Project Gutenberg 2 Raises Some Hackles

An anonymous reader writes "LISNews.com reports on a new web venture called Project Gutenberg 2, offering access to electronic books in Adobe eBook format on a paid membership basis. Some Gutenberg volunteers are concerned about the use of the PG name in such a context. The news raises questions about PG's ongoing commitment to the ideals of free distribution and nonproprietary formats. Last year PG celebrated the release of its 10,000th title, accomplished with the help of many volunteer proofreaders, many of whom aren't happy about charging people to view these titles in Adobe eBook format."

Comments

This seems to go against the whole...

[Anonymous Coward]

...idea of the original project :o(

Re:This seems to go against the whole...

[shnives]

I agree that it goes against all the hard work the PG crew has done over the years. to try and lock in something pppl have worked hard on to give away to improve humanity almost sounds like theft. But I have a good solution. here it is, i'd appreciate any comments, kudos, flames (puts on asbestos bodysuit) suggestions etc. the solution is to send your money to us instead. we have been folowing pg, and other pd libraries for some time. we are not doing this for any monetary gain (it doesnt take an mba to figure out you wont make much trying to sell what can be gotten for free.) You can easily make more flipping burgers, working IT, cobbling shoes etc. our product is the gutenberg files zipped on 2 cd's and sells for 20$. we take paypal, and the email addy is 8000books@mail.com. now you may ask why are we doing this. there are several reasons. 1 we want to spread computer literacy, as it has developed recently. in the past few decades there has been a lot of computer aided textual, literary, philosphic , theological analyses. tact is one ofthe more recent ones being done at u of t. this will only become more necessary. why did they have to say 10,000 books? no man can read 10,000 books... our goal is to make these public domain libraries as mainstream as possible. one way of doing this is putting it into a box and selling it thru retail. this has a 3 fold benefit. 1 it exposes pl to pc libraries nad all the really cool search, concordance and other functions that can be done with simple an free software out there. 2 a search cannot be done easily without having al of the books on your hd, cd etc. the free option is to download them all. this can take some time, even with broadband--believe me i tried it, and i'd rather pay 20$ than have to do that again. nobody who has bought the product to date has complained that they culd have gotten it for free by spending a few days dragin n dropping. 3 all of that downloading costs project gutenberg real money in bandwidth costs. 4 buy buying our cd, you not only save them this money, but will provide more money for them since we donate generated revenue. this in turn wil alllow then to release even more books. 5 sure it is a small difference, but it may grow to bea big one someday. thx for your time in reading this post and any response will be appreciated (ie money, kudos, sugestions, volunteering time, hell even flames and trolls. I wil try an answer everyone just hope nobody signs me up for any spam lists. sorry for putting an advertisement on this site, i kinda feel bad about it, but since its not for monetary gain, i felt it might be worthwhile. I wont be advertising anything else on this site, and only got this idea in my head cuz it was a thread about gutenberg, and wanted people to know about this little hobbly some friends and I are working on. btw i will send a free copy of the cd's to anyone who tells me what shnives means. by free i mean winners pay shipping, since if 200 ppl guess it , and its like 5 bucks per, that would tenderize the ol' wallet a bit too mcuh. those who win can choose any shipping method they want, and il give my addy to calculate the exact cost. ps please excuse they bad typing. got a broken finger and scaphoid, so cnat aim or time the keys as fast as im used to , dont want to go back to 2 finger typing. hope to hear from you soon :)

Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it goes to fund the free books, it's a godsent.
Project Gutenberg is one of the top 10 best things to happen to the internet.

Re:Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can always fork and continue with their own codebase, right?

Re:Bah.

[Nursie]

What gave you the idea that it was going to fund free books or the original project gutenberg? This looks like an attempt to make money from someone else's work to me......

Re:Bah.

[SurfaceMount]

This is contained in some/all of the PG ebooks, this means they have to pay royalties to PG? If so, its a good thing, helping to fund them.

"Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark."
Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

"Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon University"

Re:Bah.

[lee7guy]

Yes, just like most of the bigger Linux distro makers out there. Commercial Linux distros are bad things, right?

From my point if view, most things that help promotes free projects and also add some value is an added value. If the ppl complaining doesn't like what's happening, they should have thought of ways of protecting themselves beforehand.

Re:Bah.

[Nursie]

Hmmmmm. Linux distros are affiliated with Linux, they make no secret of it. They usually develop products and projects that contribute back to open source, and are generally ethical and a good thing.

These guys are using someone elses name and charging for their work.

Re:Bah.

[lee7guy]

Agreed. Their use of the project's name doesn't seem very nice, but some people seem to be complaining because they are converting PG's texts into proprietary Adobe eBook format and charge for the effort. I really fail to see how that is a problem, as long as the original, vanilla text files are still out there.

Re:Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not familiar with Open Content licenses, but if they're at all similar to the GPL, there can't be redistribution restrictions on derived works. So either the PG derived ebooks are freely redistributable (no technical or legal restrictions) or they can't use PG's work. Compilations (even of freely available data) are protected under copyright law, aren't they?

Re:Bah.

[cioxx]

GPL wasn't meant for such things as static (as in finished) text. That's why Creative Commons license was created to fill that hole. L/GPL serves well when living organisms are concerned, such as codebase, because it constantly evolves. Once a book is transcribed, corrections and/or additions won't be necessary majority of the time.

From what I understand, a specific license would fit the bill to swathe Project Gutenberg library, such as Attribution-NoDerivative 1.0. They have few options under which authors can license their content properly. As evident in the article, placing confidence in individuals who say they would do the right thing just isn't enough in these modern IP-dominated era.

Fortunately, all is not lost. There has got to be more to the story than just rumor based upon a spinoff website where they try to capitalize on original PG fame, however small it might be at this point.

Re:Bah.

[BlackHawk-666]

Additionally, most of these distros are provided free of charge on FTP servers operated and paid for by the distros. You *can* get them for nothing if you want, and that seems to be a clear distinction to me.

Re:Bah.

[Felinoid]

There has been a few Linux desros who attempt to violate the GPL (not return source) as well as a number of Linux projects.

There have also been a number of individuals who have attempted to clame ownership (assert trademarks, patents and false copyrights).

SCO is currently doing both. Clamming ownership of the existing Linux and then selling Linux as a closed product.

Now we need to wait for PG2 to sue the original project over a patent on plain text PG2 bought.

Re:Bah.

[flossie]

From what I understand, a specific license would fit the bill to swathe Project Gutenberg library, such as Attribution-NoDerivative 1.0.

Given that the texts in Project Gutenburg are all out of copyright, does PG have any (moral or legal) right to impose restrictive licences on the library, and if so, would it be possible to enforce such a licence?

Re:Bah.

[shimmin]

The legalese on the PG texts says that if you are going to redistribute the texts commercially, you must either

(1) Strip the PG header from the text, thereby removing all traces of PG's role in preparing the text you are distributing.

or

(2) Leave the PG header exactly as it is, and pay PG a royalty.

Lots of commercial ebook ventures use the PG library, and for obvious reasons, most choose option 1. The annoying thing about this venture is that it wants to use the PG name.

Re:Bah.

[mindstrm]

How does this hold up though, the copyrighted works in question are in the public domain... PG can't assert any kind of copyright over it.

Re:Bah.

[cyt0plas]

Their specific version is under copyright, as is the header. Remove their header - you now have the Public Domain text.

Re:Bah.

[Gleef]

Nursie asks:
What gave you the idea that it was going to fund free books or the original project gutenberg? This looks like an attempt to make money from someone else's work to me......

The fact that one of the few restrictions on the Project Gutenberg files is that any use of the files or trademark for commercial sales requires a royalty payment of 20% of gross profits to the project. The exact legalese can be found at http://gutenberg.net/howto/header-howto.txt.

Re:Bah.

[Squirrel Killer]

How does this hold up though, the copyrighted works in question are in the public domain... PG can't assert any kind of copyright over it.

The copyright has expired from the public domain works, so technically, I don't think they're "copyrighted" any more. However, PG does assert copyright over their header text. The license to charge for distributing their copyrighted header text is to leave the header text as is (which clearly tells the reader that the text is available for free from PG) or strip all mention of Project Gutenberg from the file.

I won't pay this PG2 to find out, but my guess is that they leave the header text as is, so as far as the redistribution license is concerned, PG2 is in the clear.

Where they run into problems is that their name is confusingly similar to PG's trademarked name.

Re:Bah.

[hesiod]

> does PG have any (moral or legal) right to impose restrictive licences on the library

Wasn't the whole point of PG to be that this stuff is free to use? Well, PG2 (despite the shady naming) is free to use them too. You can't say "anyone can use this, except my competitor." I realize they aren't exactly competitors, but it's the same idea.

Re:Bah.

[astar]

I have a little knowledge since I am trying to do something similar.

IMO, use of the Gutenberg name is a no-no. Further, they are using Project Gutenberg material.

On the Gutenberg name, the original Project specifies that if you distribute for money, do not use Project Gutenberg in your promotional material. Even given the disclaimers in Gutenberg II, I think Project Gutenberg would have a ligit complaint.

On the material, it is obvious that some Gutenberg 2 material comes from the Project Gutenberg archives. So I do not know what used no content from Project Gutenberg means, quoting from their web site. But I do the same thing at Fircrest Bookstore. My understanding is the Project Gutenberg wants 20% of my profits, and I would suppose Gutenberg 2 would honor that request, although it may not be enforceable.

Note that Fictionwise also sells PDFs of among other things, Project Gutenberg material. My little site is a reaction to the poor quality of some of the material there. I am experimenting with micropay systems and the possibility of doing machine generated "good" html, with live links to the footnotes and between the texts.

I think in the end people might want to evaluate both on price and how good the presentation is, assuming the legals are okay.

Project Gutenberg is free, but ascii text is not very nice. Fictionwise is relatively expensive, almost $4 each for Project Gutenberg material I am interested in, and the formatting is bad. Gutenberg 2 at $8.95 a year is really inexpensive, and the formatting is better than Fictionwise, but not quite perfect. All in all, I would consider the formatting acceptable. My little site has a sort of arbitrary $.25 micropay fee, but the html is a little better in layout and I use links extensively. My site will probably never be commercially successful, give the good enough aspects of Gutenberg 2.

The innovation of Gutenberg 2, IMO, is the emphasis of the read aloud capability of the format. This fits in well with their literacy orientation. I need to try them and see how that and their dictionary lookup work.

In my product, I started on the Richard Burton collection of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, because it was hard to do what I wanted with this. I think it is useful to note that there have been comments in other venues that this set of books is difficult to read because the words are often unfamiliar to people. So the dictionary aspect is a positive.

Re:Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Societies (aka "communities") need to protect themselves from freeloaders. The Open Source community uses the GPL to keep source from vanishing into proprietary products. This is crucial to keep the motivation of contributors high. People regularly get pissed when they do the hard work and get little to nothing in return while someone else does next to no extra work but reaps the profits. (One famous instance of commercial exploitation of publically contributed content is the CDDB: a dispute over access to the content lead to the creation of FreeDB.)

Would you continue proofreading, scanning, etc for free, if you knew that someone else earns money by doing a little conversion work and selling the result? After all, you and everybody else could do the same, except nobody would be left to do the real work...

Re:Bah.

[jtev]

The works are in the public domain, the argument is over the use of the "Project Gutenberg" name. It's 100% legal for me to grab a PG book, and publish it under my own publishing company for profit, it's not legal to use the name "Project Gutenberg Press" or some such derivitve for the name of my publishing company that does that though, unless I get permission from PG.

Re:Bah.

[Hater's Leaving, The]

"Yes, just like most of the bigger Linux distro makers out there. Commercial Linux distros are bad things, right?"

Like Lindows?

As a Debian user and contributor, I can say yes to that one quite easily. Also, as someone who tried to find whether a cerain package that I contribute to for Debian, whose upstream no longer exists, is also carried by Red Hat and SuSE et al. I can say with all honesty that those large commercial distributions are an utter abomination. It was nigh on impossible to find out what was in their distributions, despite the fact that the only product they sell is those very packages.

THL.

TM Registration

[wiredlogic]

This won't be any problem at all since the Project Gutenberg folks remembered to register their trademark.

Re:TM Registration

[orthogonal]

This won't be any problem at all since the Project Gutenberg folks remembered to register their trademark.

The "Project Gutenburg folks" didn't register the trademark.

You and three mods didn't read the linked article, which is actually a blurb that quotes the real article, to wit (emphasis mine):

"Over the weekend a Project Gutenberg volunteer list was buzzing with all kinds of questions for PG founder Michael Hart, who personally owns the Project Gutenberg trademark."

Re:TM Registration

[BiggerIsBetter]

So given that Project Gutenburg(tm) is actually affiliated with Project Gutenburg 2(tm), and that there's nothing on the Project Gutenburg(tm) news page about this... I'd guess the list reponse went something like this:

Michael Hart: PWNED!
Project Gutenburg(tm) volunteers: DOH!

Re:TM Registration

[shimmin]

Why should you believe the PG2 website when they say they are affiliated with PG? If you are going to infringe a trademark, why not also lie about your relationship with the rightful owner of that mark?

Re:TM Registration

[PMuse]

This won't be any problem at all since the Project Gutenberg folks remembered to register their trademark.

If you support Project Gutenberg's right to protect its good name by means of a trademark, then perhaps you'll remember in the future that trademarks have at least one good and useful purpose.

Re:TM Registration

[BiggerIsBetter]

Possibly because there's no "We are not affiliated with Project Gutenburg 2(tm)" text on the Project Gutenburg(tm) website? Or I might just be wrong...

Re:TM Registration

[Anonymous Coward]

You are being anal, pedantic, petty, etc. The point was that the trademark was registered, and it is really irrelevant whether an individual personally or the organization he represents did the actual registering. Jeez!

Do you do this a lot in conversations? And do you find that a lot of people don't like to talk to you?

Re:TM Registration

[arb]

In fact, the PG2 website also states that they have no affiliation with or support from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.

Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation.

This seems to be somewhat at odds with the claim they have on the AboutUs page.

still free

[Underholdning]

As far as I can tell the books are still available in HTML. It's just that if you want them in PDF, then they charge you a fee. I have no beef with that.

Re:still free

[nuffle]

As far as I can tell the books are still available in HTML. It's just that if you want them in PDF, then they charge you a fee. I have no beef with that.

Actually PG books aren't available in HTML. Not even in the sense that they're relatively unformatted text embedded in an HTML page. Rather, the books (or plays, manuals, etc) are generally stored as zipped vanilla-text files.

It's an often complained about problem, since there's no markup to identify authors, titles, chapter headings, etc. The PG administrators use plain text because they don't want to require readers to use fancy software to read (be it proprietary or not). The consequence, though, is that it's difficult to use fancy software if you want, since it's difficult for a computer program to parse the books.

So, the service offered by this company is non-trivial and is fulfilling an expressed desire. The fact that people are willing (well, we'll see) to pay money for this service indicates that the PG administrators have underestimated (or just ignored) the need for machine-parseable text. I personally wish someone would xml-ify these books, so that there would be a number of high-quality open source PG readers out there.

