical possession of the books). Sometimes I can find a book not in Special Collections in some another library, or can buy a cheap used copy, but it's frustrating that I have to work around these "temple keepers" to provide wider access of books to the public.

I love ebooks for certain uses... especially when in plain text format so they can be used with my speed reader program on the Pocket PC. Zipping through a just-for-fun book at 600+ WPM and finishing it in one sitting beats the heck out of fooling with paper. I love Project Gutenberg.

Then there's the joy of having pretty much an entire library of books with you at any one time. I always have my Pocket PC with me on the go, so I always have my ebooks. Can't beat the convenience, especially if you have tools to easily search and highlight in the book. PDFs, although kinda unrelated, are amazingly great for students already overloaded with encyclopedia sized volumes of tech books.

That said, I also own multiple bookshelves worth of technical, educational, and entertainment books and buy more regularly. If it comes down to a book I actually have to buy, I buy it on paper. Maybe it's availablity of older books, maybe it's not paying attention to battery life, maybe it's being able to psychically flip the page... but despite practically living on digital information, I have to admit... if I have to buy it, I typically still want a tangible copy.

With all the OCR problems, i'm sure the folks down at Project Gutenburg wouldn't mind taking this on.

Material that is available for legal distribution is just too boring to attract subscribers, at least currently. (Musically that is, so Project Goethenberg aside)

OK, that was really too long, but since you put a lot of effort into it, I'll respond. With all the examples you've shown how copyright was instituted to protect artists from other people making money off their works, and the example of how publishers give advances that requires the artist to spend 10 years of not making a cent, and how things released into the public domain can still make money...doesn't all of this tell you there is something inherently wrong with the system? If an artist is being taken advantage of and doesn't see a cent while the publishers and middlemen (i.e. "other people") make tons, even though there are laws in place that are suppose to protect the artist and prevent these thing from happening, doesn't that say the system is broken?

But to some, the system is not broken. It's working exactly the way it's be molded to work. To save Mickey Mouse. There's a saying that goes "Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain, copyright gets extended by 25 years." In fact I think I've seen it on the QOTD at the bottom of Slashdot. There are thousands of other things that should be in the public domain but aren't, all owned by huge corporations who don't want their investments to be taken by the public. It's not that Disney couldn't still make money off of Mickey Mouse and all his friends if they were public domain. It's that other people could start making money from them, without ridiculessly high licencing costs paid to Disney. And they don't like that idea, because then they'd make less money. So copyright might have started out as a way to protect artists, albeit a slightly misguided way, but it has been highjacked to protect corporate interests instead while providing little to no protection to real artists. And as for copyrights protecting people from rivals who oppose their views taking their works and using them in campaigns against them, I do believe there are defamation laws in place now that would protect against that. Copyright would not be needed in that case, in an ideal world.

So how about this. Leave the 10 year public copyright in place, so that after 10 years people can access works without the threats of fines and jail. But leave a law in place that states anyone making money from a work must pay the artist for his/her lifetime. If that were in place, P2P could legitamately work, or at least moreso then now. Recent works would be protected by law and could possibly be filtered, since a 10 year list would be much easier to filter then a 100 year list. But people sharing public domain works for free would be clear to do so. And people selling public domain works would still have to pay the artists. Everyone wins. As for books, Project Gutenburg would benefit greatly from a 10 year copyright. One of the issues they face now is that they can only put books published before 1923 (with some complications) online. Imagine being able to download "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy", or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" without being called a pirate. But reading a book on a computer is a little difficult and not as convenient as a real book. So in that case, people could download for free, or pay for a real book and pay the artist, and all the while be a good law abiding citizen. This is just one idea. I'm sure there are many others that would work much better to protect the artists then what's in place now. Actually...lets switch gears for a moment. Imagine being able to download "Star Wars" or "The Exorcist" without being called a pirate. People would still buy the DVDs, with all the extra features and all of George's "improvments". But there would be no restrictions from just downloading and watching a movie. And we wouldn't have to sit through commercials saying that pirates hurt the camera men and stage hands. I can imagine a much better world then the one we live in now...if it weren't for corporation getting too greedy...

I took a course on the philosophy of modern physics at university and on the our text books was Einstein's own called Relativity : the Special and General Theory fairly informative and yet accesible. It is available for free from Project Gutenberg. Just click on the first link.

