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Books Index update from #997 to #1,036.

This is the Project Gutenberg Newsletter for September 4th, 1997.

"Never, in the field of literature, have so many owed so much to so few."

First things first. . . .

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To all those who have volunteers help to Project Gutenberg, over more than a quarter of a century and especially to the anonymous volunteers [at least anonymous for now], and to those who worked VERY hard with me over the past few days [not to mention months] to get us from Etext #900 to Etext #1,000 on schedule.

You can be a Project Gutenberg volunteer, email hart@pobox.com.

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You might be interested in taking a look at next week's issue of Time magazine in the Time Digital Section in Point/Counterpoint. You can see me in my cap and gown holding a stack of 1,000 CDROM disks that will be able to hold 10,000,000 Etexts in the new DVD format. With compression I am told it could be 20,000,000 Etext files, which would be more books than any library contains. The University of Illinois library, in which this picture was taken, contains only 10,000,000 items in all its branches and is one of the largest half dozen libraries in the United States.

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Yes, in rereading this I realize I write in sentences that would be considered too long by today's standards; please bear with me as much as possible on this occasion which is quite possibly the pinnacle of my career [unless we get massive new support we will not be able to double our production per year ever again].

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From our humble beginnings with a single copy of the Declaration of Independence of the United States now exactly 315 months ago, the goal of Project Gutenberg has always been to demonstrate how computers should create a Neo-Industrial Revolution/Renaissance, through the efforts of a moderate number of people multiplied in a nearly infinite manner by the power of computers to copy books with incredible ease, once they are entered into digital formats readable by common persons with common computers and programs.

Since that day on July 4th, 1971, when there were ~100 people on the entire Internet, which had just started reaching out from an infancy of a handful of U.S. West Coast mainframes, each with an approximate power of modern calculators selling well under $100, the invention of the personal computer for the common persons by Woz and Jobs [Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who eventually would become known as Apple Computers Inc.] has changed the face of an electronic generation for the rest of history.

On that very July 4th, 1971, we had to predict the onset of what would come to be known as the "personal computer" and little did we know that the Apple II would hit the market before the end of the 1970's and we have been thankful to Woz and Jobs, Bill Gates and Gary Kildall & all the other pioneers of personal computers. The personal computer was a indispensable requirement for us who wanted to bring a collection of great books to millions/billions of people around the world.

At that time United States copyright was 28 years, with possibly 28 more years, if certain legal conditions were met. Most works were never renewed, so by 1978 we would have been able to print, so to speak, most works published before 1950.

However, this was also the heyday of the xerox machine, and they were not going to sit idly by while a new generation of machines allowed easy copying of nearly anything in two dimensions. BUT, instead of trying to enforce the copyright laws, they broke them by extending all copyrights to 75 years, and eliminating renewal requirements, much as what had happened in the early 1900's when the new steam and electric printing presses had made printing so inexpensive that Sears could afford to send catalogs to millions of people for whom this would be the first book they ever owned.

Thus, to drive these new, more efficient publishers out of THEIR business, the old line publishing lobby talked the U.S. Congress into to voiding the copyright laws that had stood since founding the United States, and doubling copyrights from 14 years, with a possible 14 year renewal, to 28 years, with 28 year renewals.

*THOSE WHO ARE NOT AWARE OF HISTORY ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT!*

Every single time a new publishing technique has promised to get the common people a home library, laws have been passed to stop, dead in its tracks, this kind of "Information Age."

From the first copyright laws, which were designed to eliminate, most successfully I might add, the presses which were originally started by Johannes Gutenberg in 1455, to the next generation of copyright laws designed to eliminate, again most successfully, a rash of "home libraries," published less expensively than modern [early 20th century] publishers wanted to compete with, to xerox revolutions and revolutionaries, which were legally stifled by a new copyright law in 1976, to the most current copyright bill in the U.S. Congress, which threatens to remove yet another million books from the public domain because modern day publishers would be unable to compete with electronic publishing t>oday.

*AT THE START OF THIS CENTURY COPYRIGHTS WERE 14 YEARS, NOW THEY *ARE THREATENING TO SURPASS 100 YEARS, A PERIOD LONGER THAN WILL *BE LEGAL FOR ANY CONTRACT TO BE SIGNED FOR [this is why Panama, *Hong Kong, etc., were leased for just under 100 years].

Information Age???

For Whom???

We hope it will be for you. . .

Here are the latest 40 Project Gutenberg Etexts
.

