"28 years + could be renewed for 47 years, now extended by 20 years for a total renewal of 67 years. If not so renewed, now in public domain"
I'm afraid this means that the *extension* lasts for 67 years, for a total copyright term of 67+28=95 years. Gone With The Wind will not become public domain in the US until 2031.
Even without the Disney Copyright Term Extension Act, it would have been copy restricted until 2011.
Note that PG and PGA, while related, are distinct entities. When PGEU and PGCanada get going (both are in the planning stages), then we'll have a group of projects, all with the same aim, but tailored to their particular geographical areas. PGEU, in particular, will concentrate on the large amount of *non-English* public domain material out there -- you can help proofread some of it by joining the European version of the US-based Distributed Proofreaders.
It's a nonsense to say that the only things PG should publish should be public domain in *all* countries -- indeed, the major difference between copyright laws in the US and those in the *entire rest of the world* is the main reason to want to branch out and create regional 'editions' of PG. Due to corporate interests, no new material will enter the public domain in the US for at least the next 14 years -- in the rest of the world, new material is added to the public domain on January 1st each year. By 2018, when material published in 1923 becomes public domain in the US, every work published by authors who died before 1948 (for the EU), 1958 (for India), or even 1968 (for Canada) will be public domain in those areas.
The US is currently trying to push life+50 countries to become life+70. When it succeeds in this, it will start pushing for life+70 countries to become life+90. The trend for ever-increasing copyright terms has to be resisted. One of the key ways to do this is to build people's understanding of the need for, and benefits of, the public domain. PG is a key part of this.
It doesn't matter who currently owns the copyright to a work -- if it's not an anonymous or corporate publication, copyright in the UK lasts for 70 years after the death of the author (or last author, if there's more than one). So Barrie's works remain copy restricted in the UK for a little over three more years.
Get rid of the RealAudio option, though, and we'd only be left with Microsoft's formats, which I can't legally play in Linux at all. At least with Helix and RealPlayer 10 I can finally listen to Radio 5 without things randomly crashing all over the place...
(this story is off the front page now, so I doubt you will be looking for an answer, but I'll answer you anyway:) )
I have to question why humans are doing the bulk of the editing for project gutenberg.
There are several reasons. Firstly, there are lots of people around who can spare five minutes to proofread a page -- particularly when it has already been OCRed. Secondly, we are a completely volunteer organisation, with no 'plan' as to the books we scan, and so having to find and scan two seperate copies of a text would reduce the amount of material on the site considerably. In particular, it would almost certainly stop us from proofing some of the older and/or harder material.
I can only suggest that you join DP, and test the process out. I think you'll find that it works surprisingly well.
Yes, the long term plan is to make the page images we use in proofreading available for end users. There are several logistical problems with this (mainly to do with bandwidth and disk space), but all the images are archived for the time when we can make them available.
It's possible that we might interface with something like the Million Book Project, which makes page images, but no text, available.
Yes, Australia is currently 'Life+50', which means that a work becomes copyright free 50 years after the death of the author (sadly, this will be changing to 'Life+70' soon). I live in the EU, which is 'Life+70'. There's a significant amount of material which is copyright free in the EU and Australia, but still copy restricted in the USA -- basically, anything published after 1922 by an author who died before 1934. We recently started a 'DPEU' to focus on these works. At the moment the focus is on Eastern European languages, but there's a wide variety of content (including some English material).
Does DP take on new versions of existing PG books?
Yes, we do -- although as I mention in an earlier post, we have a year's worth of material as it is, without going back and re-doing the older material already in PG. However, as you say, some of PGs content is below the standards we expect of newly produced text. Hopefully we can go back and correct *all* PGs content over time. The main factor stopping us is that we need page scans of any project before it can go through DP. If you know of any page images of a clearable edition of Ulysses, or indeed if you have a clearable edition which you are willing to scan, then we would gladly put it through the site.
If they were published before 1923, then they're public domain, and we'd love to have them in PG! All you need is a scanner, and some spare time:).
Until the middle of last year, we focused almost exclusively on books. Since then, we've been putting some very interesting periodicals through the site (Punch, The Strand Magazine, Scientific American, Notes & Queries, to name but a few). Magazine aimed specifically at boys (or, indeed, girls), would be a great addition to the pile!
I'll let you in on a secret -- this isn't really our 5000th book! Some larger works are split into multiple projects, so while this is our 5000th *project*, it's around 10% off being our 5000th *book*. The text we chose for *this* 5000 was supposed to be appropriate for an internal celebration, rather than one which would be announced to the world -- it's a great example of the sort of text which would be very unlikely to get into PG if DP didn't exist, and it gives us useful biographical information to use in the 'blurb' for future projects. It's hard to stop people from submitting stories to Slashdot, though:).