Just want to ask...how long should you profit? I mean, if this is all for profit, how long do you deserve it. You can't have it forever, because then what incentive do you have? You can write one book, and if you have a copyright forever then you wouldn't ever have to write another book if there were forever copyrights. And then the world who be without your brilliant creativity, because you're living the high life off of one book. Not to mention your kids becoming little spoiled brats because they never have to work a day in their lives because they're sill making money off of your one book. So that can't work. How about your lifetime? Sounds good, but it's as bad as forever. What incentive would you have if you only ever had to write one book and live the high life for the rest of your existance? So that can't work either?

So how about a fixed amount of time? What is it today? 150 years? No no no...that's as bad as your lifetime. Lets bring that down a little. How about 75 years, like it was originally? Is making money off your book for 75 years good? For me, that's still too long, because you'll more then likely write your book in your mid 20s, maybe early 30s. So that means you'll make money off it until for 100. Most likely you'll die far before that due to an excessive lifestyle brought on by your success. So that's not good.

So how about this...make copyrights 10 years. You'll make money for 10 years. But that means you'll have to create something else in order to keep making money. Not only that, but those of us that waited the 10 years to finally read your book because we couldn't afford it before will finally get to read it legally. Millions will benefit from reading your book for free. Your work will become public domain, and hence owned by everyone. You will add your great existance to the world through your book, because everyone is allowed to read it.

Now if you could just get rid of those darned libraries that flagrantly disregard copyright by buying your book and letting ANYONE read it for free. Not to mention finding a way to keep those pesky freeloaders from "borrowing" your book from their friends. Then you'd have quite the system, wouldn't you?

Will Google by any chance be using any of Project Gutenberg's texts?

Things licensed as Open Source do better on "just the facts" vs hype. Maybe it's because their audiences would take them to task if they did otherwise, but description of things such as GCC, Wikipedia , the Linux kernel, the GIMP, to name just a few, are completely factual. Not entirely free of marketing but tolerable are the Linux site's description of Linux, OpenSSH, bzip2, Project Gutenberg, and an XWindows organization X.org.

Particularly note Wikipedia and Google. The description of Wikipedia was made and chosen by the users. I can't think of a better testament that what users really want is just the facts. And Google understood that the last thing a person wants to do when anxious to find something quick is be forced to wait for a bunch of pointless graphics and generic ads to load. Really aggravating when on dial-up. Before Google, I got to where I knew just when to hit the stop button when loading Yahoo's main search page so I'd get the text input line and search button and miss all the extra crap they used to put on their main page.

Of course open source isn't totally above marketing. FreeBSD, Mozilla Firefox, KDE, Apache, OpenOffice all lay it on. They can point to all kinds of statistics to justify their hype, but the hype is still irritating when it catches my attention. These are easy to accept in spite of the marketspeak because I've heard from elsewhere that they're good.

Bad though some of those are, Microsoft is worse. Maybe what MS does should be called extreme marketing? In a few moments of searching, I was unable to find even a badly overblown description of just what Windows XP or MS Office is and during the search was wading through hype about MS's latest whatever: "Try the new digital music experience from Microsoft. You'll love it!"

As for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I will spend a little time trying not to do that, but when it does happen I hope it clues the promoters in to realizing they made the waters too murky. Accepting something in spite of murk is not the way to persuade them to clean up. I like to tell them about it too. You never know when commentary might actually be heeded. I'm sorry if a good thing gets short shrift, but when time is limited, books will be judged by covers. People are often asked to try to word emails so spam filters will pass them. I feel I'm not asking too much of marketing to do the analogous.

Just be aware that the Gutenberg is some 135GB, and much of it is gif jpg and mp3 (spoken work books). So i just used --include in rsync to download the .txt .htm and .html files. Its a more manageable 10GB download.

This seems like as good a place as any to throw in a plug for Project Gutenberg (old books for free!) and the Internet Booklist (a good place to go if you don't know what to read).

-jim

When real free-market think-tanks are publishing their material on the Web there is no justification left for DRM. Works that are put into formats that are easily archived and copied will be preserved. Over half of all of the movies made by commercial studios have already been lost through degradation of the media. I like to believe that some of what I write will be worth reading in a century or two. Perhaps the general public won't have any interest since they don't seem to have much now. But my descendants might. I intend to make sure that they can read it. DRM schemes enforced by hardware and software that will be long-dead by then won't help.

since some seem to have trouble on the index page... here it is:

Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision.
Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg has the following figures (as of November 8th 2002): 203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001) for a total of 6267 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks. 119 eBooks have been posted so far by Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Click here for the full PG story and here for the latest News , and learn about the Stockholm Challenge Award recently won by Project Gutenberg in the category Culture.