Re:still free

[WARM3CH]

I don't feel it's right to just convert the txt files to PDF files and start selling things that are basically free. You say it's a difficult task and requires time and money? Then how about providing many different formats of the same book (txt, PDF, Microsoft Reader, ....) all for free? I know that www.blackmask.com has this free service for more than 15,000 books. I think the free books should remain free. Maybe the PG group should also something like GPL to ensure such things do not happen again.

Re:still free

[femto]

The HTML Writers Guild is translating Project Gutenberg texts into HTML.

Re:still free

[Anonymous Coward]

At 30 a month they should have the current lot (10,000) completed in about 28 years.

Re:still free

[lee7guy]

I personally wish someone would xml-ify these books, so that there would be a number of high-quality open source PG readers out there.

Get your butt over to Project Gutenberg XML then and start helping out.

Re:still free

[Lumpy]

it's oft complained about by the lazy or uninformed. I personally LOVE the plain ascii text versions. I am able to convert them EASILY to my eBook's format and extend the life of that device that they decided to discontinue and all the books for it.

Also I was able to convert one to a Sony Bookman CD to be read on a friends Bookman... a reall old failed attempt at a ebook reader that the screen utterly sucked, was huge but was cool in the fact it had a 3" CDROM drive in it.

the plain ASCII format is the absolutely MOST valuable format for the PG books, conversion to other formats do not take much time at all if you have the tools.

Re:still free

[Spacejock]

If you're running Windows (or Wine on Linux) try my freeware ebook reader yBook

I wrote it specifically for the txt files on Gutenberg. They hard-wrap the lines at 76 characters, this prog unwraps them and puts the book back into paragraphs.

This plug brought to you by a shameless karma whore.

Re:still free

[utopyr]

I participated in this when it started up. It's dead in the water, becalmed, caught in the horse latitudes, so far as I can tell.

For example, take a look at the dates attached to the marked-up texts in this list. A shame--folks were mighty excited.

The Project Gutenberg XML mentioned earlier here was also exciting, but I've been off the mailing list a few years, and am having trouble finding its archives now. Anybody have more luck than me? As I recall, one of the unanswered threads that ran through it was what to do in the TEI headers, since TEI was an attractive choice for a mark-up vocabulary. It is not that obvious how to accommodate the Gutenberg boilerplate and metadata appropriately in the header.

Re:still free

[rbowen]

The HWG project to translate the Gutenberg texts to HTML has been dead so long, and was alive so briefly, that it's not really even worth mentioning.

Re:still free

[c]

Actually PG books aren't available in HTML.

Not directly. But various places like http://www.blackmask.com/page.php republish many, if not most, PG books in other formats.

c.

Re:still free

[hankaholic]

it's oft complained about by the lazy or uninformed. I personally LOVE the plain ascii text versions. I am able to convert them EASILY to my eBook's format and extend the life of that device that they decided to discontinue and all the books for it.

And XML isn't easy to parse or convert to other formats?

As I see it, it's easier to cut out metadata with a program or script than to add it by hand. With XML, one can easily produce ASCII, or marked-up HTML with nice formatting. I have better things to do with my time than perform tasks which could be easily automated.

With ASCII, you have to mark up the text manually. I must be "lazy or uninformed", so please explain -- how is being forced to mark up text manually better than starting with XML?

Re:still free

[Zigg]

Yeah, that was a shame, I had hoped the HWG project would take off too. But then again, it always seemed to me there were very few civic-minded amongst the HWG when I was a member; probably due to the fact that you really didn't have to do anything to "join" and a lot of people saw it as a quick way to load up their resume when web jobs were hot.

But, there is still vindication. Pluckerbooks, in addition to making ready-made pdb files for Plucker, also provides you with the full HTML for their books, which are often Gutenberg conversions. I always read them in Plucker, but the HTML is also useful for non-Palmers.

Re:still free

[dmoynihan]

Actually, most of the PG 2 titles are HTML that I did of PG texts for my own site (that one I also scanned with the distributed proofreaders so it sees more moral), but then PG 2 has another 48K books that aren't on Gutenberg, and might just be worth paying $8.95 a year to access, something the article doesn't make clear.

I've also let it be known that Dr. Hart is welcome to use my HTML as he sees fit, not pushing the issue because there are other volunteer initiatives working on this.

Re:still free

[westlake]

No one is getting rich on an $8.95 annual membership fee, which I would gladly pay to get PG texts that can be read without fatigue and included a book's original illustrations, etc.

Re:still free

[Anonymous Coward]

There should be an open source project to develop a pdf maker.

We need an open source pdf format, like ogg for written material ;).

Re:still free

[dillon_rinker]

Project Gutenberg's goal is to create books in electronic format. Marking up in XML takes time and effort; not a lot, perhaps, but it adds up over 10,000 texts. That time and effort has been used to make more texts available.

If someone else wants to mark the text up, no one will object. Unless you're willing to do so, though, there's no point in complaining that something done for you for free isn't done the way you like.

TANSTAAFL.

Re:still free

[poptones]

but then PG 2 has another 48K books that aren't on Gutenberg, and might just be worth paying $8.95 a year to access, something the article doesn't make clear.

And so one would think these titles, since they are part of "PG2," are also of expired copyright?

So what's then to stop someone from payng the 8.95, downloading those 48k typeset and proofed texts, and then contributing them to the real PG?

Re:still free

[abscondment]

And who would want to read an eBook, anyway? Printing the damn thing would take waaay too much paper, and we all know that .pdf files suck for everything except printing.

Who would pay for a markedly poor reading experience?

Re:still free

[dublin]

It's interesting that you mention blackmask.com in your rant against PG2. Interestingly, David Moynihan, who runs blackmask.com has said both there (and here on /. in this very topic, search for "dmoynihan") has no problem at all with PG2, and thinks what they are doing is a very good thing.

Seriously, what we see here is nothing more than the anti-capitalist ranting of a bunch of GPL bigots, who can't stand the idea that someone might actually *profit* (gasp!) from the sale of bits. (And, of course, the PG license expressly permits this sort of use, as it should. Like the BSD, Apache, and X licenses, it is more concerned with good resources being used and propagated than in advancing an anti-commerce political agenda...)

Here's a quick excerpt from blackmask.com on the issue:

A lot of the HTML coding on PG 2 was done by me with the notice change, but that's cool; not so much because Mr. Guagliardo has previously purchased a CD set from me, but rather that I've in the past mailed .zipped HTML disks to Dr. Hart, encouraging him to use them as he sees fit.

What's lost in the discussion is the fact that PG 2 has 48,500 more books than PG 1 (and 45k more than me), and may be a prototype alternative to something like NetLibrary, which used wrapped PG titles as part of their bid to get everyone to sign on--(PG 2 gets bonus points in my opinion for adopting the URL Netlibrary.net on their sign-up page). It's quite possible those 40k+ extra books are worth $8.95 a year.

Re:still free

[justins]

So, the service offered by this company is non-trivial and is fulfilling an expressed desire.

Oh, it's pretty trivial, in the scheme of things. Writing a book is non-trivial. Acting as the publisher that brings a new book to market is non-trivial. Correctly transcribing an ancient book into electronic format is non-trivial. Researching the legal issues involved in releasing old books is non-trivial.

Tweaking pagination and saving a file to pdf is, well, pretty trivial. Ditto on putting the files up on a web page and creating a web storefront to sell the files.

And I wouldn't have any problem with them profiting from their trivial improvements to Project Gutenberg's work, but they shouldn't try to confuse the public into believing they are a replacement to Project Gutenberg. Of course, that's likely to be the only way they could sell such trivial improvements.

Re:still free

[bwy]

You are right on the money, all their stuff is plain vanilla text. Which made me wonder who would use it? I believe the stuff I looked at even had hard line breaks! I remember trying to get them on my handheld in some sort of a way to where i could read them, and I gave up after a while. I even tried to write some pre-processing code to clean out the line breaks, but preserve what I thought was a valid paragraph break, etc.

Isn't there some royalty free format, (XML if nothing else) that could do a better job? And who uses these things otherwise? Do people sit around reading books in notepad? Otherwise it seems like a completely worthless project to me. A big waste of whoever fronts the money. Hell, you can get a used paperback book for next to nothing at a used bookstore, or go the a public library and check one out. Either of those form factors beats the option of a 500 page book in plain ASCII text.

Re:still free

[Anonymous Coward]

Markdown - text/html conversion

Re:still free

[hankaholic]

I'm not complaining about it not having been marked up. I _am_ stating that saying that ASCII text is more useful than ASCII text + markup (ie, XML) doesn't make sense to me.

Re:still free

[Zigg]

Yeah, there are several XML options, including those that can be XSL'd to HTML or PDF; I think the problem is that it's just not easy to create good XML. I'm holding my breath that someday Conglomerate will change that for Linux/etc. but for Windows your best option is still XMetaL for XML text, and it ain't cheap (or at least, it wasn't.)

Re:still free

[d34thm0nk3y]

...anti-capitalist ranting of a bunch of GPL bigots...

As much as I detest Microsoft, I've reached the conclusion that the GPL is a greater long-term threat.

Ok, great, so you don't like the GPL for some reason. Unfortunately for your premise, the GPL does allow people to make a profit off the sale of bits. All the GPL says is that you must provide the source (when you use other peoples code), if that makes it impossible to make a profit you are just unimaginative. Redhat and IBM are not in it for the karma.

Re:still free

[HamNRye]

I personally like the books in plain text for use with a strobe reader. But that's just me. I always assumed that PG was about archiving, not selling or presenting. If that was the case, whay am I hearing a buch of Linux Kiddies complain it wasn't in PDF, or DOC format for that matter. ASCII is the lowest common denominator, and it is readable everywhere, even on Plan 9, QNX, or any other funky OS.

Re:still free

[incom]

I convert the plain text files to ztxt and put them on my palm pilot, and read them using weasel reader. I would HATE if they changed thier standard file format, but if they, or someone else wants to have an additional format available, go ahead.

Lottery Grants

[pandrijeczko]

Here in the UK, a proportion of the profits from the National Lottery are used to finance public projects in The Arts and sports.

It strikes me that Project Gutenberg, as a valuable educational tool, should be a prime project to receive lottery grants (not just from the UK) to ensure that it remains entirely free to use and publishes documents in formats suitable for all to use - both proprietary and open formats.

Re:Lottery Grants

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the history of our governments (ie western capitalist) promoting anything that a) they don't control and b) might educate people sure bodes well for a big grant to Project Gutenberg....

Re:Lottery Grants

[0x0d0a]

Project Gutenberg is nonpolitical (and given that they can only use out-of-copyright works, not even particularly topical in their choice of additions).

Project Gutenberg doesn't really directly compete against any companies that I know of, and facilitates people obtaining things in the public domain. I think that Project Gutenberg would be an excellent destination for grant money. If I had some way to vote on US grants going to Project Gutenberg, I certainly would do so.

Re:Lottery Grants

[Anonymous Coward]

Project Gutenberg, with its goal of providing access to literature free of charge is definitely a worthy cause. But some other funding source ought to be found.

Lotteries won't do it. In the U.S., lotteries are at the state level, not the national level. The educational budgets "supplemented" by the lottery funding tend to have decreased in proportion to the lottery income.

Re:Lottery Grants

[zabieru]

They're competition for the Dover Thrift Editions. Then again, I don't think Dover makes much if anything off the Thrift Editions, not at their prices. I think they publish them just barely above cost as a public service/name recognition thing.

But I'm guessing at all this. Publishing insiders? Anyone?

Re:Lottery Grants

[coachvince]

Here in the US, I've just completed my income tax form. There's a box asking if I (or, separately, my spouse) want to donate $1 to campaign funds. I'd be quite glad to fund something like PG, or even have $0.25 of my tax go to a separate page, asking how I'd like 10% (or even 1% of my money spent- do I want to support the arts, foreign aid, military spending, etc.). Let people vote with what businesses and PACs vote with; MONEY.

Re:Lottery Grants

[baggins2001]

If I had some way to vote on US grants going to Project Gutenberg, I certainly would do so.

If you live in the US then the closest you can come to doing this, is to send/inform your congressman. That's why they call our form of democracy a representative democracy. Yes, I realize that not much may come out of this, but hey, we don't tell them, then they don't know (I don't think any of them or their aides are slashdot readers). I'm pretty sure though that they are still quite busy spanking some CEO's and raving to every local news reporter the horrendous indecency imposed on America when Janet Jackson exposed her breast.

Maybe, instead of just shutting down web sites (slashdotting), /. could request reponses be sent to congressmen and see if it has any effect. We could pick a topic such as this, and confirm we responded to our congressman with a yeah or neh (your choice, you know like a poll where we tell someone outside of /. the results) and see if we have any sway or not.

Or we could just continue to critic articles and television shows we haven't read or seen and bitch about "how it sucks the man is getting us down or might get us down".

Okay, I'll switch to decaf tomorrow.

Re:Lottery Grants

[Grotus]

I don't see PG as competition for Dover. PG provides electronic texts of public domain works while Dover provides printed and bound versions of those works. Sure, you could print it out yourself from the PG version but I think you'd have a hard time beating the price and quality of the Dover version.

Dover in fact could make use of PG to get the text of public domain works for subsequent printing and sale.

Re:Lottery Grants

[zabieru]

I know I've thought about hitting a bookstore and getting a cheap copy of whatever, and decided not to because it was on PG. Then again, I've also bought books I could get on PG because I wanted on my shelf. So it goes both ways, I think. But when I just want to read the damn thing, PG wins.

Re:Lottery Grants

[Grotus]

It boils down to personal preference. I'd much rather read from a book than a computer screen. So, while I own and have read many Dover books, I have yet to fully read anything from PG.

Once electronic paper is out of the vaporware stage things might change for me, but for now Dover wins for me.

It all boils down to the lisence

[Max Romantschuk]

I haven't proofread anything for PG so I have no idea what proofreaders have or have not agreed to. Ultimately there is probably little that can be done if the lisencing scheme makes this possible.

Then again, if the information is available in plain text, I feel it would be OK to charge people for typeset versions of these works. I'm not sure if this is the actual case though, anyone more informed around?

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[Max Romantschuk]

Make that license, not lisence...

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[kfg]

Project Gutenberg texts are all in the public domain and the files are created by volunteers. There is no way to protect anyone's labor or philosophy. The material is free as in free.

The only "license scheme" is a protection of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you wish to distribute the files and claim them as Project Gutenberg files you must distribute them unmodified, including the license text.

Since the files are all in the public domain anyone can download them and sell them, either as a computer file, a pdf, or a printed book. Or start a "competing" website with them.

Many already do this, and if people who have donated their time to the project don't understand that public domain allows this, well, I really don't know what to say.

They are in the Public Domain, not GPLed, or BSDed or whatever.

Project Gutenberg continues unabated. Simply go there for all your ASCII format, literary goodness.

KFG

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[antic]

Since when has being informed mattered around here? :)

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[Max Romantschuk]

Thanks for the info :)

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[sir_cello]

Under the newly proposed database laws in the US (which already exist in the EU) the database would be protected as a "sweat of the brow" compilation (rather than needing a "modicum of creativity").

This would mean that although the texts are in the public domain, people would be prevented from "substantial extraction" of them from the project gutenberg website.

Whether this would be a good or bad thing makes for a good debate ...

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[Anonymous Coward]

Make that license, not lisence...
Err, only in America. In any country that speaks correct (British) English, it's spelt with a C.

