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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."
This won't be any problem at all since the Project Gutenberg folks remembered to register their trademark.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
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.
Underholdning.info
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. "
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.
May we never see th
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.
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.
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.
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...
Karma: Contrapositive
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.
Oh no... it's the future.
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.
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...
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
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????
http://www.automatiq.se
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...)
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
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
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
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.
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.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
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.
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