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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.
There's nothing in the world that can't be learned from a quick search via google, be it bomb recipes or the correct spelling for "partner". As search engines become more complex, directory listings (especially human-crafted ones) will become increasingly irrelevant.
What matters now is not where your data are hosted, but how others can access them. That's why it's far more important to get government-subsidized network access for our schools than it is to give them physical access to dead-tree books. Textbooks are just an excuse to milk readers out of $100 and rising, and I won't be sad to see them go.
Read the rest of this comment...
Have you had any overt opposition from the 'For Pay' publishing industries? If so, what is it like. Do you expect legal challenges?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
From the FAQ:
Project Gutenberg began in 1971 when Michael Hart was given an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois.
Anyone know how much computer time that is, or how it was computed? Unfortunately I wasn't alive at the time, and it seems like a weird way to measure time. But if time is money, how much time is 100 million dollars?
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Here's the question (which I'll follow by a little discussion of my one) but basically the point is how long do you think books, or other content, once given a copyright, should be able to maintain the exclusive rights to their work? It seems that books and music never enter the public domain anymore, why is this?
Anyway, here's some discussion (not part of the question and doesn't need to be forwarded):
Ok. I look at this situation and I'm torn. On one side is the fact that without copyright and trademark law, there is little or no incentive to create new works of art. On the other side, with trademarks and copyrights, we're living in an anti-capitalistic world meaning resources are being wasted.
So, we come to a middle ground.
The real problem, as I see it, is not that there are currently songs which are copyrighted and cannot be copied and sold. This is only fair and I, along with most other producers of content would be annoyed if, say, I wrote a book and tried to publish it only to find the next day that another company was giving a reprinted copy of my book away for free as a grab bag prize. Suddenly I cannot make a living (there are no performances for authors). So I do need copyright.
On the other hand, the blocking of others from selling something that they can produce and distribute more cheaply than I can is a shame, and there is no reason that after I'v been allowed to make my money from a product someone else can try to do a better job selling.
What we really have is a problem of time. For some reason it seems that copyright, unlike how it was originally intended, no longer expires. Patents on medines run out after 7 or so years to allow generic copies to be made, why can't the same hold true for content?
So, after 10 or so years, all content enters the public domain and can be reprinted or resold by anyone who wants. Anybody today could print up and sell Beatles albums at whatever cost they decided to charge. Suddenly there would be a true free market for Beatles recordings and the market would decide the price, instead of one company in an artificially controlled pricing system.
That's just my idea, but I truly believe it should be applied to all content: movies, music, books... everything. Give the authors ten years to make thier riches, then give them to the masses to use and reuse as they see fit. The public domain would once again be bountiful.
--
RumorsDaily
Hi,
I wrote some optical storage/doc scanning code in a previous life...would you be willing to share some experiences and insight into the mechanical/database/indexing side of things, past present and future?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
are either of you worried about possibly erroneous submitions, 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?
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
Information is always documented in some form or another. How do you plan on creating this database of info without giving credit where credit is do? And usually that involves money to the parties in which you "borrow" information from, especially in a publication.
___________
I don't care what it looks like, it WORKS doesn't it!?!
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? As in the previous example, while brosing the various Shakespere works, will I see a link to his biography on Nupedia?
Personally, I think that this kind of intergration 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. Without biasing you answers, I really think that this kind of intergration 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.
-sk
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 Gutenburg) what would they be?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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 derivitave 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?
Do you think your project would thrive and survive if you were hit by a train, or is the project still very much depending on you for expansion and future direction?
Johan.
Encyclopediac (is that a word?) storage is useless as evidenced by all the Encyclopedia Britannicas holding doors open.
How are you different?
---
This
To Michael S. Hart:
.zip format and the Microsoft DOS style linefeeds, when most of the patrons (from what I can tell) are using some form of UN*X?
Why is project gutenberg using only
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
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.
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
I have been an avid fan of the project for as long as I've been aware of it. 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.
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?
illegitimii non ingravare
How do the managers of the Nupedia project plan to maintain consistent and useful cross-linking between articles written by different authors?
Ahh, but Nupedia actually has editors and peer reviewers. Hopefully they will be able to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Finding a random page on the web is akin to asking a random person on the street about something.