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[kfg]

Whether or not they are even a database by the definition of the law would be a good debate, however, in this case, Project Gutenberg makes the entire base freely available, en masse, thus no misappropriation is possible.

If you cannot download for some reason, the project will even endeavor to mail it to you, 9400 works on a DVD, entirely free of charge.

KFG

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[PhotoGuy]

They are in the Public Domain, not GPLed, or BSDed or whatever.

Actually, BSD'd (or X MIT'd) would be the closest comparison (any attribution requirements aside). Anyone can take BSD or X code, and create a commercial product. As a person who makes their living creating and improving software, I like that.

If anyone has a problem with what I do to commercialize chunks BSD or X (and truth be told, I haven't, but I like the fact I *could), is completely free to rip off my concepts and implement them back into the core for free. Go nuts!

It's interesting how much warmer the reception is for "if they want to PDF them and charge, fine, as long as the free alternative is there" versus the GPL/BSD/X/Stallman debates.

Being *able* to commercialize, and being *able* to do things for free, is true freedom, in my humble but biased opinion. :-)

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[redtape]

Yes, but even in British english, it doesn't start lis... (licence or license would be correct depending on which country you are from, but no one spells it lisence).
At least I think that is the point that was being made.

Re:It all boils down to the lisence

[Eccles]

Since the files are all in the public domain anyone can download them and sell them, either as a computer file, a pdf, or a printed book. Or start a "competing" website with them.

As an occasional minor contributor to PG, I have zero problem with that. Microsoft is free to make Word format files of all the PG books, and I wouldn't bat an eyelash or stop contributing.

The only issue here is using the PG name. The Project Gutenberg name has always been associated with the purely altuistic PD book archive. Now it is also associated with a money-making enterprise. Again, I have no problems with money-making enterprises. What I am concerned with is that now if I refer to the project, the listener may be confused over whether it's the free project or the commercial site, and the good name of the free site is no longer so good.

Consider, for example, if Habitat for Humanity started selling middle-class homes for profit.

Some Companies...

[Doomrat]

...I mean, would you actually have the nerve to steal an organisation or free project's name? I'd love to be reading Slashdot the day somebody comes out with Linux 2 or something.

Re:Some Companies...

[0x0d0a]

A few rather nasty people tried trademarking the term "Linux" in various countries, which started a bit of a to-do a ways back. (Note that I'll bet that someone is going to forget about paying the renewal fee in the US, and Linus is going to lose the Linux trademark, and some jackass will grab it again, and the whole thing will start again).

Re:Some Companies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux 2 has been out for quite a while. In fact they're up to 2.6 now!

GET WITH THE TIMES MAN!!

Re:Some Companies...

[Guppy06]

"would you actually have the nerve to steal an organisation or free project's name?"

It seems some would...

Re:Some Companies...

[Anonymous Coward]

2.6 is old news. 2.6.5-rc1 is THE kernel now.

Maybe you should "GET WITH THE TIMES MAN!" ;)

And in related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

the Humane Society...2!!!! Now accepting unwanted pets and animals from the community which we will be selling to be used in scientific research!

*btw We are not associated with the original Humane Society.

Re:And in related news...

[AftanGustur]

the Humane Society...2!!!! Now accepting unwanted pets and animals from the community which we will be selling to be used in scientific research!

Amnesty International 2, Selling human-rights reports in dictator-friendly format ..

Red Cross 2, now collecting blood and other body parts to sell on the free market.

Re:And in related news...

[groot]

Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17, @04:38AM wrote:
the Humane Society...2!!!

After picking myself off the floor, and thinking hey maybe PETA2 would an idea!

Getting back on track to the subject, what PG2 should do, if they have not done it yet and been snubbed is to offer a few cents for each sale as a donation to PG in exchange for the right to use the PG moniker. (spelling? Hey slatdot why not add a spellcheck button, we seem to really need it :)

Otherwise the community can threaten to write a script to do it (PG->PDF ebook) for free to compete with them, maybe at (say) freebies.PG2too.org web site. //

Issues

[L-s-L69]

Project Gutenberg (the first one) was fantastic, it allowed me to download books in lynx that i could read with joe on a 486 when i first got online. I read books that normally I would never pick up as well as downloading plays etc for research.

Paying for ebooks i have no problem with but why use the PG name that so may have come to associate with the free PG.

Even if they do put this on the front page...

" Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation. "

Re:Issues

[Saint Stephen]

Yeah, the name was chosen entirely at random, in fact they didn't even know of the first one, and just stuck a "2" on the end cause it's pretty.

I hope PG has lawyers and covered their bases. This has shades of 1999 and Flooz and "gaining mindshare." I hope they go bust.

Re:Issues

[JimDabell]

Paying for ebooks i have no problem with but why use the PG name that so [many] have come to associate with the free PG.

You answered your own question right there. They are using the Project Gutenburg name as it's already fairly well-known for being a good source of books.

Re:Issues

[Zocalo]

This just smacks of using the reputation of Project Gutenberg to make a few bucks from those who don't like ASCII and can't generate their own .PDF from the original. I personally don't have a problem with them charging a nominal fee for the .PDF generation and hosting, even if it is really little more than writing a script to add markup to the original ASCII. Those who proofread for PG are entitled to feel differently of course.

I think in this case, since PG2 is not really and evolution of PG they might have done better going for a similarly themed, but different name. The domain "projectcaxton.com" currently appears to be available, for instance...

Re:Issues

[circusnews]

They do have a core of volunteer lawyers. They usually do (c) research, but I am sure they will take action.

Sue them?

[MrIrwin]

It seems that operations that work on a "Pay for rights" model are very happy to sue whenever a "Pay for Service" operation has a name that remotely infinges on thier namespace.

Should the reverse be valid? Perhaps in the first instance PG could politely request that they alter thier name.

What I do not understand is, if they did sue, how would PG fix "damages"?

Re:Sue them?

[rokzy]

using a bit of RIAA maths:

anyone buying a book from PG2 would have paid in donation to PG the equivalent of approx. 12 times the PG2 cost.

Re:Sue them?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were a fast reader, then that amount doubles to 24 times the cost.

Re:Sue them?

[Secrity]

The World Wildlife Fund successfully sued the World Wrestling Federation to stop using the name "WWF". The World Wrestling Federation changed it's name to World Wrestling E-something. I think it started with a dispute over the "wwf" domain name.

Well, this is largely the point, but...

[91degrees]

Does Project Gutenberg 2 have any affiliation with Project Gutenberg? It appears not. This would appear to be trademark infringement.

Apart from that, there's nothing wrong with it. People are making money off of public domain works. Good for them. That's one of the benefits of the public domain. People can do this. I'm not quite sure why people should want to buy something that they can get for free, but that's beside the point. If they want it, PG2 is providing the service.

Re:Well, this is largely the point, but...

[stiggle]

Perhaps if Project Gutenberg started their own PDF distribution people would complain less.

Continue to provide the texts in the plain text formats but also in PDF. That way they can also provide the original layout of the text and the images in the right contexts like some of the old Celtic books (eg. Book of Kells).

Re:Well, this is largely the point, but...

[Arker]

About Project Gutenberg 2 Project Gutenberg 2 is a member of the World eBook Library Consortia, an eBook library consortium adds an additional scope to eBook preservation and access. Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation.

So that answers your first question.

Looks to me like it's time for Mr. Hart to talk with a lawyer though. The name is definately 'confusingly similar' to the one he has trademarked, and being used in the same area.

Re:Well, this is largely the point, but...

[Hieronymus Howard]

The whois information for projectgutenberg.info (PG2) shows:

Domain Name: PROJECTGUTENBERG.INFO
Created On: 09-Nov-2001 05:08:24 UTC
Last Updated On: 05-Jan-2004 07:01:05 UTC
Expiration Date: 09-Nov-2008 05:08:24 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar: Network Solutions, Inc. Registrar (R122-LRMS)
Status: ACTIVE
Status: OK
Registrant ID: C1449260-LRMS
Registrant Name: Greg Newby
Registrant Street1: CB 3360 Manning Hall
Registrant City: Chapel Hill
Registrant State/Province: NC
Registrant Postal Code: 27599-3360
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Email: gbnewby@ils.unc.edu

This is the SAME Greg Newby who is the CEO of the original Project Gutenberg. Make of that what you will.

Re:Well, this is largely the point, but...

[Ioldanach]

This is the SAME Greg Newby who is the CEO of the original Project Gutenberg. Make of that what you will.

What I make of this is that he's a fool. He's not going to prosecute himself for trademark infringement. The side effect he doesn't realise, though, is that he just caused himself trademark infringement. If someone comes along and creates a website ProjectGutenburgEbook, he won't be able to prosecute them for trademark infringement because there are already companies doing the same thing with the PG name and the same target audience.

Way to go. Why didn't he just add an option to purchase a converted ebook or pdf file from the original PG website as a special subscription to support the project?

Re:Well, this is largely the point, but...

[Ioldanach]

Oops, didn't see that typo... "he just caused himself trademark infringement" should read "he just caused himself trademark dilution".

Re:Well, this is largely the point, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:Well, this is largely the point, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. You're still an idiot.

Not affiliated with Project Gutenberg

[MysteriousPreacher]

The leader says that this raises questions about PG's commitment to providing free books? How so? They aren't in any way affiliated with them (at least according to their site).

taken from http://www.projectgutenberg.info/
"Today Project Gutenberg 2, an eBook library consortium adds an additional scope to eBook preservation and access. Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation. . "

Re:Not affiliated with Project Gutenberg

[idril]

If PG2 is not affiliated with the original Project Gutenberg -- does anybody know why they are using the Project Gutenberg name instead of coming up with a new one?

Re:Not affiliated with Project Gutenberg

[makapuf]

Try delivering a software project named 'Photoshop bis' or 'Windows XP 2', claim you are not affiliated to Adobe or MS.
This is a trademark issue and claiming is not the same as being right.

Re:Not affiliated with Project Gutenberg

[MysteriousPreacher]

yeah, it's odd that they claim to not be affiliated yet the name is nearly identical. Also, they include a lot of information on the 'free' Project Gutenberg and links.

I presume that they have some kind of relationship or agreement in place. Either that or they enjoy litigation.

Microsoft 2

[Anonymous Coward]

What a great idea! I think I'll start up a business called "Microsoft 2" and start selling Linux distros through it...

Re:Microsoft 2

[xlyz]

What a great idea! I think I'll start up a business called "Microsoft 2" and start selling Linux distros through it...

actually somebody already did it

Re:Might as well try for fp

[Tx]

But is this an issue? Does anyone actually read books on screen?

I read ebooks almost to the exclusion of paper books as far as entertainment books are concerned - textbooks and manuals are another story. However I do the reading on my iPaq, and there is no Adobe eBook Reader for PocketPC (Abobe eBook != PDF). So I guess I'll have to stick with the free stuff.

This is a good thing

[Noksagt]

"Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation." So despite the stigma of paying for IP, this project will do little harm to PG, which will still release other public domain works for free.

By including PG2, they are becoming a first-rate library that will be able to release material that the free service wasn't able to. I'm sure schools and universities will watch for what PDFs will be made available. I'll be watching to see what audiobooks they put out.

This is certainly no worse than IMDB going commercial. Just because they will charge money for some products doesn't mean they are EVIL. Few people raise hell because Mandrake charges for a boxed set of their distro. The free stuff will still be there, but some value-added services deserve remuneration.

Re:This is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

"Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation." So despite the stigma of paying for IP, this project will do little harm to PG, which will still release other public domain works for free.

Duh? They claim to receive no money from the original foundation? Why should they? It's for them to pay or make donations!!

So eBooks is good, but ripping of the project is bad.

Re:This is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

"The MandrakeMove Download Edition is already available for Club Members!"

"You have to be a Mandrake Club member to download MandrakeMove"

Doesn't sound like they are abiding by the terms of the GPL.

i see no problem except the use of the name..

[Anonymous Coward]

really, if the txt still is available, then they can charge for this type set as long as they want.
however, the chose of name is outrageous, people will probably have problem finding to real gutenburg and assume that guteburg has started to charge people money
(people are idiots so dont count on that they will read the fine print and realize that they can still download the txt files for free)

Trademark infringement

[curiuz]

A company wants to sell ebooks with copyright expired titles? I don't see the problem? They want to call it Project Gutenberg 2/too? That must be such a clear cut tradmark court case? If they'd copycatted a big multibucks company rather than a small non-profit setup this news wouldn't even have reached us before they'd be cluttered with corporate lawyers. Try set up a MS 2 webpage...

Re:Trademark infringement

[91degrees]

Try set up a MS 2 webpage...

Or call a Linux distribution "Lindows".

Re:Trademark infringement

[pantherace]

The fact that the Windows(TM) Trademark should not have been granted in the first place? Windows was and is a generic term in computers. Now if it were the whole of Microsoft Windows(TM) I wouldn't mind. Anderson Windows for example, has a better claim to Windows as a trademark.

Hey if Windows(TM) can be trademarked, then Lindows, sure a hell outta be trademarkable, it isn't even a generic term!

Now, Microsoft has an interesting case in other countries, because they don't speak English, so Windows doesn't have the same meaning there (Wonder why they are going after Lindows there?). I would not be at all suprised if Microsoft loses their trademark to Windows. (not to mention the anti-competitive regulator's hackle's it's raising with these suits.)

Re:Trademark infringement

[0x0d0a]

You can trademark a generic term for use as a brand, as long as it isn't used to refer to a specific other thing already, and you're capitalizing it as Microsoft did with Windows. I can have an "Apple Fruit Orchard". It's usually a poor idea to do this, as it makes the trademark weaker, but there's nothing wrong with it.

Trademark Law

[0x0d0a]

The problem is that, in the United States, a trademark must be registered to recieve any protection. The idea of "trademarks" and "profit-generating businesses" is closely tied together. If you start up a project, you need to drop at *least* $400 or so on a trademark application. It's just not financially feasible to do this for every project on Sourceforge.

There is no sense of "de facto" trademarks, where an institution can recieve protection for a lower amount of money. I suspect Project Gutenberg hasn't registered a trademark, and so they can't go after people hijacking their name.

Frankly, I see no reason why trademark processing on a text trademark (like "Project Gutenberg") should cost more than $10 in a modern, computerized system. It should also be automated, and doable over the Web.

You can't do "Microsoft 2" because "Microsoft" is a registered trademark.

It's kind of depressing how difficult the United States makes it to do gratis projects.

Re:Trademark Law

[puhuri]

It should also be automated, and doable over the Web.

While much of processing can be automated, with an automatic system it would be easy to get some violating trademarks accepted. Or, on the other hand, some of those proper, non-violating, trademarks rejected. A human is always better to evaluate if one is too similar.

On some other legal systems, you cannot register trademarks that are well established to other companies even if they have not registered it.

Re:Trademark Law

[0x0d0a]

What about plain old textual ones? I can understand the issue when it comes to graphical trademarks.

Also (admittedly, I should research this), but I'm not sure if a trademark being registered is a definite, unshakeable legal claim that cannot later be challenged. It certainly isn't for patents. So it doesn't have to be perfectly infallible. I would think that it's reasonable for a system to give me "garblelublubschopass" as a trademark, since I'm quite sure that there isn't a single reference on the Web and that nobody else has registered the term.

Still good idea...

