[gweekly] PT1 Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Jun 8 09:22:40 PDT 2005
Weekly_June_08.txt
**The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, June 8, 2005 PT1**
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******
Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart at pobox.com or gbnewby at pglaf.org
Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart at pobox.com
*
HOT REQUESTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
PROJECT GUTENBERG OF EUROPE TAKES OFF!!!
"EUROPE'S FLAMING JUNE 2005"
"PROJECT GUTENBERG EUROPE" STARTS REGULAR ACTIVITY
After a year of preparation "Project Gutenberg Europe", organized by
"Project Rastko Network" and its "Distributed Proofreaders Europe",
starts regular activity this month, now having now its own server
provided by leading South Eastern European provider "EUnet".
First 20 PD e-texts are already posted, as below, and some 80 could
follow by the end of the June. In coming days, special greetings,
essays and translation will be posted on title page of PGE,
as well as definitive tuning of the technical system will be over.
PGE and its branches operate under European copyright legislation
(life+50 and life+70).
It already has volunteers all over the continent: European Community,
Comonwealth of Independent States [ex-USSR] and other countries.
"Distributed Proofreaders Europe"--as central European PD digitizing system,
and only Unicode is capable of that kind in the world at the moment--releases
a multilingual "European Proofing Package" of books this month, as special
choices of general interest for whole continent.
Also, regional and national campaigns in European countries are scheduled
between May 31 and June 30, including first wave of physical events--
conferences and promotions--in Eastern Europe (Macedonia, Serbia,
Romania, Ukraine, Poland)
The international community gives enormous support to PGE, led by original
PG [U.S] and DP [U.S], as well as local open source, PD and Wikipedia
communities. PGE also has strong support by academic and professional
circles in many European countries.
EUROEPAN LINKS:
http://pge.rastko.net [Project Gutenberg Europe]
http://dp.rastko.net [Distributed Proofreaders Europe]
http://www.rastko.org.yu
[Belgrade branch of "Project Rastko Network", main organizer of PGE]
http://www.eunet.yu [EUnet, Internet provider]
Stay tuned!
Zoran
Sample listings: [please forgive chars not supported in this format]
Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic (1787-1864) - Srpske narodne pjesme [Serbian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0001
Petar Petrovic Njegos (1813-1851) - Luca Mikrokozma [Serbian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0002
Nikola Tesla (1876-1943) - My Inventions [English]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0003
Arvid Jdrnefelt (1861-1932) - Minun Marttani [Finnish]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0004
Uuno Kailas (1901-1933) - Purjehtijat [Finnish]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0005
Uuno Kailas (1901-1933) - Uni ja kuolema [Finnish]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0006
Stella Benson (1892-1933) - The Little World [English]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0007
Stella Benson (1892-1933) - The Man Who Missed The 'Bus [English]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0008
Stella Benson (1892-1933) - Worlds Within Worlds [English]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/0/u0009
Claude Hopkins (1866-1932) - Scientific Advertising [English]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0010
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) Ruslan i Lyudmila [Russian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0011
Mihail Bulgakov (1891-1940) - Master i Margarita [Russian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0012
Odoevskiy Vladimir Fedorovich (1804?-1869) - Russkie nochi [Russian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0013
Mihail Yur'evich Lermontov (1814-1841) - Geroy nashego vremeni [Russian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0014
Aleko Konstaninov - Do Chikago i nazad [Bulgarian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0016/
Anton Strshimirov - Horo [Bulgarian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0017/
Mihaylo Kotsyubinskiy - Tini zabutih predkiv [Ukrainian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0018/
Ivan Kotlyarevskiy (tr.) - Eneyida [Ukrainian]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/1/u0019/
Plato, K. Jaakkola (tr.) - Platon Krito [Finnish]
http://pge.rastko.net/dirs/u/0/0/2/u0020/
*
Those of you with access to Charlie Rose can see/hear new commentaries
on this subject as per last Friday's show with Eric Schmidt of Google.