In other words, I could put instructions for building a perpetual motion machine on my website. So what if Google links to my page? It still doesn't mean the information will be correct. Hopefully, because of the way Nupedia is setting up experts and peer reviewers, the information in it will be more accurate than information found on general web sites.
Projects like this are great, they move information to places that are readily accessable to more people.
Do you think libraries like we know them now are going to eventually replaced by stuff like this?
What about paper books, will everything be digitized?
How damaging has the Bono Copyright Protection act been to Project Gutenberg?
This idiotic piece of legislation retroactively increased length of copyright protection for works written in the 1920s, so that Robert Frost's poetry and many other works will now be kept out of the public domain for another generation.
Is there any possibility this act could be repealed?
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
As a history buff, I can assure that there is a large universe of information which is not now, and never will be, available from a quick search via google. There are not enough trained monkeys out there to get the vast majority of pre-digital texts onto the web.
That said, a good HTTP-based encyclopaedia is an almost perfect application of the technology and directly in keeping with the spirit of the original encyclopaedists: Voltaire, Diderot, et. al. It may be said that the project of the encyclopaedia defined the spirit of the Enlightenment: all human knowledge will at last be encapsulated within the covers of a book; available to ready cross-reference.
illegitimii non ingravare
Is there any work being done to change current copyright law? It appears copyright has been continuously extended on everything produced since 1917 (not sure that's the right year, the copyright office website has it somewhere). This seems to contradict the original stated purpose of copyright. I'm interested in both the interviewees positions on copyright law reform and if they are aware of anyone doing work in this area. I would gladly donate to an organization doing copyright law reform.
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.
I've also noticed that all texts are available as text-only and I understand your decision behind this.
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, 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)??
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?
ps. Kudos on the excellent work you've done through the years!
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
Hey guys, on the free (beer/speech) information range, let's not forget:
Mutopia.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Could you derivate like the CDDB project database (Free -> Pay) ? Have you some legal lock against this happening ?
What do both of you think about digital paper from xerox?Do you think this will have a huge impact on people choosing to use your projects on a larger scale?
It appears copyright has been continuously extended on everything produced since 1917 (not sure that's the right year, the copyright office website has it somewhere).
The correct year (in the US at least) is 1923. To me, a copyright date provides only one bit of information: before 1923 or on-or-after 1923. Read my short essay on the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the root source of DisneyCo's power.
I would gladly donate to an organization doing copyright law reform.
You could start at the Eldred v. Reno page. Also consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I agree that the Bono Act has gone too far. Imagine if patent terms were as long: we wouldn't have generic drugs at all. IMHO, 25 years is more than enough to cover an author's expenses and provide a decent profit. If 17 to 20 years for a patent is enough to keep the drug industry running, why wouldn't a similar time period also work for the copyright industry?
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
My question is a practical one for Michael Hart:
An organization I've become interested in seems to have an ongoing project to mark Project Gutenberg documents up in XML. There are DTD's available, and you can "check out," mark up and submit a text.
My question is: Are there a large number of organizations doing this, and would it be a good use of time? It seems to be an fine way of getting smart at XML while doing some general good.
Thanks.
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
There are a lot conceptual and practical issues to be dealt with when designing an information resource that is supposed to have value over an extended period. In this vein, what efforts have been directed towards understanding strategic issues like:
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Mr. Hart - Many works which have been written in different languages have been translated multiple times, and many of these translations are now in the public domain. What sort of criteria does the project have for including translated works in the archive?
Conventional wisdom in the world of Free Sofware says that most development happens because it scratches somebody's itch. Obviously something else is driving the volunteers at Project Gutenberg, because you must already own a copy of a book before you can scan or type it and contribute it to the project. Yet some volunteers have given a great deal of their time, especially when working on extremely large works (e.g., Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, all 6 volumes).
After many years leading the project, what have you learned about volunteer motivations? What drives them to give so freely? What implications does this have that might change our understanding of Free Software projects?
I read recently on a library archivists' site that it's estimated that 95% of all copyrights that were originally registered prior to 1950 have lapsed. My question, then, is two-fold.
What investigations, if any, have you made into obtaining releases or verifying that newer works are available?
Second, what steps do you think could be taken to preserve the legacy of out of print books, given that once they fail to become readily available to the general public, they in essence cease to exist and pass from our collective consciousness?