[saigon_from_europe]

...but the name should be changed. This is obvious name infringment. New project, in same field as old one, steals old name adding "2" behind it. Obviously intentionally misleading.

In first moment, I thought that this was a plan to raise money for old project.

Expect more of this in the future

[ahodgkinson]

It is surprising that something like this has not happened sooner. You should expect more OS Hijacking to occur as the various open source project begin to achieve a positive brand recognition.

In this case, some clever business has realized that Project Gutenberg has a good name and is now attempting to make money off it. Thankfully they've had the good sense to put a (rather oblique) disclaimer disassociating themselves from the original Project Gutenberg.

That said, in my opinion, it's certainly unethical and in some case, may even be illegal to attempt to generate business based on fooling the consumer. Perhaps someone should alert the RMS and the EFF of this new method of co-opting open source.

Is this really a good thing?

[LemonYellow]

I got the impression from the Project Gutenberg 2 web site that they were in no way connected to Project Gutenberg. So, PG is not "including PG2" unless PG2's claim is bogus. I'm left with the impression that PG2 is leeching the hard work done by PG in generating the raw text for the books, then squatting on a domain name which is clearly designed to imply a (business or reputation) relationship with PG. How is this not illegal, seeming to be a straight case of "passing off"?

Update

[0x0d0a]

According to a later post, Project Gutenberg *is* a registered trademark -- I still stand by my complaints about the failings of the trademark system, though.

Don't smell right

[frovingslosh]

From the website: Over 27,000 HTML eBooks Over 60,000 PDF eBooks Sure looks to me like the effort people put into making these books free has been subverted into making more than half of these book more available to paying customers, err I mean "members", than to the generaal public. I too think it stinks.

Slam Dunk for a Trademark Atty

[Waltan Hammett]

FWIW IAAL and IMO this one should be an easy win for a trademark atty if everything is as it appears. Particularly since nonprofits of the PG variety have little of value OTHER than their marks. PG"2" is stepping in sacred waters. Any other attys out there want to give Michael Hart (of PG) a buzz? Sounds like a good IP pro-bono.

More BS from the PG 2 people

[0x0d0a]

Also notable is the fact that these people didn't even try registering www.projectgutenberg2.info -- they got www.projectgutenberg.info.

This is about as blatant an abuse of the name as I can think of.

Re:More BS from the PG 2 people

[silentbozo]

Definite confusion - if you had asked me, just from looking at the website, I would have thought project gutenberg 2 was a spinoff of project gutenberg. At the very least, the use of the name seems to imply some sort of legitimacy (real or not.) If that isn't trading on the goodwill and reputation of somebody else's mark, I don't know what is.

Re:More BS from the PG 2 people

[eclectro]

I especially like the tag line "Project Guttenberg: The Next Millenium" and the line below it says "providing library services to the world".

Essentially what they are saying is "you don't want the old project guttenberg, you want the new better one that you have to pay for".

It's pretty clear to me that their aim is to confuse computer users to start up the adobe ebook program rather than loading it into a plain text reader/editor.

I especially like the "public access section" as if that is the "official" source for project gutenberg texts that are "free", and "by the way, here are are added search results that are over here that you have to pay for".

I think the distinction needs to be made clear. There is nothing wrong with selling a public domain text. Anybody can and will do that.

The problem is that they are essentially plying off the good name of project gettenberg and adding subtle misdirection to get people to buy their services.

You see, the adobe ebook program can not offer enough advantages for it to stand on its own (and why there aren't adobe ebooks all over the place and why it has fallen on its face) so they have to try and prop it up with lies.

I would be outraged too. Somebody needs to yank their cord.

Good idea turned asinine

[miyako]

I think the idea they have is a good one. I've downloaded quite a few texts off of Project Gutenburg, and for those of you who haven't, all of their files are simple plaintext files. I've wished for a long while that project gutenburg would release files in HTML or some other format. If the Project Gutenburg won't, then I see nothing wrong with what Project Gutenburg 2 is doing.
If they would have come up with some better name, then I would have probably considered buying from them, but this is just asinine. It seems to me like they are intentionally trying to use a name very similar to Project Gutenburg so that people who may have heard of Project Gutenburg will be confused and pay them for their services.
Of course I guess this is what Trademark laws are all about, so hopefully this group will have some lawyers on their arses pretty soon.

Re:Good idea turned asinine

[kfg]

I, for one, bless them for continuing to distribute in plain text. That's how I read and print them. On any machine capable of displaying plain text. My old 486 laptop, which I use as a text editor/ebook reader running Mu Linux doesn't even have a web browser installed. Not even Lynx. I don't need it.

However, that said, Project Gutenberg does distribute many texts in HTML format, which you can either download or read online. HTML is a plain text format, with plain text tags.

They do not distribute texts in propriatary formats.

KFG

Re:Good idea turned asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

I've wished for a long while that project gutenburg would release files in HTML or some other format. If the Project Gutenburg won't, then I see nothing wrong with what Project Gutenburg 2 is doing.

PG text > OpenOffice 1.1 > PG Text in PDF

(note: the above is a description of a process, not a *nix command, obviously, although I'm sure someone could paste something together with wget, xpdf, etc.)

Simple and easy. It won't be marked up, but it's a different format and maybe more readable.

Re:Good idea turned asinine

[El Dopa]

Lots of folks do that already, without using the PG name: Blackmask and Manybooks.net to name a few. Not only HTML, but Plucker, iSilo, Palm Reader, zTXT, etc

Re:Good idea turned asinine

[SnarfQuest]

PG does release some books in HTML format. I know, because I have created several of them. When you supply a HTML version, they also want to have a text version. Some books, however, don't make much sense as text only (an Illustrated Childrens Alphabet, for example)

If the person uploading the files to PG include a HTML version, it will be made available. However, not many of the providers take the time, or have the knowledge, to create one.

Their ISP

[0x0d0a]

Their (small) hosting company is apparently Maui Global Communications.

$ host projectgutenberg.info
projectgutenberg.info has address 207.175.209.175
$ whois 207.175.209.175
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
Genuity GNTY-207-175 (NET-207-175-0-0-1)
207.175.0.0 - 207.175.255.255
Maui Global Communications GTE-CUST-MGC (NET-207-175-209-0-1)
207.175.209.0 - 207.175.213.255


Hell of a weird-ass place to base a server (on an ADSL line on Maui), when the Project Gutenberg 2 guy is registered as being in either North Carolina (billing whois) or Alaska (admin whois). I'll bet they're regretting it in retrospect, given the slashdotting the thing is getting now.

Re:Their ISP

[orthogonal]

Hell of a weird-ass place to base a server (on an ADSL line on Maui), when the Project Gutenberg 2 guy is registered as being in either North Carolina (billing whois) or Alaska (admin whois). I'll bet they're regretting it in retrospect, given the slashdotting the thing is getting now.

According to the article linked to the blurb .linked to by Slashdot:

the person running PG 2 is John Guagliardo, a past president of the Hawaii Library Association, who, at one point, has been described as having invented "the idea of eBooks and eLibraries on his own, and then invited Project Gutenberg founder, Michael Hart, to speak at several of the HLA Annual Conferences, where they met in person."

Maui, of course, is an island and a county in Hawaii.

Something doesn't look right...

[rdmiller3]

The appearance of the PG-2 web site looks professional at first... but look again.

The Acrobat Reader ad/link graphic at the bottom of the main page says,

Let you(sic!) computer read to you

So this very likely is not a legitimate graphic from Adobe, Inc. but rather something that this PG-2 site may have made up themselves.

...and if they can't even get the spelling right on their web site's front page, doesn't it make you wonder about the quality of their e-books?

Re:Something doesn't look right...

[cubic6]

The graphic links to a site that seems to be a mirror of a page on Adobe's site. No indication other than the URL that it's not Adobe.com. I checked Adobe's site, and the software they're distributing is only available as part of Acrobat Reader 6. I smell something fishy...

Re:Something doesn't look right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Click on the "Adobe" banner!!!

You're lead to a fake Adobe sebsite!
at the url http://www.worldebooklibrary.com/Adobe/

Let Adobe's lawyers begin their show..

Re:Something doesn't look right...

[AndroidCat]

They also brag of their "text to speak capability". Sigh. All their page needed was the Flash intro to be total shiny fluff.

Re:Something doesn't look right...

[aitsuda]

Not only does this lead you to a face Adobe website (as the anonymous coward above pointed out) but the links to "adobe" software are, in fact, hosted on the same page... Anyone want to try installing it to see what it does to their PC? Scary

Re:Something doesn't look right...

[Skilf]

Yes fishy indeed, on adobe's page concerning eBook Reader 2.2 they state that the eBook reader software has been merged with the Adobe Acrobat Reader into a single product.

This is clearly NOT what the worldbooklibrary.com/adobe site is claiming.

Who knows what might be in this "reader".. a trojan? virus? spyware.... only one way to find out, download it! (have an antivirus software around if you're on windows)

They should be reported to Adobe.

More info here

[soramimicake]

Half way down this page are more details of this case.

Especially of interests are the following 2 points:

- PG trademark owner and PG2 owner are supposedly friends.

- PG2 tries to claim copyright over the files as well, even though the text themselves are supposed to be in the public domain.

Re:More info here

[Anonymous Coward]

"PG2 tries to claim copyright over the files as well, even though the text themselves are supposed to be in the public domain."

That's very interesting. I believe translations from public domain works into another language are copyrightable, but is formatting?

Re:More info here

[jubei]

PG2 tries to claim copyright over the files as well, even though the text themselves are supposed to be in the public domain.

The idea that the formating is copywritable is a scary one. Any number of people could reformat PG texts using a specific XML dtd and stylesheet in exactly the same way. Does this mean that it is a race to see who can mark up the text first?

Hypocrites

[cubic6]

This is just one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. If they want to sell access to PDF copies of Project Gutenberg texts, that's fine by me. However, they're quite clearly trying to use Project Gutenberg's good name to sell their material. True, they say that they are unafilliated on the page, but think about it. Their site is www.projectgutenberg.info. Not www.projectgutenberg2.info. The name, Project Gutenberg 2, means a sequel to Project Gutenberg. Most people would see "Project Gutenberg 2" and assume it's an extension of the original Project Gutenberg. They can claim they're not trying to exploit name confusion all they want, but they picked their name with full knowledge that it would be confused with another project with similar goals that already existed.

Re:Hypocrites

[0x0d0a]

Plus, this place has zero name recognition. It'd be easy for them to just change their name now, before they put lots of money into advertising (that is, unless they were trying to just make money off of confused people). I'd say that their service is potentially legitimate. I've spent a long time trying to figure out ways to intelligently render long ASCII ebooks into PS/PDF format. It is not easy to do, since a lot of formatting information isn't there any more, and since few people want to read an entire book in a nonproportional font.

Re:Hypocrites

[cubic6]

I agree, and I think it might be a great service. If it looked half as good as the stuff I do with TeX, I might even pay for it. But their name choice and methods are morally questionable. If they want to sell PG texts as PDF, call it Project PDFBooks or something.

Re:Hypocrites

[bryanp]

[I] However, they're quite clearly trying to use Project Gutenberg's good name to sell their material. [/I]

"They" in this case includes the holder of the trademark to the name "Project Gutenberg." Whether we like it or not, he has the right to use the name.

There is an easy solution

[heironymouscoward]

I am pleased to announce:

ProjectGutenburg 3
(not affiliated with any other PG).
E-books for FREE!
Come & get'm while they're hot!

Re:There is an easy solution

[AndroidCat]

Coming Soon: ProjectGutenberg Forever!

Re:There is an easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no...
We must use the Capcom (Street Fighter) style of numbering and have 12+ ProjectGutenberg 2s before moving to Project Gutenberg 3.

Yes

[Noksagt]

PG's licensing terms state this "Commercial use: The 'small print' license includes a royalty schedule for commercial use of the Project Gutenberg trademark, including any sort of resale."

PG2 will have to pay PG. PG will see money from PG2's subscribers.

Project Gutenberg 2 = Michael Hart

[mikeymckay]

I believe Project Gutenberg 2 is being run by Michael Hart (and others), founder of the original Project Gutenberg and holder of the trademark. At least this is what I am picking up by the mass of emails flying on the gutenberg developers list. So it is affiliated, though in a messy circular sort of way.

Second Update

[0x0d0a]

It seems that I was also wrong about whether it's possible to file online. You can, in fact, file entirely online. However, apparently this just feeds the stuff to the beaucracy on the other end, and you pay the same price as the paper world and wait the same amount of time -- $335 per trademark per class (plus the renewal fees).

Why PDF?

[mikeymckay]

I have never understood the PDF format. I hate it. Adobe Acrobat Reader defines bloatware - it takes ages to launch, and provides very little added value as far as I am concerned.

If you are reading an ebook on a desktop or laptop, read it as html or plain text. If you are reading it on PDA (as I have read many gutenberg texts) use zTxt with the Weasel Reader. The reader is great and the compressed text is tiny.

Re:Why PDF?

[LemonYellow]

OTOH, at least with a PDF you get a document which looks the same everywhere (formatting, fonts) and which doesn't require MS Word to read it. Acrobat reader is indeed a bag o'sh*te, but there are lightweight PDF viewers; In particular, I'm thinking of Preview in Mac OS X and presuming that there's a similarly quick app for every platform. Compressed HTML might well be a better format for shipping documents for PDAs where one isn't bothered about the exact font or formatting, though.

Re:Why PDF?

[0x0d0a]

That Weasel Reader thing looks great -- *if* you're using a PDA.

There are no good open source projects that I know of to let you read ASCII ebooks on a computer screen.

Constraints I would put on such a project:

* Must support antialiased text. If I'm going to be reading masses of text, I'd rather not see jaggies.

* Must support keyboard and mousewheel navigation.

* Must support some form of good resizing to run in fullscreen mode.

* Must support display with a proportional font. This is harder than it sounds, since proportional display is usually done without a hard-wrapped source, and the PG texts are all hard-wrapped.

* The ability to bookmark locations in the text, and zip back to these saved locations.

* The ability to read gzip- or zip-compressed files. ASCII compresses well, and there's no reason to leave ebooks around uncompressed.

* A find feature. It would be nice if this had glark-style features, so you can do context searches and the like. (actually, it might make a lot of sense to just be a frontend to glark).

* (Optional but nice) the ability to feed output into festival or a similar speech synthesis sytem for listening. Open Source speech synth isn't quite to the point where I'd want to use it for ordinary usage (as opposed to use by the disabled), but it's not awful and some folks may like it.

* (Optional but nice) the ability to remember where you stopped reading.

I've looked at a *lot* of approaches to getting a nice, readable book. This hack takes in a text file and seems to spit out a pretty good pdf viewable in full-scree-mode in xpdf:


#!/bin/bash
# Converts a text file into a nice, computer-readable PDF
# Usage bookize
cat "$@"|tr -d "\r"|enscript -B -f Palatino-Roman24 -M Compscreen --word-wrap -p
"$@".ps
ps2pdf "$@".ps && rm "$@".ps


And the required ~/.enscriptrc:


# Media definitions:
# name width height llx lly urx ury
Media: Compscreen 858 644 0 0 858 644


It is, unfortunately, still not perfect. I've tried writing scripts to feed things in to LaTeX (to enjoy the superior kerning of LaTeX), but I've never been that happy with the results. It's easy to have something that's a metasequence in LaTeX isn't escaped.