Gutenberg in Portugal and Brasil

Project Gutenberg now has the following mirror site in Portugal, and a site in Brasil is under construction. We would VERY much like to open more sites south of the equator. If you know some places we could ask, please let us know.

gutenberg.esoterica.pt
ftp.esoterica.pt/dir?mirrors/gutenberg
ftp.esoterica.pt/gutenberg
ftp.esoterica.pt/pub/mirrors/gutenberg gutenberg.esoterica.pt/pub/mirrors/gutenberg ftp.esoterica.pt/pub/mirrors/gutenberg

A note of interest for potential Project Gutenberg volunteers:

XEROX INTRODUCES SCANNER-PRINTER-COPIER FOR HOME USE Xerox is introducing a $499 machine that combines scanning, printing, and copying capabilities with easy-to-use software. Industry analysts don't expect rival manufacturer Hewlett-Packard to incorporate color scanners into its products before next Spring. (New York Times 18 Aug 97)

And our newest sites: ftp://ftp.ihug.co.nz/pub/mirror/gutenberg Adam Moore <sickboy@ihug.co.nz> and Sydney, AU

Our Newest Site Is In Taiwan ftp transend.com.tw/mirrors/gutenberg/etext or, with your browser, the URL is: ftp://ftp.transend.com.tw/mirrors/gutenberg/etext

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Larry Owens, who is handling DNS for the Sailor Network, has pointed out to me that all DNS-related problems and requests should be addressed to: dns-admin@sailor.lib.md.us. This includes DNS items for gutenberg.org . If you do a 'whois' on gutenberg.org, you'll see that this is the address for the technical

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www.ul.cs.cmu.edu These will also be available via FTP.

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You can get the Project Gutenberg books via FTP and the Web:

Our newest site: ftp://ftp.ihug.co.nz/pub/mirror/gutenberg
Adam Moore <sickboy@ihug.co.nz> and Sydney, AU

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uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
[This site is in Urbana, Illinois, and is quite fast]
ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu or ftp 128.174.5.14
login: anonymous
password: yourname@your.machine
cd pub
cd etext
cd gutenberg
cd etext96 [or 95, 94, 93, 92, 91 or 90. 70's and 80's are in /etext90]
get filename (be sure to set bin, if you get the .zip files)
get more files
quit
get INDEX?00.GUT ? = 1,2,4,8.
get GUTINDEX.96 to see all Project Gutengberg Etexts to date. get GUTINDEX.?97 to see current releases. New files in etext97, of course.

ftp.prairienet.org
[This is usually the first site they appear in, but is slow]
[This site is in Champaign, Illinois]
ftp ftp.prairienet.org or ftp 192.17.3.4
username: anonymous
password: yourlogin@your.machine.domain
[this is your email address where you are]
cd pub/providers/gutenberg/etext96 [etc, as above]
ls or dir for a listing of files
get filename.txt (ascii files)
get filename.zip (binary zipped files)

be sure to type "binary" before retrieving the .zip files!

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For those on the East Coast of the United States we have sailor.gutenberg.org or 198.76.201.198 in Baltimore, MD. This site should provide very fast service for both WWW and FTP service.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ has a page pointing to mirror sites.
http://sailor.gutenberg.org/ is Sailor's web page for its gutenberg site.
ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/ gets you to the Sailor/gutenberg ftp server which can also be reached from the web site above.

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In Europe, please try our newest site at:
Bucharest High School of Computer Science
Serving Central and Eastern Europe
ftp://ftp.lbi.ro/pub/Books/Gutenberg

And a new at:

http://www.informika.ru/windows/books/gutenb/list.html
official server of the Ministry of Education of Russia
(the Russian part of the server not equivalent to the English one).
This is only available on the Russian language side of their system, but is pretty easy to see. Click on the WINDOWS icon at the bottom of the main menu.
Then, on the lower left selection [the web names will pop up in English] which is /books. The first one of that list, The Palms Russian Public Library, is Project Gutenberg Etexts in .zip format as mirrored from uiarchive.

and our newest site in Europe:

ftp://ftp.pinknet.cz/pub/etext/gutenberg/ in the Czech Republic.

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http://www.mirrors.org.sg/pg in Singapore

The Gutenberg archive can also be accessed from Singapore at http://www.sol.com.sg/pg

These two addresses reflect the same database in Singapore. and others are starting soon in Japan and Taiwan.

***

Project Gutenberg Web Sites can now be reached at:

Promo.net
[This site is in Nevada] http://promo.net/pg/
[This is the definitive site for now]

http://www.prairienet.org/pg

and from Silicon Valley at:

ftp://cdrom.com/pub/gutenberg/
and
ftp://archive.org/pub/gutenberg/etext/etext96/ and etext95/94/93/92/91 and etext90, of course.

and from Dallas, Texas at:

ftp://viemeister.com/pub/gutenberg/

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gopher://spinaltap.micro.umn.edu:70/11/Gutenberg

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Michael Stern Hart Executive Director Project Gutenberg

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