The key link is search page.

since some seem to have trouble on the index page... here it is:

Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision.
Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg has the following figures (as of November 8th 2002): 203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001) for a total of 6267 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks. 119 eBooks have been posted so far by Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Click here for the full PG story and here for the latest News , and learn about the Stockholm Challenge Award recently won by Project Gutenberg in the category Culture.

The key link is search page.

since some seem to have trouble on the index page... here it is:

Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision.
Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg has the following figures (as of November 8th 2002): 203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001) for a total of 6267 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks. 119 eBooks have been posted so far by Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Click here for the full PG story and here for the latest News , and learn about the Stockholm Challenge Award recently won by Project Gutenberg in the category Culture.

The key link is search page.

since some seem to have trouble on the index page... here it is:

Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision.
Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg has the following figures (as of November 8th 2002): 203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001) for a total of 6267 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks. 119 eBooks have been posted so far by Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Click here for the full PG story and here for the latest News , and learn about the Stockholm Challenge Award recently won by Project Gutenberg in the category Culture.

The key link is search page.

Most of PG's more well-knownalready are formatted into HTML.

Well, there is Project Gutenberg.

I started reading ebooks on my old palmIIIx to see if the convenience would make up for the crappy reading experience. About 2 years ago I got a clie NX 60, mainly for the screen and the wireless. Now I'm totally hooked cuz I can read one handed in the dark whenever I have a spare couple of minutes, and I can carry A BUNCH of books. I've borrowed a couple of Pocket PC's to compare and in my estimation they don't . It's just to hard to beat the bright color 320x480 hires screen which translates to more and sharper text on the screen. P.S. I also work from a powerbook and convert lot's of books from Project Gutenberg with Pordible for OS 10. As for pay for play books, you can buy most books for mobipocket or palm reader, which both support some kind of anti-aliased fonts.

Libraries without enough books could always have a link to Project Gutenberg on their start up page.

A link to the Baen Free Library could be good too.

Trouble is the PCs may end up even more hogged that way.

Would be helpful if libraries could print books themselves from free/public domain material.

"If you have the keys to an encrypted file and you refuse to decode it and a judge issues a warrant for that data"

I would, of course cooperate by producing the plaintext of every encrypted file on my hard drive. I'll be keeping a complete mirror of Project Gutenberg on my hard drive. You never know when having an archived copy of the United States Constitution might prove useful. Like where it says that I'm entitled to a trial by jury within the state where I allegedly committed the offense. I think I could convince a jury that an act that is not a crime under our laws should receive a verdict of Not Guilty. In fact, a good lawyer could probably find grounds to sue the foreign government within our jursidiction.

ARTICLE THREE

Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States; --between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

i do agree with your point, but...

Some won't expire.
Some you don't care if it expire.
But some people just don't care at all.

Well, I am almost ashamed to admit it but I went ahead and purchased the ATT natural voice pack that comes along with the wonderfully _buggy_ Textaloudmp3. (Really just a voice kit for windows and a crummy Text to Mp3 app) but I was just really tired of the festival voices (which was how I used to do the following:) Slice up a raw text book into parts small enough to navigate through with ffwd and rwd and convert to mp3. Then copy to neuros for ubiquitous listening pleasure.

How do I get a hold of em? Well, I do try looking for others on P2P/UUnet etc of the books I own but don't want to slice up (ugh... it was psychologically devestating the first few times.) If I don't find them there, I slice the binding on the book and scan them in.

Currently I have a scanned OCR (either of my making, or acquired) library of pretty much every paper back book I had before I moved. Slicing the binding with a paper slicer was the hard part, lining the pages up on my toploading scanner direct to PDF allows me to keep a relatively complete library in an easy to read format (at least on my lappy).

Any (public domain) literature I feel like reading I go to the gutenberg library mirrors.

My big complaint when it comes to visual reading on a 'puter is I would like a good visual way to read a PDF (oss if possible) that would let me toss visual bookmarks/annotations onto the document... but once you get used to reading on a PDA and/or listening to the fun-ky com-put-er voic-es it's no-t tha-t ba-ad.