Re:Why PDF?

[blrichwine]

Why not use the Daisy format? The community providing books for the media challenged have worked hard for years to provide an open standard. From their Web site:
http://www.daisy.org/about_us/default.asp

In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard.

A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:

One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.
The DAISY standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.

Re:Why PDF?

[tmilford]

use xemacs.

Re:Why PDF?

[Bystander]

Here is one open source project for displaying and reading PG e-texts on a computer. It doesn't do everything you asked for, but does quite a bit.

Re:Why PDF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two projects come to mind. Etext Reader is a cross-platform open-source reader which looks like it hasn't been updated for a while, but the source is available for you to improve on. PyGE is another cross-platform reader which even includes some support for text-to-speech output.

Infringement of Adobe trademark as well?

[0x0d0a]

Good eye. If you are correct, it *may* be infringement of Adobe's trademark as well -- I'm pretty sure you can't make up ads for other people's products without disclosing who you are (could be wrong on this, but I know that political groups always do it).

DMCA

[femto]

If the ebooks are encrypted, isn't this a valid reason to possess an ebook encryption cracker? It's primary purpose would not be to crack the encryption on copyrighted works, but to crack the encryption on public domain works.

Profiteering Skum. . ,

[Fantastic Lad]

should be removed from the playing field.

The company deliberately chose a name designed to manipulate people. They are the sort where, if they gain any money or power, would think about trying to shut down the original Project or some other such SCO-style nonsense. (And who knows where copyright law will be five years from now; the DMCA is an insanity I certainly thought was too far out-there to come true, but here it is.)

PG2's character and motivation are clear from the outset and they cannot be expected to change or improve. They deserve to be destroyed.

-FL

Re:Profiteering Skum. . ,

[MysteriousPreacher]

Easy tiger, aren't you jumping the gun somewhat?

Sure the name is near enough identical which could be a legal issue unless they licenced it from PG, but they include very prominant links to the original PG on their front page.

It would be interesting to see comments from the people at PG before you start calling people Profiteering Skum [sic].

Nice SCO and DMCA references though, someone was bound to get them in. ;-)

Re:Profiteering Skum. . ,

[MysteriousPreacher]

Ah, that explains it all. The Nazis burnt all those books so they could get the monopoly on eBooks.

I think Godwin's law should apply here..

The proper article

[Anonymous Coward]

The one paragraph link doesn't give much info as the article (or blog as it may be) it links to. As a lot of people seem to have not read the longer article (as I see a lot of questions that are easily answered if one has read it eg. a lot of people don't seem to realise that the head of PG who personally holds the PG trademark is involved with PG2), here is the full text of the blog entry:

Project Gutenberg 2 controversy: A membership fee site with the Gutenberg name--and Adobe huckstery

For months Project Gutenberg volunteers have been polishing their main site, which today is at Gutenberg.net rather than the venerable Promo.net address. Now a flashy site has sprung up separately from Gutenberg.net. Called Project Gutenberg 2, it comes with a stylish layout and "Over 27,000 HTML eBooks to choose from." That's several times the 10,000 or so in the original Project Gutenberg. Mysterious, too, is the emphasis on Adobe format for paid members of Project Gutenberg 2--at complete odds with the strenuously nonproprietary approach of Gutenberg's past. The HTML is free. But you pay for membership to read the more than "60,000 PDF eBooks and eDocuments."

So have the most active of the Project Gutenberg volunteers been quietly slaving away to surprise the world with Project Gutenberg 2 while using Gutenberg.net as a decoy? Not exactly. It's news to them as well, including Charles Franks, head of the well-regarded Distributed Proofreaders, which is the main source of PG texts these days. Over the weekend a Project Gutenberg volunteer list was buzzing with all kinds of questions for PG founder Michael Hart, who personally owns the Project Gutenberg trademark.

$8.95 membership fee

The original Project Gutenberg makes its public material available to commercial sites such as Blackmask, which it should. The enigma here is why the name "Project Gutenberg 2" is used; mightn't there be some confusion here, when the original Gutenberg is supposed to be the main show? The response from Michael and defenders is that the words "Project Gutenberg" have shown up in such manifestations as "Project Gutenberg Australia." But they lack a name strongly implying that they are an organizational successor, complete with the all-important "2"--while the accompanying domain doesn't even include the 2, suggesting that one day that projectgutenberg.info might conceivably displace gutenberg.net. What's more, addresses such as gutenberg.net.au use country domains and follow the same noncommercial, open source model that we all know, love and expect of Michael Hart and Project Gutenberg. That's not all. For access to material in the proprietary PDF format, the new site charges individuals $8.95 a year, a low sum but rather in contradiction of the "free" approach that has characterized Gutenberg in the past, at least when The Name is invoked on The Site.

Other questions arise. For example, the person running PG 2 is John Guagliardo, a past president of the Hawaii Library Association, who, at one point, has been described as having invented "the idea of eBooks and eLibraries on his own, and then invited Project Gutenberg founder, Michael Hart, to speak at several of the HLA Annual Conferences, where they met in person." And yet in discussing the history of e-books, Michael hasn't exactly been playing up Guaglioardo's role. Clearly, however, as shown by a photograph on the site of Guagliardo Technologies, the two have been friends. Each year Michael takes a long vacation in Hawaii, his buddy Guaglioardo's turf. A little favoritism here?

Terms of use to be changed--following Charles Franks' questions

Significantly, too, Charles Franks has raised questions about the language in the Project Gutenberg 2 site's terms of service. On the "Terms and Conditions" page, the site read as follows while I was writing this blog item:

Ownership Notice

Unless otherwise noted, this website and all of the materials contained herein, including the HTML code, source code, and any other code used to gen

PG2 on shaky ground

[Bud]

A couple of things:

• The Project Gutenberg license requires royalties for commercial use.
• As others have already pointed out, "Project Gutenberg" is trademarked (at least in the US).

It's unlikely that anyone would start a business like PG2 without first establishing a licensing plan with PG, unless they are situated far off-shore or have less than three braincells.

--Bud

Re:PG2 on shaky ground

[Anonymous Coward]

...or unless they're based in Mauii...duh

Third update

[0x0d0a]

Damn, I'm *really* whiffing today WRT trademarks.

Okay, trademarks *also* don't have to be registered (at least in the United States). Simple use "in commerce" (which I would guess PG probably counts as from a legal standpoint) produces an unregistered trademark, which may *optionally* be denoted with "TM".

So, I guess things are okay after all. :-)

Maybe

[LemonYellow]

It's good if PG sees royalties from PG2. However, to crank out an analogy, there's a heck of a difference between me paying royalties for calling a product "SmallCorp Foo v1, Designed for Microsoft Windows" (which would be good for Microsoft) and me calling a product "Microsoft2 Foo v1", which would be 'passing off'.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell should people be paying royaltes for public domain books from project gutenberg.

I am going to download these public domain works from PG2 and release them.

Re:Maybe

[LemonYellow]

You misunderstand. The potential royalties which were mentioned were for the use of the "Project Gutenberg" name, not the books.

its on a adsl line

[Anonymous Coward]

host projectgutenberg.info
host name : projectgutenberg.info
address : 207.175.209.175

host 207.175.209.175
host name : jg-xtx4.adsl-09.pacificglobal.net
address : 207.175.209.175

Re:its on a adsl line

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really?

(stabs F5 repeatedly...)

Re:its on a adsl line

[AndroidCat]

Cue Jaws theme...

Hurd Windows!

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite windows are Hurd Windows

Building fine windows for more than 80 years!

Electronic books for sale

[PingPongBoy]

What I would rather see is publishers selling all their books first published more than, say 5 years ago, in a standard electronic format

This is bad for PG

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the fact that this goes against the principles that PG was founded on, this venture will no doubt discourage more proofreaders and typers from volunteering.

They should at the very least change the name of their venture/website.

Re:Why PDF? And why bogus claims?

[AndroidCat]

All eBooks are in HTML or PDF format Let your computer read your book to you. What makes PDF eBooks unique is the text to speak capability and a built- in dictionary. Over 60,000 to choose from.

Text to speak [sic] is trivial to do in a Windows environment. Microsoft gives that away with SAPI. Heck, just as easy to have a little animated character on the screen reading it to you. (Calm down, Clippy doesn't talk. Yet.)

The glitz of their webpage, the lack of proof-reading (ye gads!), the pushing of a minor feature as if it was sliced-bread, the data mining of Project Gutenberg's hard work suggests that this is a Get Rich Quick cheesy operation.

Since they were stupid enough to step on Project Gutenberg's good name, hopefully the Flush of Justice will remove this turd quickly.

Re:Might as well try for fp

[Tx]

Familiar does not have an Adobe eBook Reader. Let me reiterate, Adobe eBook format != PDF. Nor does it support Microsoft Reader or Palm Reader, the formats in which most ebooks are sold. So in the context of ebooks your comments are pretty inane.

Anyway, I tried Familiar a while back, and it wasn't ready for prime time. It may have improved since, but anti-microsoft zealotry aside, PocketPC is a perfectly decent PDA OS in my opinion.

Uptime 99.98%???

[yudan]

In this page it states

Since our initial launch time our webservers have had a 99.98% up time 24 hours a day, 7 days a week ...

Posting a story about it on slashdot will definitely change their stated uptime. :-)

Adobe vs Microsoft

[0x0d0a]

The difference between Adobe and Microsoft is product quality.

When I use Windows, I get pissed off at the sheer number of broken things (click, click, click, "Oh, Explorer seems to have hung", click, "Well, now it's crashed...") or things that are a tremendous pain in the ass to do under Windows that would be easy in Linux. (Try batch-printing 200 PS files, as I did once when pretty-printing an entire source tree -- on an *IX box the lpr call is nicely serialized, but Windows parallelizes everything, so if you just select all the documents in Explorer, right click and choose "print", Windows opens eighty zillion copies of Ghostscript or whatever you're using and then throws up all over itself.

When I'm using, say, Photoshop, I don't constantly get angry at the failings and random breakage of the program.

Re:Adobe vs Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

bash != linux
bash = ported to window$

Either XML or simply LaTEX

[Anonymous Coward]

I think give all the current solutions plain tex files would be the best.
It is rather easy to add the LaTEX markup to given books and from there all the necessary plugins and filters are given to generate every fileformat there is under the earth.

The step from plain text to LaTEX would be a rather small one.

Re:Either XML or simply LaTEX

[mirko]

Also my advice.
Especially as these'd be easy to convert into PDF on the target machine I'd use to read these.

Interesting, they are using XML as well.

[Moderation abuser]

This is potentially as important a project as Project Gutenberg itself is. Seriously, a much better way to spend your spare time than 8 hours per day of VegeVision.

Needs a GUI markup tool which can handle their DTDs though.

Dr. Greg Newby is the CEO of Project Gutenberg

[Hungus]

Why are people raising such a furor over this Newby is teh CEO of Project Gutenberg. There is no relationship because PG is a non profit or

Donations are made to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (PGLAF), a corporation registered in the US State of Mississippi. PGLAF is approved as a charitable 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal Revenue Service, and has the Federal Employee Information Number (EIN) 64-6221541.

so of course there is "no relationship" between them and a group running a for profit enterprise. Do a little bit of research before you start shouting sue ESPECIALLY THE LAWYERS WHO HAVE POSTED Call up pg and tell them their tradmark is being depreciated and while your on the phone with teh ceo you can ask the registrar of pg2 why he is infringing because they are the same person. Different legal entities but the same physical person.

Doesn't PG allow this though?

[seanm666]

From a PG Etext

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"

You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this "Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,

or:

[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, including any form resulting from conversion by word processing or hypertext software, but only so long as *EITHER*:

[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and does *not* contain characters other than those intended by the author of the work, although tilde (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may be used to convey punctuation intended by the author, and additional characters may be used to indicate hypertext links; OR

[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that displays the etext (as is the case, for instance, with most word processors);

OR

[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small Print!" statement.

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.

IANAL, but doesn't this allow them to use the name provided they pay the original Project Gutenberg 20% of their profits? Or am I missing something...

Re:Doesn't PG allow this though?

[clonebarkins]

IANAL, but doesn't this allow them to use the name provided they pay the original Project Gutenberg 20% of their profits? Or am I missing something...

Yes, this is allowed. Part of the problem is that PGII (which is just a shiny new, brand-recognizable front for the WorldEbookLibrary) is putting Copyrights on PG's books. Let me say that again: COPYRIGHTS ON PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS! Every book downloaded from PGII claims to have a copyright, not belonging to PGII, but belonging to the WorldEbookLibrary. This is on top of the PG header that says the book is public domain.

Talk about confusing the issue....

Re:Doesn't PG allow this though?

[kilgortrout]

What an easy thing to get around. The company will never show a net profit. The officers/directors of the corp will just vote themselves incredibly huge salaries.

This is a fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Adobe banner: it links to
www.worldebooklibrary.info/Adobe
which is a *fake* Adobe website.

World eBook Library owns both sites.

Plus the information given below on their ISP in Maui...

I guess you shouldn't begin to give your money to them...

Anyone knows how to alert Adobe's legal department? I guess it would help solve GP problem...

Re:This is a fake

[De Lemming]

Look at the Adobe banner: it links to http://www.worldebooklibrary.com/Adobe/ (corrected url)
which is a *fake* Adobe website.

World eBook Library owns both sites.

whois:
www.worldebooklibrary.com = [ 207.175.209.173 ]
Organization:
World eBook Library
John Guagliardo
PO Box 22687
Honolulu HI 96823
US
[...]

And their ISP: Maui Global Communications Corp., Hawaii

Even better: the advertised eBook Reader is a discontinued Adobe product, the functionality is integrated in Adobe Reader now:
http://www.adobe.com/products/ebookreader/main.htm l

Re:This is a fake

[rarkm]

Searching the website, you'll find that the "Executive Director" is a John Guagliardo in Hawaii. There is also a website for a website developer called Guagliardo Technologies at http://www.guagliardo.cc/Directory.html.

Looks like he's leveraging his web development skills.

Alternatives to PDF

[doktorstop]

As a biased supporter of PG, I would really argue that switching to PDF goes against the whole idea of a free, easily-accessible and voluntary-based project. Doing so would cut down any possible motivation for thousands of people to contribute time and work to something that will become proprietary products sold later on to all of us.
But that is not the point, as I am quite sure this idea will be expressed with different accents in thousands of posts. The points are: 1) yes, it is good that PG is trying to get away from pure text. That is the way to go.
2) There already exists a mature project called FictionBook. Basically, it is a derivative of the DocBook format, XML-based, but optimized for books instead of documentation (yes, there IS a difference!) Thousands of books (unfortunately most of them in Russian) are already published and readily available on the net. The standart itself has survived so far for at least 2-3 years, so it is proven by time to work. And there are lots of tools to create, modify and archive books, and readers for almost every platform.
So why reinvent the weel????

Gutenberg index files..

[NickRuisi]

Ahh.. for a second I had some hope that the "gutenberg2" project might actually have a machine-parsable index file format.

I suggest they rename it to

[Rogerborg]

Project Firefox.