DP is 'semi attached' to PG -- I think you'll find that we are much more concerned both with keeping page and edition information, and with marking such information up in an appropriate way, than some of the traditionalists inside PG are.
For example, many of use make sure that we produce a valid XHTML edition of each project, and that the page numbers and edition information of the source are preserved. For an example text, see Graham Wallas -- Human Nature In Politics. We are currently working on a markup and stylesheet which will improve the end-user experience in several ways (and then, sigh, we will have to go back and move all the books we've already done to this new system. This may take a while:) ).
The next book won't yield a news item, but is no less important. You are very welcome to join us, and help us proof all the books which will also provoke no news items until text 10,000 comes along -- which you can also complain about:).
because playboy hasnt lapsed into the public domain yet...
Very true, although several of us do keep talking about searching for some Victorian Porn to put through the site:). There's actually quite a lot of public domain 'erotica' (anything written and published before 1923, for example) -- we just need people to scan it and contribute it to the site! We've had a couple of 'racy' books, and not surprisingly they tend to be proofed very quickly.
Luckily, you do not need either grammar or spelling skills -- just the ability to match text against a source image. Indeed, it may even be an *advantage* to not be a great linguist! One of the key things we emphasise is that we want an exact copy of the source material -- we do not want people 'correcting' or 'updating' the originals to bring them into line with the way the language is written today.
It's an interesting idea, but at the moment we're concentrating on providing proofreading services for Project Gutenberg. Every book which goes through the site has been scanned by one of our unpaid volunteers (except for those which have been, to use a slightly emotive term, 'raided' from sites that provide page images) -- and we already have enough books in our queue to keep us going for a year, even if we all stopped scanning immediately!
Also, we are very comfortable with being a provider of *public domain* material, and I think many members wouldn't feel comfortable moving into the copy-restricted domain.
There are many sites which have taken some of the more popular works from Project Gutenberg, and put a more user-friendly directory style front end to them. One of the best is Blackmask.com, which also contains works from non-Gutenberg free book providers. There are 312 works in the 'Science Fiction' section alone.
However, I am curious as to just how accurate the proofreading is.
The answer is: surprisingly accurate. We proof one page at a time, working from the original scanned images, and emphasise that people should try as hard as they can to stick to the source material. As counter-intuitive as it may appear, this type of proofreading is actually hardest to do with material from the late 18th/19th century -- subtle changes in spelling (and small changes in accent systems for the non-English languages) make errors much harder for human proofreaders to correct than the earlier material, where spelling consistency was completely optional!
Each page is OCRed (and the ability of modern OCR programs is a major improvement over those of even a couple of years ago), proofread twice, and then the whole document is reviewed twice before being posted. We've also recently become much more aware of the need to make useful texts which can be used for scholarly purposes in the future, leading to such improvements as retention of all page numbers.
I've been waiting for a decent non-beta version of Helix/RealPlayer for Linux for a while now -- and now I can finally listen to all the output the BBC provide while working.
Those of you who haven't browsed through the material that the BBC offer really should check it out. One of the best areas is the "Listen Again" section of BBC 7, which repeats some of the best comedy and drama in their radio archives.
No, this isn't a paid advert for the BBC -- I'm just a very happy licence fee payer:).
The Encyclopedia at that link is nothing but the content from Wikipedia with added adverts (as they note in a tiny font at the bottom). In future, go to the source.
well, to those with computers & internet connection...
One of the projects run by the Internet Archive is the Bookmobile, which creates, prints, and gives away (for a nominal production fee) books created from public domain sources. One of their most popular products is an illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland.
who can read English...
Yes, PG's content is primarily English at the moment, but this is only because most of the volunteers up until now have been English. If you are confident in a language other than English, you can help us get more books in this language -- either by scanning them, or by proofing the books which other people have scanned by joining the Distributed Proofreading Project (or the new EU sister-project DP Europe). At the moment the main site has projects available for proofing in German, Latin, French, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Hebrew, Danish, Italian, ancient Greek, and Gaelic. The EU site has, in addition, books available in Serbian, Slovenian, Romanian, Welsh, Hawaiian, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukranian, modern Greek, and Bulgarian.
if the copyright has expired...
Yes, the vast majority of books in PG are copyright expired. This isn't a big problem, though, as we've only scratched the surface of the number of copyright expired books. Even at the current rate of growth, there's enough to keep us going until the US copyright regime starts letting new books into the public domain in 15 years or so.