You're right! On a positive note, Many libraries (i.e. NASA) have on-line access to Copyright Journals/books etc. that are routinely accessible remotely via VPN. You can find thousands of classics and other books at
Project Gutenburg. Many Government publications (including Patents) are available on-line. Are we getting close to the day when: "If it's not on-line, it doesn't exist".

A more constructive thing for her to do would be to read *to* or *with* her child. Maybe involve the computer -- PG has an excellent selection of classics, from Shakespeare to Shaw, to Lewis Carroll to Asa Grey (a botanist from around CNY). Too many parents blame the machine for stealing their children away, but refuse to make it a tool of their own choosing.

I think a lot of this has to do with the continuious copyright extensions. If copyright were left alone and implemented as it was originally, it wouldn't seem like such an oppressive system.

I agree, especially since copyright (at least in the US) was originally implemented with a renewal process. During the final year of a copyright term, the holder would be able to renew the copyright for another X years.

Surely it would have made much more sense for legislators to have tinkered with the copyright renewal process instead of repeatedly increasing the length of copyrights accross-the-board.

Unfortunately the renewal process is now an automatic system, and copyrights get renewed whether the holder cares about it or not. The result is that a lot of work that the copyright holders don't care or have forgotten about is now simply dying, because projects such as Project Gutenberg aren't allowed to save it.

A neverending renewal system doesn't solve all the problems (depending on your point of view), but at least with a renewal process, Disney would be able to keep its precious Mickey Mouse for a bit longer without producing the momentous amounts of collateral damage that neverending copyright does.

I use it to write down whatever tasks I accomplish at work, I use it at the gym to write down weights/reps, I also take notes whenever I want to remember something (like an address, a list of hotel rates, etc), I keep my resume on it as well (I have beamed my resume to a potential employer once; note that I didn't plan to apply at that place, I was merely visiting a friend); of course, its phonebook is also useful (and can hold a lot of info and games are nice, but what really makes this old Palm IIIx useful to me is that it can hold about a dozen novels, so I can read during one of the many trips (bus, plane, train) I make each year. With sites like Project Gutenberg and the Baen free library, I always have books to read and carrying them around is a breeze.

I believe the recent Bono Copyright Extension Act ensured those cartoon characters won't go out of copyright for a long, long time. 2019 at the earliest.

Every time I think about this, it occurs to me that it would have made much more sense to have simply allowed owners and authors to request another copyright renewal rather than extend copyright accross the board.

Personally I couldn't care much less about wanting to use Mickey Mouse in the public domain -- Disney can keep it. But because of the ruthlessness of the whole thing, it means that countless amounts of less-well-known media from the past, that nobody is still enforcing ownership for, is just going to be lost into oblivion because efforts like Project Gutenberg aren't allowed to revive them.

I recently ran across a good, concise discussion of US copyright laws with timeframes of when content becomes public domain here at Project Gutenberg. Looks like we will see some PD works next in 2019.

I recently ran across a good, concise discussion of US copyright laws with timeframes of when content becomes public domain here at Project Gutenberg. Looks like we will see some PD works next in 2019.

I agree. Project Guttenberg is one of the first things that come to mind.

Here are some links I dredged up last time this subject rolled through.

Wiki Textbooks
Light and Matter: Open physics textbooks.
An open math textbook
Project Gutenberg, for all the English majors out there.

There are also a lot of books out there which are freely downloadable, but not modifiable. Has anyone here used a free (in either sense) textbook as their primary learning tool in a college class? If so, what was your experience?

Under pre-1970s copyright law, all of this material about telegraphy would have come out of copyright. Someone would have scanned it and made it freely available, probably through Project Gutenberg.

I love these new copyright laws meant to spur innovation... by letting people and corporations get income in perpetuity while producing as little as possible, and locking out the material that no one wants to publish any more.
</soapbox>

What books will I find in Project Gutenberg? We cannot publish any texts still in copyright. This generally means that our texts are taken from books published pre-1923. (It's more complicated than that, as our Copyright Page explains, but 1923 is a good first rule-of-thumb for the U.S.A.)

Yeah, I know this one site with thousands of books, only a handful of which have their author's permissions.