Re:I suggest they rename it to

[welshwaterloo]

then:
Project Lutenburg

then:
Project Luten--

Oh, the humanity...

name use questionable, but fee is for added value

[pwarf]

The use of the name is very questionable because it misappropriates the good name of Project Guttenburg and the good will people have towards Project Guttenburg.

However, the whole point of Project Guttenburg is to make texts already in the public domain readily available. A reasonable person will know that the same works exist for free in plain text format and will only pay for the added value (to them) of having them in a different format.

Anyone who wants to is still free to make PDF or HTML files of public domain works Project Guttenburg has made into e-texts. Project Guttenburg CANNOT release their books under the GPL because the copyright has already expired on these works. (For the vast majority, if not all of their works. Are there any exceptions?). That's why Project Guttenburg can get them free in the first place.

Project Guttenburg probably does have a strong trademark case, though.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Sacrificial bloodletting has become a commonplace and is widely regarded as the only ethical course of action. After all there's always someone out there that needs some blood.

The worldwide index of self-centered actions has dropped to a record low of 0.0001%. We should soon be seeing a future in which no-one would be heartless enough to perform an action for their own benefit.

Re:Why PDF? And why bogus claims?

[Anonymous Coward]

Text to speak [sic] is trivial to do in a Windows environment. Microsoft gives that away with SAPI.

<Amiga fanboy>

We were doing text-to-speech fifteen years ago with Workbench 1.2 Nice of everyone else to have caught up with the latest developments..

</Amiga fanboy>

Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for Linus 2.

Numbers don't add up.

[Jade E. 2]

Project Gutenburg has 11,531 titles as of now, in text format.

Project Gutenburg 2 claims to have 27,000 books available for free in HTML format, and 60,000 books they charge for in PDF/eBook format (Those aren't the same format, and their site confuses them.)

So, they're obviously ripping off PG's trademarked name (unless they have permission, as a couple people have speculated), but are they really ripping off their content? And even if they are, where are they getting the rest of their books? Presumably, all 27,000 HTML books are duplicated within the 60,000 PDFs, since they claim they pioneered converting from HTML to PDF... But that still leaves 50,000 books that had to come from somewhere other than PG. PG2 is a front for the World eBook Library, which claims to be a consortium of either 45 or 'hundreds' of companies, depending on what page you're on. But their counterfit Adobe page doesn't exactly instill confidence. Then again, with them claiming support from the likes of PG, the Internet Archive, Google, Amazon, Systran, and the LOC, how can they be bad? I mean, on that page they even list the CIA as one of their contributors, and have an outdated mirror of the CIA world factbook. That book is, of course, in the public domain, except that they didn't bother to strip out the official CIA logo, as required by the CIA. Talk about the wrong people to piss off.

So, this whole thing smells like a major scam, but I still want to know where they got the rest of their content (assuming they actually have it...)

Re:Numbers don't add up.

[clonebarkins]

Project Gutenburg has 11,531 titles as of now, in text format.

No, PG may have 11,531 titles, but they're not all in text format. Like any other library, they have a variety of audio books, movies, and music.

So, they're obviously ripping off PG's trademarked name (unless they have permission, as a couple people have speculated)

It's not speculation. Michael Hart, who owns the PG trademark, has given the World Ebook Library permission to use "Project Gutenberg II" and the projectgutenberg.info domain name as a front.

Many of the other books you see (above the 10+ that are from PG) come from sites like Blackmask.

People really didn't read the article did they?

[tehanu]

I think a lot of people are getting the issues confused. What seems to be happening is not an evil corporation hijacking the name of an innocent open source project, it is the head of said project being personally involved in a corporation called PG2 run by a good mate offering the paid options. I have to snigger at all the declarations of evil corporations and telling Michael Hart about this and calling up the lawyer attack dogs, because the article plainly states that he is behind all this. All these statements show is that people really don't read articles on slashdot and have knee-jerk reactions.

What this is, is if Linus (who I think personally owns the Linux trademark) starting up a company with some good mates, which takes the current Linux source, close-sources it and sells it for a profit with the name Linux 2 and takes the domain name, www.linux.com as his company's front. Not only that said company heavily promotes propietry closed-source formats and programs.

Basically, has Michael Hart sold out?

1. There is no trademark issue, because Michael Hart, the founder of PG, who *personally* owns the trademark "Project Gutenberg" is personally involved with the commercial entity called "Project Gutenburg 2" which is run by a good friend of his. The people running PG2 seem to have *permission* from Michael to use the trademark. They are NOT co-opting the name illegally. They have the full permission of the right holder. Calling lawyers to sue in this case is stupid. The issue seems to boil down to a lot of PG people disagreeing with Michael this is an appropriate use of the name, not that they can do anything about it legally. The issue the article raises is whether a single person should have the right to the name and hopes that this incident will lead to a more formal control structure for the project (eg. a committee) which is independent of any single person's control.

(2) There seems to be some problem with the license. Not sure about this. I think the license on the PG2 website asserts copyright over the contents of the public domain books as well.

(3) There is the question over whether Michael is personally profiting from PG2. Whether or not you think he should is another issue, but it is one of the issues the original author of the article is pressing Michael to explain.

(4) In relation to (1). The issue is not whether or not you should be able to repackage and profit from PG's work as this is allowed. The issue is the name PG2 seems to indicate that this is the successor to PG. And also the association with the PG name with closed, propietry formats.

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[DarkMan]

What this is, is if Linus (who I think personally owns the Linux trademark) starting up a company with some good mates, which takes the current Linux source, close-sources it and sells it for a profit with the name Linux 2 and takes the domain name, www.linux.com as his company's front.

He can't, as Linus doesn't own the copyright to all of the code in the current source. For example, there are major contributions by Alan Cox, Al Viro, IBM, and thousands of other, lesser known contributers. Unless, and until, he gets the agreement of each of those contributers, the current linux source cannot be used like that. I think that there are some contributers that would not agree to that (Alan Cox springs to mind here, as an example).

The major difference here is that Linux is copyrighted, under the GPL. Indeed, it's a desgin intent of the GPL to prevent such a situation.

The PG e-texts are public domain. There is no copyright on them. This is a fundemental difference.

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[clonebarkins]

(2) There seems to be some problem with the license. Not sure about this. I think the license on the PG2 website asserts copyright over the contents of the public domain books as well.

No, the PG license does not assert copyright over the contents of public domain books. The license states that you can do anything you want with the text as long as you remove any mention of PG from the modified version. To rephrase, the license only protects the PG trademark and not any copyright claims on the public domain text (it also talks about how to make donations, volunteer, etc.). There have been discussions within the project about the need for such a long license in every text (it currently weighs in at something like 27k) or whether there should just be mention of the license (which, again, only protects the PG trademark) and a URL of where it can be obtained.

(3) There is the question over whether Michael is personally profiting from PG2. Whether or not you think he should is another issue, but it is one of the issues the original author of the article is pressing Michael to explain.

Of course Michael is profiting, though whether financially or not is unknown at this point. Michael wouldn't have made the partnership if he (or PG, and therefore himself by transferrance) didn't profit in some way. He has responded on the PG volunteer mailing list to say that he has not profited.

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[Anonymous Coward]

(2) There seems to be some problem with the license. Not sure about this. I think the license on the PG2 website asserts copyright over the contents of the public domain books as well.

IANAL, but, I believe that copyright (since it protects expression) can be applied to a new typesetting of a work, even though the content is in the public domain. So PG2 could copyright etexts in HTML and PDF form, even though the ASCII and print versions are public domain.

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[theLOUDroom]

What this is, is if Linus (who I think personally owns the Linux trademark) starting up a company with some good mates, which takes the current Linux source, close-sources it and sells it for a profit with the name Linux 2 and takes the domain name, www.linux.com as his company's front. Not only that said company heavily promotes propietry closed-source formats and programs.

He'd be the target of a huge lawsuit by all the OTHER people who have contributed to the Linux kernel.
That's the key thing here:
Linux is more that just Linus and P.G. is more that just this guy. What happening is one guy trying to co-opt the work and good name of a lot of people.

It's important to realize that the guy who holds the trademark on "Project Gutenberg" basically took the name of an established charity organization and trademarked it for himself, instead of the organization. (Even if he started it some years earlier.)

It's quite likely that the owner of this trademark could loose it if taken to court since the Project Gutenberg ORGANIZATION has been operating under this name for quite some time. While this guy may have been affiliated with the project at some point, it doesn't necessarily give him the right to take ownership of its name for his own personal purposes. Furthermore, even if a court found that the original tradmark claim was vaild it could be dismissed on the ground that the P.G. organization has been actively using this trademark for quite some time. This could result Michael Hart loosing ownership of the P.G. trademark.

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[Woogiemonger]

Perhaps this is not a notion of Michael Hart selling out, but perhaps Michael Hart plotting an ingenious and elaborate money-making scheme from the very beginning. Pose as a free organization.. own rights to the trademark... then make money off the trademark, and all the volunteers' hard work. I haven't contributed to Project Gutenberg personally, but I'd be outright pissed if I did.

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[tehanu]

The article was talking about the PG2 license on their website, not the PG one.

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[Phroggy]

He'd be the target of a huge lawsuit by all the OTHER people who have contributed to the Linux kernel.
That's the key thing here:
Linux is more that just Linus and P.G. is more that just this guy. What happening is one guy trying to co-opt the work and good name of a lot of people.

However, the basis of that hypothetical lawsuit against Linus would be copyright infringement - using code contributed by the plaintiffs without a suitable license. PG volunteers can make no such claim, since they do NOT own the copyrights on the work they have contributed (and neither does PG itself, or anyone else).

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the way that the one guy that takes the time to state the facts and interpret clearly gets only +4 for interesting while all the people that just started screaming about lawyer attack dogs and trademark infringement, including this:

"These guys are using someone elses name and charging for their work.",

which is obviously factually incorrect get modded to +5! So now it appears the moderators don't even read the articles before the mod peopel one way or the other. Way to go Slashdot!

Re:People really didn't read the article did they?

[shnives]

there is the issue of bad faith. If you want to get into legal concepts this one should not be overlooked. most if not all of the ppl scanning, typing, proofing the texts did so pro bono, under the impression that they were making a very valuable contribution to society, and that it would be free and beneficial to all. there was always the caveat that free enterprise could try an generate revenue from these pd texts, and nobody saw anything inherently wrong with that. there have been many companies who have tried this. when the dust settled, they were buried under it. getting back to mr. Hart, it is highly unlikely that having started this project in 1971, he harboured the idea of tricking ppl into copying vast amounts of public domain texts, so he could profit some 30 years later Mr. hart has every right to engage in a commercial activity of this sort, since he has already given permission to anyone else to do so. The only time I would be considering bad faith on the part of the gutenberg team would be when tey stop offering free texts (there have always been many impoverished ppl who have benefitted from such help, and even went to to give soemthing back to society. It is a proud and noble tradition started by the athenians, when a citizen declared tey could not afford to pay to see a play, the state would pay it for them.) things like this strenghten any society greatly, and much of gutenberg's value would be lost if this was changed. it really would hurt more people than it helped.

project for free distribution of written knowledge

[N3wsByt3]

It is sad to see that projects lose their initial zeal and ideology.

I think the major error these sites/projects make, is that they do not incorporate the goals with which they start in any binding legal form. Thus, after a while, they fall prey to commercialism, often in its worst form. While their is nothing wrong with commercialism, when left unchecked, it will ultimately destroy the very thing it made it great. Time and again, the ideology is replaced by commercialism...unless you make sure, from the start, that can't happen.

Some open source projects, such as Linux, have understood that, and were GPL'ed. This safegards any commercialism that would destroy it's very foundation.

Another one, more in line with the Gutenburg Project, is the OPLA. This can be found on http://www.verbumvanum.org; a site dedicated to the same goals as project gutenburg, but which has learned the lessons of OSS/GPL.

Gutenberg books are fine!

[flimnap]

Project Gutenberg will accept any format of an ebook, as long as there is also a plain text version. So, many ebooks are available in plain text and HTML, and sometimes other formats (including PDF!!).

The major producer of PG ebooks, Distributed Proofreaders, ends up producing an illustrated HTML version of almost every book that would benefit from it.

As long as the public domain PDF ebooks are eventually added to the real Project Gutenberg, and PG2 pays the proper royalties to PG, I don't have a problem with this site.

Oh wait, I do... I think it's fishy that a friend of Michael Hart (the founder of PG) is awarded one of the domain names owned by the real Project Gutenberg. The "owner" of the domain is Greg Newby (the CEO of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. He does a fine job, and this isn't his fault ;).

PROJECTGUTENBERG.INFO Registrant:
Newby, Greg
(PROJECTGUTENBERG2-DOM)

Not entirely

[Gleef]

"Project Gutenberg 2" seems to me to be run by completely different people, specifically the World eBook Library Consortia.

The real Project Gutenberg is unchanged. Furthermore, the whole idea of the original project seems (at least to me) to be to take Public Domain works, and make them freely available to as many people as possible so they can do what they want with them. If what you want to do is sell PDF eBooks with these works, that's fine. To quote the notice on the top of Project Gutenberg works:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

So the problem here isn't what these people are doing, but the cynical and callous adoption of the "Project Gutenberg" name, which seems designed to cause confusion in the community and the market. I think it might be time for Project Gutenberg to remind the World eBook Library Consortia the nature of trademarks.

Re:Not entirely

[jazman]

...by renaming themselves "World eBook Library Consortia 2".

It would make the point, and is substantially cheaper than suing. And if they sued, PG could simply point out that they did it first and make some use of the words "sauce", "goose" and "gander."

Re:Not entirely

[Sandor at the Zoo]

The parent post is overrated, IMHO, since there's no background knowledge on the author's part.

Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, has given full permission to these guys to use the name. Here's part of a post to the ebook-community mailing list (a yahoo group):

PGII only charges for certain files they modified or created, and is paying PG the same royalty as we require from anyone.

and

Anyone who calls for such drastic action immediately just doesn't want to see how things will work, they want to force the worst assumption on us all. Project Gutenberg has always been open to experimentation. And we also have always had the fine print that has allowed for the production of "Project Gutenberg CDs" DVDs, etc., all by anyone who wanted to give it a try.

In my humble opinion, this dilutes the Project Gutenberg name and idea, but it's Hart's to do with as he sees fit.

Re:Not entirely

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Right on. When someone is saying something that you don't like, the response to that should be to say something to counter it. When bad speech is a problem, the problem is always more good speech, not censorship.

Likewise, these motherfuckers are doing something that appears to be bad. There's no need to shut the dickheads down. All we need to do is start another project.

Therefore, I propose a project called "Project Gutenberg 2 Motherfucking Sucks". The mission will be to give away Adobe E-books absolutely free.

Re:Not entirely

[infolib]

...by renaming themselves "World eBook Library Consortia 2".

Not to mention that the PG1 fans (I'm one) would google-bomb the crap out of the original WeBLC :-)

Re:Not entirely

[bumski]

In my humble opinion, this dilutes the Project Gutenberg name and idea, but it's Hart's to do with as he sees fit.

What a shame, too. There ought to be a low-cost mechanism by which collaborators could be invested with some measure of formal ownership in projects like Gutenberg and CDDB so that their putative owners can't take advantage of the work of scores of volunteers and sell out in the end. Gutenberg shouldn't be owned by Hart, but rather by everyone who has contributed over the years.