Does this apply to Win2K as well as WinXP? I sadly need to keep Win2K around for some work-related stuff, so I can't risk randomly nuking it by installing Fedora:).
Slashdot Mirror
From your link:
"28 years + could be renewed for 47 years, now extended by 20 years for a total renewal of 67 years. If not so renewed, now in public domain"
I'm afraid this means that the *extension* lasts for 67 years, for a total copyright term of 67+28=95 years. Gone With The Wind will not become public domain in the US until 2031.
Even without the Disney Copyright Term Extension Act, it would have been copy restricted until 2011.
Note that PG and PGA, while related, are distinct entities. When PGEU and PGCanada get going (both are in the planning stages), then we'll have a group of projects, all with the same aim, but tailored to their particular geographical areas. PGEU, in particular, will concentrate on the large amount of *non-English* public domain material out there -- you can help proofread some of it by joining the European version of the US-based Distributed Proofreaders.
It's a nonsense to say that the only things PG should publish should be public domain in *all* countries -- indeed, the major difference between copyright laws in the US and those in the *entire rest of the world* is the main reason to want to branch out and create regional 'editions' of PG. Due to corporate interests, no new material will enter the public domain in the US for at least the next 14 years -- in the rest of the world, new material is added to the public domain on January 1st each year. By 2018, when material published in 1923 becomes public domain in the US, every work published by authors who died before 1948 (for the EU), 1958 (for India), or even 1968 (for Canada) will be public domain in those areas.
The US is currently trying to push life+50 countries to become life+70. When it succeeds in this, it will start pushing for life+70 countries to become life+90. The trend for ever-increasing copyright terms has to be resisted. One of the key ways to do this is to build people's understanding of the need for, and benefits of, the public domain. PG is a key part of this.
It doesn't matter who currently owns the copyright to a work -- if it's not an anonymous or corporate publication, copyright in the UK lasts for 70 years after the death of the author (or last author, if there's more than one). So Barrie's works remain copy restricted in the UK for a little over three more years.
XviD *is* MPEG-4.
More specifically it's a codec which implements certain parts (up to and including the AS 'Advanced Simple' profile) of the ISO MPEG-4 specification.
Not bad for 'funk' and 'cult'... or perhaps you meant some other words?
Get rid of the RealAudio option, though, and we'd only be left with Microsoft's formats, which I can't legally play in Linux at all. At least with Helix and RealPlayer 10 I can finally listen to Radio 5 without things randomly crashing all over the place...
There are several reasons. Firstly, there are lots of people around who can spare five minutes to proofread a page -- particularly when it has already been OCRed. Secondly, we are a completely volunteer organisation, with no 'plan' as to the books we scan, and so having to find and scan two seperate copies of a text would reduce the amount of material on the site considerably. In particular, it would almost certainly stop us from proofing some of the older and/or harder material.
I can only suggest that you join DP, and test the process out. I think you'll find that it works surprisingly well.
Well, for a start, it means that we can get 'This Land' into PG, where it will be freely available for everyone.
Yes, the long term plan is to make the page images we use in proofreading available for end users. There are several logistical problems with this (mainly to do with bandwidth and disk space), but all the images are archived for the time when we can make them available.
It's possible that we might interface with something like the Million Book Project, which makes page images, but no text, available.
Yes, Australia is currently 'Life+50', which means that a work becomes copyright free 50 years after the death of the author (sadly, this will be changing to 'Life+70' soon). I live in the EU, which is 'Life+70'. There's a significant amount of material which is copyright free in the EU and Australia, but still copy restricted in the USA -- basically, anything published after 1922 by an author who died before 1934. We recently started a 'DPEU' to focus on these works. At the moment the focus is on Eastern European languages, but there's a wide variety of content (including some English material).
Yes, we do -- although as I mention in an earlier post, we have a year's worth of material as it is, without going back and re-doing the older material already in PG. However, as you say, some of PGs content is below the standards we expect of newly produced text. Hopefully we can go back and correct *all* PGs content over time. The main factor stopping us is that we need page scans of any project before it can go through DP. If you know of any page images of a clearable edition of Ulysses, or indeed if you have a clearable edition which you are willing to scan, then we would gladly put it through the site.
If they were published before 1923, then they're public domain, and we'd love to have them in PG! All you need is a scanner, and some spare time :).
Until the middle of last year, we focused almost exclusively on books. Since then, we've been putting some very interesting periodicals through the site (Punch, The Strand Magazine, Scientific American, Notes & Queries, to name but a few). Magazine aimed specifically at boys (or, indeed, girls), would be a great addition to the pile!