Is there any relationship between Nupedia and GNUPedia? Are these simply two independent implementations of an idea whose time has come? If they are independent, will they merge or continue separately serving different goals?
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Can these two projects be combined? There were quite a few encyclopedias published in the first part of the 20th century that are now in the public domain, and many of their articles are still good and useful. Actually, for many figures of the 19th century the biographies are better than what is published in modern reference works. Descriptions of, among other things, basic algebra, geometry, ancient and medieval philosophies are still valid. Of course entries like "Germany" and "Argentina" would need updating. Would the weeding and editing be more work than the final value of having a comprehensive set of listings?
A real, unfettered, complete archive of security related material. From the most elusive to find to the current day featured on 'slashdot' . By materials I mean, books, how-to's, FAQ's that have long since dissappeared. One might argue that there is no reason to study old fixes, old rules, old policies. I have a different opinion than that, and would love to see a huge gathered archive. ;-)
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again. :-b
Even if just a hyperlinked list.....Preferrably searchable!?
What exactly is your focus on this 'free' information?
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
what are the best open source OCR efforts that you are aware of? G* and K* compatible scanner/OCR/packaging systems should be pushed to help get the most material online in the shortest time, using modern formats like SGML.
This isn't such a silly question, when you think about it. My brother and sister are considerably older than I (17 and 14 years, respectively). When I was in Jr. High I discovered an old encyclopedia my parents bought for them, and I had great fun comparing articles in the old one with the same articles in the current encyclopedia in the school library, seeing how the Conventional Wisdom had changed for some subjects, but hadn't changed for others. I think there would be considerable (well, OK, some) interest in historical encyclopedias, if they were available for PG.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Are you going to turn your lack of a print version into an advantage by doing things the others (I'm thinking WB and EB, not Encarta) can't do on paper?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Has PG considered making bound "dead tree" versions of their books available on their web site for purchase? This seems like a good way to make money, since there are many people who prefer to read a paper version rather than a computer screen.
- writing articles
- peer reviewing
- editors for certain subject areas
- copyediting
- software work
- software documentation
...?
Certain subject areas (e.g. physics) seem to have some people interesting in writing articles, but don't seem to have enough volunteers for the editorial jobs to get articles through the process. What jobs need to be filled in what areas? Do you think the editorial jobs are hard to fill because people don't want to make enemies?Re software work, Nupedia has just changed over to new software, which seems a little raw. Is it on CVS? Would you like to get offers of help from people with good track records writing open-source software?
Sorry if I sound like a whiner, but as a Nupedia newbie (nubie?), I was pretty discouraged by the lack of understandable, current documentation, and stuff like underlined text that turned out not to be real hyperlinks,...
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
somoe people (usually relatives of a dead writer) are trying to extend their copyright in order to get the maximum amount of money which is possible, even after a century from the dead of the author. What do you think are good methods to fight that behavior? In your experience, is there any way to "fight" against what is obviously a misuse of the right of publications? After all, who said that his/her relatives have the right to be rewarded of his/her work?
I'd like to apply this issue not only to books (the first one which comes into mind) but also to every piece of the human knowledge involved in such things.
Thanks for the attention, long life and prosper!
(and forgive me for the broken english)
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
The view has been expressed that as content becomes more freely available, the value placed on objects - such as first editions, or signed copies - will increase.
What does Michael Hart think? Will people be more inclined to buy books for their curiosity/iconic value? Will this reduce the value placed on the content, the thoughts and ideas, as people buy books much as they now buy antiques or works of art? Will this be a good or a bad thing?
Andrew Ó Baoill
I'd rather go down in familiar flames than be lost in that endless blue.
What measures are being made, if any, to correct any of the false recorded historical occurences? And what of newer developments that belong in the encyclopedia, but have not yet made it there? Are you Copying it as is, or are you giving yourself a certain amount of free reign with the knowledge?
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
Mr. Wales: After looking over the Nupedia site, it seems that only those persons with post-graduate degrees in a specific field are considered 'acceptable' contributors for information in that field. Is this true, or have I somehow misinterpreted your requirements? I realize it's a stretch, but it begs the question: Does this imply that you will not include information for which there is no accredited degree program? Was'up wif dat?
With a public domain encyclopedia, how do handle alternate views of history? Who's version of the truth will be print?