Re:Not entirely

[riprjak]

Hell, if MikeRowe can get caned for domain squatting, surely these dickheads can. Failing that, are there any recently retired commandos around??

Sorry, but folks like this really yank my chain. Freeloaders who drag arse over the principles of an organisation whose work they unabashedly co-opt. :) Ill settle down now, or *I* might infringe on rageboys copyright...

err!
jak

Format

[Dan East]

A number of years ago (when I was reading PG texts extensively) an idea hit me for a format that would suite PG very well. The idea is to have a second meta data file that describes the .txt file. Such a beast may already exist, but here are a few points regarding such a format:

• The system would accompany completely original, unaltered PG txts.
  
• The meta data file would contain a checksum of the txt file, so the reader software would know if the file has been altered or mismatched.
  
• The meta data would include bibliographic data.
  
• The meta data would contain actual text formatting (for example, "turn on italics at character 12,345").
  
• The couplets (meta data + txt) could then be run through converters to produce pdf or html, or be used in readers that understand the format natively.
  

Anyway my idea was to simply enhance the existing system (plain text), not replace it. Obviously this would require the creation of a WYSIWYG editor, but the formatting involved would be fairly basic and could be extended as needed. A library this extensive would warrant a format custom designed for it, as opposed to trying to drive a square peg into a round hole using existing formats (pdf, html, etc, which would introduce a whole new set of compromises).

Dan East

Re:Format

[JBMcB]

Sounds like a job for (Dun dun daaa) Docbook!

I've been looking around for a docbook reader/editor for a while. OpenOffice.org has some basic docbook import/export support, and there are some commercial apps that can do docbook, but most are really expensive (FrameMaker, XMLSpy I think.)

If we can get a really nice, friendly docbook editor/converter, ideally that doesn't use TeX (Arcane and HUGE)

A reader could be a modified browser, ideally one that would let you apply styles to your taste, like, oh, mosaic could do :)

Re:Format

[theLOUDroom]

Very good idea! I suggest you send it to the P.G. people.

Re:Format

[Bystander]

The biggest hurdle to having well-formatted versions of the PG books is not the formatting standard, but simply the effort needed to enter in the formatting information. The way most PG books are produced now is by scanning in original works, running the image files through an optical character recognition program, proofreading of the generated text files by an army of distributed volunteers, and final assembly by a much smaller number of experienced editors.

It's during the OCR process that a lot of formatting information is lost, and that information can only be recovered by people manually viewing the original image and adding markup language to the text output. The current process works well because the most labor-intensive part, the visual proofreading and error correction, requires little in the way of specialized skills and leaves little room for inconsistencies due to interpretation or personal preferences. Adding extra responsibility for including markup language for style and formatting reasons would quickly reduce the pool of volunteers who were both qualified and interested in spending time contributing to the proofreading work needed to keep PG running.

Renaming

[hawado]

go figure an anagram for project gutenberg is "OBJECT EGG PRE RUNT"... I don't know what to say....

More on Project Gutenberg 2 @teleread

[Anonymous Coward]

To be completely honest, we didn't really report this originally, it was at Teleread. They have a good Follow Ups as well, and a good archive of eBook stories. The latest has an interesting quote:

"In fact, that's exactly why Project Gutenberg 2 troubles me, because it at least appears to be a sellout of some valuable ideals, and Mr. Public Domain still does not grasp the implications. Proprietary DRMed formats like Adobe, encouraged by the existence of DMCAish laws, are among the ways the rules get rigged."

Right now I'm just hoping my server can take a slashdotting. We've gotten just over 1,100 referrals already. I'm not sure my slashcode an handle real slashdot numbers. Load average is still just under 2, which is higher than normal, but probably not too bad so far.

tail -f access_log | grep slashdot
It's scary watching a new one pop up every 5-10 seconds!

Teleread's Take on this

[Anonymous Coward]

For an interesting read on the issues (and in fact numerous others affecting eBooks), check out Teleread's Blog

Re:Why PDF? And why bogus claims?

[dmoynihan]

This may not register to a slashdot reader, but Adobe's Read-Aloud function (text to speech) is a major, major selling point for some less-technically knowledgeable folk.

I was able to pay my mortage as well as my dedicated server costs for two years just selling CDs of many, many books on ebay with that function, and I'm pretty sure the PG 2 guys saw that happening. (The PG license allows you to do what I did, and I do give back to the project, and, no, I'm not proud of the listing, but ugly, garish, centered font schemes work on ebay where nothing else really does.)

If PG 2 sounds like a scam... I don't think so; there are 48,500 not-on-PG books that you're paying $8.95 a year to access... this might just be worthwhile.

(And, yeah, PDF sucks, but it's all most people know.)

That is AGAINST the spirit!

[anandcp]

Lesson: Never Trust Big Business and Good Hearts.

Re:name use questionable, but fee is for added val

[WARM3CH]

Project Guttenburg CANNOT release their books under the GPL because the copyright has already expired on these works.

Why not? They can prohibit any commercial use of their work by stating it is not allowed to directly use, change or convert their e-books to any other format unless it be free for public. Anyone who wishes to make money, can scan, edit and proof any original book with expired copyright.

Not to mention

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla itself... how many times have they had to rename things because they used someone else's trademark?

Is it worth restarting? (no text)

[leonbrooks]

(I said...)

Re:Might as well try for fp

[Ayaress]

I don't read them on my PC so much, but I currently have several books, several of which I downloaded from PG, on my PDA. I've always had a horrible time losing books, papers, notes, but I've not once lost an electronic device.

This was launched in 2002?

[leonbrooks]

No evidence of any decisions made even about DTDs, let alone books marked up.

<joking> Since he's a Utah'n and a Mormon, perhaps we should ask him to disavow D'ohl McBride and any ownership claims on these texts (or the principle of marking up PD texts) before we pitch in?</joking>

Re:project for free distribution of written knowle

[clonebarkins]

It is sad to see that projects lose their initial zeal and ideology.

The project has not lost its zeal and ideology. Project Gutenberg is alive and kicking, and even revolting to some extent against Michael's unilateral decision to partner with the World Ebook Library through the device of projectgutenberg.info (aka Project Gutenberg II). As an active volunteer of PG and DP, I have seen the discussions over the past few days, and the zeal has increased if anything. People are still holding true to the ideals of PG, even if its founder has made a bad decision.

Some open source projects, such as Linux, have understood that, and were GPL'ed. This safegards any commercialism that would destroy it's very foundation.

Project Gutenberg is not an "open source project." It is a project to get public domain texts into electronic formats and distribute them to whoever wants them--including commercial enterprises. Linux and others are projects that work in copyrighted materials. Verbum Vanum requires specific licensing, which is very much against PG philosophy (yes, PG does have some copyrighted texts, but it does not require authors to give up any rights as the OLPA does, only to provide PG non-exclusive electronic distribution rights).

Yes, PG puts a license on every one of its texts. But it is the only license I know of that says you can remove the license altogether and redistribute however you desire. That is a benefit, not a detriment.

Re:Why PDF? And why bogus claims?

[AndroidCat]

Adobe's Read-Aloud function (text to speech) is a major, major selling point for some less-technically knowledgeable folk.

Really? Excellent! I was including that feature in something because it was free to add and some people might want it. (Even with the pop up animated talking character.) There's a fair number of free packages that will read what's in an arbitrary window or file. I guess I should check out Adobe's product to see what it does.

Michael Hart == good

[cyberon22]

Thanks for the clear review.

What amazes me is how cynical people here are. Project Gutenberg owes everything to Michael Hart, and so you think that admirers of the original would be supportive of the new venture.

Thanks Michael.

Re:Michael Hart == good

[Simon Brooke]

What amazes me is how cynical people here are. Project Gutenberg owes everything to Michael Hart, and so you think that admirers of the original would be supportive of the new venture.

You're missing the point. Michael Hart's work on Project Gutenberg is indeed admirable and to be commended. But this new venture is bad for all the reasons that Project Gutenberg is good.

Project Gutenberg is about opening the information commons, making knowledge freely available in an accessible form to everyone. That is the core of what it is about.

This new venture is a land grab on parts of the information commons; it's about making knowledge available in proprietary formats to people who pay for it. There's nothing in principle wrong with doing that, it's what commercial publishers do all the time, and if it had been called 'Michael Hart and Associates' I don't think anyone would object to it. But it's objectives are the complete opposite of Project Gutenberg's

And therein lies the rub. There is no doubt that this venture can, will and must tarnish the reputation of the original project, because it carries the implication that the original project is somehow replaced or superceded by this tawdry little company. It will make peopel who previously trusted the Project Gutenberg name wary of it. It will make volunteers wary of contributing to the project, for fear that their work will be privatised by PG2. Mr Hart may own the name, but this use of it is nevertheless deceitful and dishonest, and very damaging, certainly to Project Gutenberg and probably to the new company.

One or other of them is going to have to change its name, and there is going to be a very nasty taste left in everyone's mouth.

Bugger. I can't mod this story since I posted.

[leonbrooks]

And there's no way to delete my posts so I can mod instead. +1 informative, David Moynihan.

Re:Why PDF? And why bogus claims?

[AndroidCat]

I have a RS-232 to speech card that's even older. (You just can't get a good robotic voice like that these days.) It was fun on my Coherent/Linux BBS--I even had a "talk to the sysop" command.

I'm sure every environment has reasonable quality text to speech available these days. That's why I found their "text to speak" feature so odd.

Who cares? I'm waiting for...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

...the Steve Guttenberg project. Can you imagine it? All of his works, from the seminal "Police Academy" series to the touching "Cocoon", all available for free. Savor the acting in "Diner", then laugh your ass off at the zany antics in "Short Circuit". Oh, whose heart didn't go out to "Number 5" in that masterwork?

Text is dead; long live video. Free Steve's work now!

why not PDF?

[the_2nd_coming]

at least that is royalty free.

The book is public domain...

[leonbrooks]

...but their "arrangement" of it may not be.

This is a perfectly legal way to treat PD works. PD is different to GPL. There is a reason RMS and co had to invent the GPL.

I'm guessing that the eBooks copyright might be kind of hard to actually enforce. And of course, if you don't like it, don't buy the service, just use the original PG texts.

Rich vs plain

[gidds]

I can see both sides of this argument.

On the one hand, plain 7-bit ASCII text is the single most compatible format; just about any platform and app can handle it in some way or other. And it's likely to last longer than almost any other format. So as Gutenberg says, it's the most accessible format and the most future-proof.

But on the other, it's very thin. It has no structure: nothing to separate chapters, scenes, volumes, &c. It has no metadata: nothing to identify authors, translators, editions, dates, even titles, in a machine-readable manner. And it has no way to represent accented characters, directional quotes, and other characters that would greatly improve the typography.

The compelling argument for me, though, is that although you could automatically convert from a standardised rich format to plain text, it's impossible to convert the other way around without lots of manual work. If Gutenberg had chosen a rich format, even a very simple one, to start with, then all the benefits of plain text would come with that almost for free -- a simple open-sourced program would let people convert from the one to the other, and they could even provide both versions of texts on their web site.

FWIW, for my own reading I keep files in plain text but formatted in a particular manner: in Windows Latin-1, with accents and typography; with Palm-style bookmarks; and with conventions for chapter/scene/volume breaks, bold/italics, and metadata. It's a pain getting them there, but means they're ideal for reading on my palmtop, and also capable of being up-converted if the need arises.

Re:Rich vs plain

[bbc]

Just to give you folks some info about what's going on at PG.

First of all, PG is not against any other formats than plain vanilla text. However, because of the accessibility and future-proofness of that format, every text that PG will ever produce will also be published as plain vanilla text. It is the one format we will always produce, of many.

XML formats are being discussed. The idea is that we will produce XML files that will be used as storage format, from which at the very least the plain vanilla texts will be produced, and further more any format we care to support (most likely at least HTML and PDF).

The problem with these technologies is that they require volunteers to implement them.

Currently the biggest producer of ebooks for PG is Distributed Proofreaders (DP). This is a web-based, distributed application for the correction and formatting of ebooks. DP has a long list of guidelines of the sort of information that needs to be retained. At the moment, we keep more information than is required by PG, and a lot of this extra information runs the risk of being discarded. One of the solutions to this problem that volunteers have devised is producing their own HTML and XML etexts. Please read our newsletter article The Illustrated Masterpieces of Project Gutenberg to see some recent examples.

The Distributed Proofreaders would love to see a solution for the conservation problem. We want our ebooks to look good. It's the natural effect of putting ten thousand nit-pickers in the same room.

--Branko Collin

Re:name use questionable, but fee is for added val

[Erik Hollensbe]

Gutenberg.

one t.

Guttenberg sounds like the name of a society for fishers or hunters. :)

(Your local spelling correction fairy has struck)

So what?

[gotr00t]

Linux founder Linus Tovralds owns the Linux trademark. However, its just as good as having a group of people register it, in case someday, a third party org. makes a new, totally unrelated product using the Linux name.

PG links

[Anonymous Coward]

www.projectgutenberg.info ( The link in the article )
www.projectgutenberg.net ( WTF? )
www.projectgutenberg.org ( WTF? )
www.gutenberg.net ( The real site )
www.gutenberg.org ( The real site )
www.promo.net/pg/ ( Some other almost real site )

PETA 2

[FreeUser]

Press Release

PETA 2 is now accepting donations of livestock, bison and venison which have been "rescued" from ranchers and hunters. Our facilities guarantee the animals will be well cared for and well fed for the rest of their lives.

Disclaimer (4 point font): "People Eating Tastey Animals 2" is not affiliated with "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals."

PG should do same for free

[wardk]

perhaps PG should generate eBooks from the texts and give them away. sorta screw up the PG2 business model.

I'd even be willing to help out with such an adventure, have no idea how to generate an ebook, but I suspect it entails giving a wad of cash to adobe for some authoring/converting software. One adobe license = many many many free PG ebooks.

or is giving away something formatted in this manner against the US constitution and generally illegal?

You can still get free books on your PDA.

[Jaywalk]

You don't need to pay someone to get free books in PDA format. Get the plain text from Gutenberg or elsewhere, then download a copy of the program DropBook. Run the plain text through DropBook and you'll have the book on your PDA. If you want to get fancy, you can use a text editor to mark up the book in the Palm Markup Language. That will get you stuff like chapter headings and a table of contents.

I did this just the other day and now I have a copy of the manual for MySQL readable on my PDA complete with a table of contents. Sweet.

PG vs PG2?

[Almost-Retired]

I think these people who intend to make money from the good name of Project Gutenburg should be drawn and quartered. Thats inexcusable.

I hate to see the real project folks have to waste money on attornies to kick these jerks where it hurts, but I don't see a real, usable, alternative to doing just that.

Maybe its time we found a place to submit donations if the real PG site doesn't have such a facility available. I don't have very deep pockets as I'm on SS as I approach my 70th birthday, but surely there are folks out there with deeper pockets than mine, and equally committed to shooting back instead of being mugged by the likes of these low lifes.

We need the literary equivalent of a CWP, and a posse comitatus. To paraphrase Willy Nelson & friends, "whiskey for my men, and beer for our horses" when the job is done seems like a hell of a good idea.

Cheers, Gene

Lawsuit Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, if it was a Brand Name,
They couldn't do that...

Like you couldn't come up with a new drink
named: Coke 2.0

Re:Why PDF? And why bogus claims?