I'll let you in on a secret -- this isn't really our 5000th book! Some larger works are split into multiple projects, so while this is our 5000th *project*, it's around 10% off being our 5000th *book*. The text we chose for *this* 5000 was supposed to be appropriate for an internal celebration, rather than one which would be announced to the world -- it's a great example of the sort of text which would be very unlikely to get into PG if DP didn't exist, and it gives us useful biographical information to use in the 'blurb' for future projects. It's hard to stop people from submitting stories to Slashdot, though :).
DP is 'semi attached' to PG -- I think you'll find that we are much more concerned both with keeping page and edition information, and with marking such information up in an appropriate way, than some of the traditionalists inside PG are.
:) ).
For example, many of use make sure that we produce a valid XHTML edition of each project, and that the page numbers and edition information of the source are preserved. For an example text, see Graham Wallas -- Human Nature In Politics. We are currently working on a markup and stylesheet which will improve the end-user experience in several ways (and then, sigh, we will have to go back and move all the books we've already done to this new system. This may take a while
The next book won't yield a news item, but is no less important. You are very welcome to join us, and help us proof all the books which will also provoke no news items until text 10,000 comes along -- which you can also complain about :).
Very true, although several of us do keep talking about searching for some Victorian Porn to put through the site
Luckily, you do not need either grammar or spelling skills -- just the ability to match text against a source image. Indeed, it may even be an *advantage* to not be a great linguist! One of the key things we emphasise is that we want an exact copy of the source material -- we do not want people 'correcting' or 'updating' the originals to bring them into line with the way the language is written today.
Also, we are very comfortable with being a provider of *public domain* material, and I think many members wouldn't feel comfortable moving into the copy-restricted domain.
There are many sites which have taken some of the more popular works from Project Gutenberg, and put a more user-friendly directory style front end to them. One of the best is Blackmask.com, which also contains works from non-Gutenberg free book providers. There are 312 works in the 'Science Fiction' section alone.
The answer is: surprisingly accurate. We proof one page at a time, working from the original scanned images, and emphasise that people should try as hard as they can to stick to the source material. As counter-intuitive as it may appear, this type of proofreading is actually hardest to do with material from the late 18th/19th century -- subtle changes in spelling (and small changes in accent systems for the non-English languages) make errors much harder for human proofreaders to correct than the earlier material, where spelling consistency was completely optional!
Each page is OCRed (and the ability of modern OCR programs is a major improvement over those of even a couple of years ago), proofread twice, and then the whole document is reviewed twice before being posted. We've also recently become much more aware of the need to make useful texts which can be used for scholarly purposes in the future, leading to such improvements as retention of all page numbers.
Those of you who haven't browsed through the material that the BBC offer really should check it out. One of the best areas is the "Listen Again" section of BBC 7, which repeats some of the best comedy and drama in their radio archives.
No, this isn't a paid advert for the BBC -- I'm just a very happy licence fee payer :).
The Encyclopedia at that link is nothing but the content from Wikipedia with added adverts (as they note in a tiny font at the bottom). In future, go to the source.
well, to those with computers & internet connection...
One of the projects run by the Internet Archive is the Bookmobile, which creates, prints, and gives away (for a nominal production fee) books created from public domain sources. One of their most popular products is an illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland.
who can read English...
Yes, PG's content is primarily English at the moment, but this is only because most of the volunteers up until now have been English. If you are confident in a language other than English, you can help us get more books in this language -- either by scanning them, or by proofing the books which other people have scanned by joining the Distributed Proofreading Project (or the new EU sister-project DP Europe). At the moment the main site has projects available for proofing in German, Latin, French, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Hebrew, Danish, Italian, ancient Greek, and Gaelic. The EU site has, in addition, books available in Serbian, Slovenian, Romanian, Welsh, Hawaiian, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukranian, modern Greek, and Bulgarian.
if the copyright has expired...
Yes, the vast majority of books in PG are copyright expired. This isn't a big problem, though, as we've only scratched the surface of the number of copyright expired books. Even at the current rate of growth, there's enough to keep us going until the US copyright regime starts letting new books into the public domain in 15 years or so.
Does this apply to Win2K as well as WinXP? I sadly need to keep Win2K around for some work-related stuff, so I can't risk randomly nuking it by installing Fedora :).
preaching to the quire
quire: A collection of leaves of parchment or paper, folded one within the other, in a manuscript or book.
Why would I want to preach to paper?