(Permission isn't everything. ;-) )

• The Wikipedia project has spun off the Wikibooks, the free textbook project.
• MIT offers the OpenCourseWare initiative
• the venerable Project Gutenberg offers e-texts of public domain books
• The University of Pennsylvania complements Gutenberg with the Online Books Page
• and numerous other authors, universities, and organizations are jumping on the bandwagon

According to that PDF, the cost was 32.3 cents on the dollar, or nearly a third. That's a lot of money considering most college texts are between 20 and 50 dollars. That's 6 bucks off the largest of my lit class books, and 15 off my Java and UNIX books while I was majoring in SE.

Here I'd like to note that I saved on my Shakespeare and Jonson class by finding nearly every text on Project Gutenberg (if you need a link to get there, shame on you!), while even at the used shops they were 4 and 5 pounds apiece (I'm at UWA right now on exchange. Enjoyed the Guy Fawkes celebration on the beach!).

The melody was written in 1859. The words were written in 1893. The melody and the alternate words "Good Morning to You" were PUBLISHED in 1893. The information given does not indicate precisely when the words "Happy Birthday" was first published.

Now, according to information on the Project Gutenberg site (which agrees with info I have seen on the U.S. Copyright Office pages):

"1. Works first published before January 1, 1923 with proper copyright notice entered the public domain no later than 75 years from the date copyright was first secured. Hence, all works whose copyrights were secured before 1923 are now in the public domain."

So if it was published in 1893 with a copyright notice, then at a minimum, the music and alternate words are public domain.

"5. If a substantial number of copies were printed and distributed in the U.S. prior to March 1, 1989 without a copyright notice, and the work is of entirely American authorship, or was first published in the United States, the work is in the public domain in the U.S. "

If it did not bear a copyright notice when published in 1893, then it is also likely to be in the public domain due to this rule.

I also think that there are limitations on how long a work may be copyrighted after it was created, but I am not sure about this.

Nah, a Palm makes a great ebook reader. And Palms are cheap like borscht, you can pick up a used Zire or Palm III/V for under $50. Hell, you can get a new Zire 21 for $99. Cost of the unit hasn't been an issue for a long time unless you're talking about one of those stupid only-reads-ebooks-and-costs-$300 devices like the Franklin Ebook reader.
Here's the problem I have had with the e-books as presented by the industry since day one. Cost of the books themselves. Why the hell does the ebook version cost only a buck less than the paperback version? It only costs a buck to print and ship to distributors? That's friggin news to me! If the Ebooks were reasonably priced for the lack of a physical thing that you can hold in your hands, like say around $2.50 per instead of $7 per, then there would have been a lot more interest than there has been so far.
In fact, there's been so little interest in Ebooks, I find the title of the article laughable. The bubble burst? What bubble? It was never there to begin with. The publishing industry is terrified of ebooks and never wanted them to succeed to begin with, which probably explains the asinine pricing model. A lot of the bigger publishers refused to even consider ebooks at all. A lot of the books I read on my palm come from either public domain sources like Project Gutenberg, or one of the few tree publishers that does seem to "get it", Baen Books. They even have a free library of a lot of their published stuff, a download from which of a book by David Weber eventually saw me going out and buying several of his books. They also have an interesting "webscription" system, which I am thinking about trying for a few months. Could be good. Unfortunately, they seem the exception rather than the rule when it comes to publishers and ebooks.

many years ago actually: I went to yard sales, flea markets, and public library book sales. $20 USD goes a long ways in those places. I also inherited most of my family's book collection, dating to the 1940's for college textbooks. I also went to places like the Online Books page, Project Gutenberg, and BlackMask Online to round out my collection of world favorites and classics. Librarians love me, btw...

You're absolutely right. I actually got a Palm Vx from ebay, with: shipping, hard anodized case and folding keyboard, for only 70 bucks. When I got it I headed over to project gutenberg and downloaded some books. Then I downloaded some great software, an app to look at the stars: keyring (encrypted open source app to generate and store passwords), solitaire and a few other interesting apps

After getting all that installed I now have a very nice palm (with still 4MB of ram free) that I can use to read some great literature[1], take out of my pocket in a cafe and unfold the full size keyboard to type something up, check the location of stars at night, store all my numbers and appointments, etc. Plus the battery lasts about a month

So I agree with you, nothing so far really makes me want to buy a new palm for now, I'm good for another few years. [1] I hate reading looking at the computer screen. The palm screen however is very comfortable to look at.