[blrichwine]

In Mac OS X, it is extremely trivial to have text read back to you. Almost all native apps have a text->speech option available on the menu bar.

Why not use the open DAISY Reader format?

[blrichwine]

The blind/dyslexic community has for years been working on an open standard for e-texts. Why not use it? There are many readers available to read these texts and it would be nearly trivial to use the Text-to-speech (TTS) features of Mac OS X and Windows to do this (I don't know the TTS features avail to Linux (sorry)).

From the DAISY Consortium's Web site:

http://www.daisy.org/about_us/default.asp

In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard.

A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:

One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;

A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);

A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and

A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.

The DAISY standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.

Re:Michael Hart == not good

[Anonymous Coward]

> Project Gutenberg owes everything to Michael Hart

Maybe, but the state of PG2 suggests Michael has been planning this for some time.

One has to ask how his PG decisions/influence may have been compromised by the conflict of interest.

For example, many wanted machine readable texts. PG declined to offer them. In light of this, were the reasons really "valid", or did Hart turn the argument to his own favor to further his own agenda (and to some extent dis-favoring the best intersts of those actually doing the work from which he will now profit)?

Hart eschewed a flashy web site. Why? Perhaps because he didn't want a real competitor to his own, secret until now, plan?

Hart clearly created a conflict of interest situation, one geared towards his own profit, and kept it secret from those doing volunteer work.

There is no book in which this sort of agenda is considered "good", most won't even consider it "ethical".

Remember the CDDB database fiasco. That's the sort of crap that these hidden agenda's cause.

Re:Michael Hart == idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

I was briefly involved with Project Gutenberg back in '98. I wanted to do etexts of some books on which the copyright had never been renewed (which was a loophole, since they'd still be protected today). Knowing all of this, I did all of the necessary research, including getting a copyright attorney, who happened to be a fan of the author, to draft me a complicated email regarding the history of the stories in question.

Long story short, the stories cleared PG's legal review and got underway. Some time later, someone panicked because they didn't have a copy of the legal clearance. I'd lost the original email in a crash, but figured that it was no big deal since so many other eyes had touched it. Turns out that NO ONE -- including PG's lawyers -- bothered to keep a record of the project. It also turns out that (until at least 1998) Michael Hart doesn't OWN a printer, and is therefore unconcerned about backing up his documentation.

Between that event and this article, I wrote the entire project off. There are a lot of dedicated volunteers spending many hours of their time to bring books to the rest of us, but the project itself is run by an utter idiot. Outside of the name recognition -- which is great -- anyone could do exactly the same thing, and with Charles Franks' Distributed Proofreaders technology, it wouldn't be hard.

Commercial was always in the cards

[Googol]

I spent a day, 11 years ago, discussing with Michael Hart his plans, at a conference I organized and also driving him from Chicago to Urbana-Champaign where he lived at the time. At the time, I was running a similar project aiming at creating freely distributable e-books.

You must remember that PG started before the Free Software movement and Open Source movements changed our ideas of commercial distribution.

Today, we take for granted that work that is under GPL or other open licensing will be distributed freely--not necessarily free as in beer, but free as in freedom.

Many people in the late 80s and early 90s were willing to contribute for free, but a number of variants were common. One of the most common was:

Free beer yes, free as in freedom no. There were any number of dual license schemes with various restrictions for commercial use. Free ASCII beer, but not Public Domain, not free as in freedom.

RMS and Linus created a revolution by *convincing* large numbers of persons that allowing others to "commercially exploit" their work was in fact a net gain for the community, because it increased the mobility (sharing) of software. What seems dogmatic doctrine today was Enlightenment for many in 1992-1993.

Michael Hart came out of the *DOS* tradition, not the *UNIX* tradition. Freeware binaries with enhanced versions for commercial use.

Read the PG headers. They are NOT public domain, but the text is licensed for non-commercial use. More specifically, this was not refined in the early versions of the header, which allow the header to be removed so the work would truely be public domain (if proven in court).

Michael Hart's concern was that putting work in the PD, even might leave HIM *liable* to copyright infringement charges, even if he made a innocent mistake. PG has a copyright vetting process and a license for this reason. Recent and future events may well prove him wise in that regard.

In any event, he is well aware that commercial use brings possible liability to a different level.

I would suggest, in looking at any of the views of Richard Stallman, Michael Hart, Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, or any other leader of the "free/open" movements, as well as innovators like Bill Gates (inventor of the "binary application") that you consider the totality of legal, social, and economic issues they work with.

Perhaps there is no single "right way". The PG way is maximum utility but not necessarily freedom for the non-paying masses, legal protection for the distributors, and a definite non-commodity commercial prospect.

Both the GPL and the PG license make a balance of rights, profits, and efficient distribution. The key is to learn that one must continually revisit the social and philosophical model underpinning any distribution method--Stallman very rightly guides us to the philosophical and social issues here.

Passing off

[knuth]

And not the first time.

The same guy, John Guagliardo, World eBook Library, also runs NetLibrary.NET. There is a netLibrary.COM, owned by OCLC, not Guagliardo, which sells access to online books, including framed HTML versions of Project Gutenberg texts, to libraries.

The search at Project Gutenberg 2 takes you off-site to the same search used by NetLibrary.NET.

Do a search for:
yet again

Compare ***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm***, at World eBook Library
Yet Again, at World eBook Library, and
Yet Again, at Project Gutenberg. Basically World eBook Library strips out the Project Gutenberg license and slaps their own copyright on it.

Are there alternatives for pdfs?

[christor]

Anyone know of a free app that takes pg text files as input and renders them nicely as pdfs? I know many prefer .txt files for readability - but others would prefer well-formatted pdf files. It would be kinda neat to be able to be able to configure the conversion too (fonts, layout, etc.). And, needless to say, batch processing would be great too.

Texts are NOT Public Domain

[Googol]

They texts were Public Domain before they were transcribed and formatted. After that, the ones done since the U.S. signed the Berne convention (if done in the U.S.) have an implicit copyright. Your right to distribute is based on the license they give you.

PG doesn't distribute "Public Domain" texts, but licensed texts. The reason is concern for legal liablity. Read the headers. If you want to do a PD distribution, you have to scrub the texts from all references from PG. Part way through the project, the "drop all references to PG" clause was dropped--at least I can't find it.

So, I'm afraid if you are looking for free ASCII base text released into the public domain (and hence available for commercial and non-commercial use), you haven't found it.

People who are saying PG and PG2 are evil now should look closer--by their standards of good and evil, PG was never good to begin with. One should be careful when judging others!

Mozart...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Dead for a long, long time.
I don't see his CDs going for any cheaper..
Because the performers get paid, and the copyright goes to the guy that reworks partitions for his particular orchestra.

Same here.
All they can enforce is a notice that this book comes from gutenberg.net and can be gotten for free there.

Also, It should be easy to have all Gutenberg 1 files and process them to pdf. The added value would come with better presentation, additional thesaurus, etc, and that you can charge for.

... and it's the wrong one.

[Googol]

(1) you will get sued.

Michael Hart, owner fo the PG trademark, initiated the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case (Hart vs. Reno, it would have been), but fired Boies. Way good call, Michael.

(2) their not your texts.

PG texts are copyrighted (Berne convention) and distributed royalty free under license.

Corrrection: it was Lessig

[Googol]

Still a good call.

Freely Distributable != Public Domain

[Googol]

Read the headers please.

You get a license to distribute the works under very specific terms.

Public Domain is impossible to implement in practice without some legal mechanism, since the Berne convention makes "copyrighted" the default.

You can get "effectively in the Public Domain" if you give a relaxed license for your necessarily copyrighted work. *All* computer files whatsover are copyrighted implicitly (we think) by their creators, if not by upstream "IP rights".

PG -- freely redistributable for non-commercial use -- doesn't even come close.

Their purpose is free-as-in-beer literature for the masses, not free-as-in-freedom for computer files. Hence, a commercial PG2 has no conflict with PG as to purpose.

Plain text to markup converters

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't heard of Markdown before, thanks for the tip. reStructuredText, as used in the python docutils module is my own favourite. It will produce many other markups besides HTML (LaTeX for example).

However, the Gutenberg volunteers would have to have followed some text formatting conventions for either of these to work.

Not Quite (was Re:Good idea turned asinine)

[Anonymous Coward]

I am PG/DP (Distributed Proofreaders) volunteer who has produced or helped produce well over 100 separate etexts for PG in the past 16 months, and proofread nearly 12,000 individual pages, so understand I have a slight bias here.
Your statement that all the files at PG are plain text is incorrect. Most of the texts being sent to PG through DP have well-formatted HTML editions accompanying them; where applicable, 8-bit ASCII, ISO-8859-1, Unicode, and other *ML formats are included. Sub-projects exist within DP to move towards more metadata-oriented markup systems (TEI Lite) so that multiple formats can be produced from a single source file.

...why would this be good?

[RevAaron]

Err... I mean, why would having PG books in Adobe eBook format be a good thing? Adobe eBook files are a hassle, and with no reader for any PDAs, be it a Palm OS, WinCE or Linux device, I can't see any advantage. I prefer txt, html or rtf for my ebooks, formats I can read on any PDA and any computer. And if it has to be something proprietary, at least PDB files for MobiPocket or Palm Reader allow me to read the files on PocketPC, WinCE or Palm OS. For WinCE or Linux though, I have been buying my books in .LIT, which can be converted to HTML. Yes, I actually *buy* the book, but I need some way to read it.

But Adobe eBook... bleh. The only place to read that is on a desktop/laptop OS. And who the hell reads books that way? Not I!

And for those who are out of the know- yes, every modernish PDA platform out now can read PDFs. But Adobe eBook files are *not* just simple PDF files, but something different. But even if the ebooks came in regular Adobe PDF format, it'd still suck- compare using something like Adobe Reader or Picsel Viewer for Palm OS or PocketPC or even worse, qpdf2 for the Zaurus with a nice app *designed* for reading ebooks- Palm Reader, JustReader+ or uBook.

Creates Confusion in the Market Place

[Blinkslowly]

I don't know if the original Project Gutenburg will pursue them legally but it sure seems like PG2 creates confusion in the market place. Confusion in the market place is the standard judges typically use to decide trademark infringement cases.

verbumvanum

[N3wsByt3]

I did not say it was an open source project, I said open source projects like Linux have understood the importance of making sure that what is free (as in free speech) remains free. Just as verbumvanum did. Just as PG does not. I guess it's the equivalent of the discussions between GPL and BSD-licenses. While, viewed on itself, the BSD can be regarded as being more 'free', it has one major drawback: it does not attempt to keep it free. Alas, as history has shown us; if you do not fight for freedom, you eventually lose it. It's the perogative of the ultimate pacifist, as it were: to never take a stance and always 'live and let live'. Which is an admirable philosophy, but only possible because earlier generations have fought for that same freedom (and are still doing now). That's why, ultimately, I think the right way to go is the GPL and OPLA style: the only restriction for the free use, is that it be freely used. (Simplified, but you get the drift). It has basically the same freedom of use, but it aims at keeping it that way. If the price of freedom is keeping freedom alive, it's a price well worth paying. That said, verbumvanum does NOT require *specific* licensing. It is prefered if authors use OPLA, but equal (or more) free licenses are accepted as well. And even when using the OPLA, they are only doing the same (depending on what version they choose to use), as what you say PG asks: providing online distributionrights as long as it's for non-commercial purposes. I think you might have misread the licence if you think it gives the authors LESS rights then anything that PG asks, on the contrary. They can choose themselves how restrictive or free they want to be, with the provision that it's not more then the most restrictive of the OPLA variants; which basically garantuees free online distribution. Apart from that, they keep the right of always being able to give another license to a third party, under different conditions; the OPLA rights remain for THAT particular licensed work from verbumvanum, however.

I suggest changing the name to...

[hobbestcat]

Project Badenoff...

"and theen we will get the money from the peoples..."

Other PG-like domain names

[knuth]

Anonymous coward asks,

www.projectgutenberg.org ( WTF? )

Disgruntled ex-volunteer.

What the hell?

[pclminion]

Jeez, if they need money, they could just ask for frickin' donations... I'd give PG $50 in a heartbeat. It's been invaluable to me for years.

And using some Adobe format? Why? Even PDF isn't a good option, since it's controlled by Adobe. Open or not, it's a corporate format.

I still don't understand why people do not distribute documents in DVI format. This is the standard output format for TeX and LaTeX, and the 'xdvi' reader is already installed on your system with 99.99% likelihood. Converting to Postscript, if you really want to, is as simple as running 'dvips'.

Some Text lifted from Boston Public Library

[bsdparasite]

The "World Library" seems to have stolen some of the images and text from Boston Public Library

Check out www.bpl.org (Text below the select box) and World Library

so is he a

[sulli]

clueless Newby?

HTML - use GUT

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice the complaint about the text not being available in HTML. I have used GUT (http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/gut/) to translate the text and it works fine.

Thank you

[Gleef]

I was unaware at the time of writing that they were using the Trademark with permission . Generally, if you are using someone else's trademark with permission, among other things you identify whose trademark it is as part of the message, something like "Project Gutenberg is a trademark of Michael Hart".

Since I saw no such notice on the Project Gutenberg 2 Website, I assumed they were in violation of the trademark.

Assuming they are legitimately using the trademark, this is a really disappointing usage. They give no credit to the work of the volunteers of Project Gutenberg, and they make their site sound like they are the new, improved replacement for the project. This is confusing to many people, and seriously dilutes the trademark, two things that licensing is supposed to minimize. *sigh*

Why not use the open DAISY e-text format?

[blrichwine]

For years in the blind & dyslexic community they've been developing an open e-text+audio format.

You can check it out at their Web site:
http://www.daisy.org/about_us/default.asp

It should be trivial to use existing Text-To-Speech API's to make an open source reader/player for these.

From their site:
In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard. A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:

• One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
• A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
• A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
• A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.

Stop whining.

[BoneFlower]

From Project Gutenbergs FAQ:

"Most Project Gutenberg e-texts are public domain. You can do anything you like with these--you can re-post them on your site, print them, distribute them, convert them to other formats."

So just stop.

IMPORTANT: the ASCII documents *are* unrestricted

[Anonymous Coward]

The PG ASCII texts themselves are completely free as in beer and as in speech and are under in the Public Domain just as the original text in printed form.

So long as you live in the United States or another country in which the original copyrights are not enforceable for the work in question, you can do anything you want with the PG ASCII texts. You can modify them, convert them to XML, distribute modified copies, sell modified copies, anything.

The only thing that you can't do, is to do any of the above except in accord with the PG license, unless you remove the license and all references to PG.

And you can do just this - you can remove the license and all references to PG.

Neither the transcribing/formatting work of PG volunteers, nor anything else causes the PG ASCII texts to be copyrighted by PG.

It's just the plain text, ripped right from the book for all effective purposes.

Not all PD.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that is untrue and addressed in their FAQ. Not everything from PG is in the PD. Their website, for one, ain't.

Nitpicking aside, we mean the work on which the copyright has expired. Some volunteers prefer to put their (hard) work under a permissive license which grants redistribution only for non-commercial usage. Some prefer PD. Some do, others don't. I don't have numbers but claiming 100% of the volunteers' work is under the PD is simply false.

oh no!

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

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