LOTS about cell access to the Internet.
Cellphone as PDA Redux:
Following up on several discussions concerning cell phones used as PDAs,
eBook readers, etc., it now appears that the major players realized this
is the new wave, as more and more of the major players, including Google,
have made their services available in cell phone formats.
Not to mention that he was very big on promoting automatic translation,
for those of you who interested in making eBooks in 100 languages.
*
In related news, something I have feared was going to happen:
The Digital Divide, Version 2.0 !!!
The New York Times has announced that there will be a $50 per year fee
to access their various editorials, articles, and services that have a
user base that was built up through free access.
*
Wanted: People who are involved in conversations on Slashdot, Salon, etc.
*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.]
*eBook Milestones
*Introduction
*Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements
*Continuing Requests and Announcements
*Progress Report
*Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
*Permanent Requests For Assistance:
*Donation Information
*Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections
*Mirror Site Information
*Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks
*Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet?
*Flashback
*Weekly eBook update:
This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter
Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter
Corrections in separate section
5 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
58 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
20 New From PG Europe, as below
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Poem of the Week
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones
16,425 eBooks As Of Today!!!
13,301 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
We Have Produced 1469 eBooks in 2005
We Are ~64% of the Way from 10,000 to 20,000
We are ~27% of the Way from 15,000 to 20,000
3,637 to go to 20,000!!!
We have now averaged ~482 eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971
We Averaged About 339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Are Averaging About 280 books Per Month This Year
We Are Averaging About 67 eBooks Per Week This Year
62 This Week
It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks
It took ~32 months, from 2002 to 2005 for our last 10,000 eBooks
It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100
It took ~1.25 years from Oct. 2003 to Jan. 2005 from 10,000 to 15,000
*
***Introduction
[The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly
go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments,
News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing.]
[Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a
few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us:
hart at pobox.com and gbnewby at pglaf.org if you would like to volunteer.]
This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
***
***Continuing Requests New Sites and Announcements
*
Darwin!!!
Would anyone like to work on reproofing our Darwin collection
and creating a compilation file as requested by our readers.
We could also use some help making some new editions of "The
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and "Frankenstein."
*
Project Gutenberg of Canada needs your help!
Please email:
pgcanada at lists.pglaf.org
To subscribe to the pgcanada list, please visit:
http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/pgcanada
*
v0.2 version of PodReader is out, and it interfaces to PG. This allows
users to browse the catalog on their Desktop, pick a book, and have it
downloaded to their iPod in the correct format...this is a good plus for
PG users since it makes it a lot easier to get to PG documents.
http://homepage.mac.com/ptwobrussell/podreader.html
*
We have been invited to peruse the various eBook collections
of the Internet Archive for potential Project Gutenberg eBooks.
http://www.archive.org
Don't worry, many of the numbers listed are out of date,
but you should get all the files when you pass through
to the original sites.
Click on "texts" to get started, feel free to pick up any
of the eBooks you would like to work on.
Many Thanks To Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive!
*
REQUEST FOR RUSSIAN TRANSLATOR
We are trying to start up a Project Gutenberg Russian Team,
and we need someone to translate simple email messages from
members of Project Gutenberg who want to provide a service
to the Russian Team, but who do not know Russian. . .these
people will be helping with scanning, finding books, etc.
The messages will be in MS Word's .doc format in Cyrillic,
we need them translated into English, also in a .doc file.
Thanks!!! Contact Jared Buck <JBuck814366460 at aol.com>
*
Please visit and test our newest site:
www.pgcc.net
[also available as www.gutenberg.us and www.gutenberg.cc]
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center [PGCC]
Please let us know of any eBook collections that
would be suitable for inclusion: public domain
or copyrighted, for which we must ask permission.
[or listed as copyrighted with permission]
You should see some significant changes this week.
*
There is a new experimental online reader available. Start from any
bibliographic record page, e.g.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4300
Basically this paginates the .txt file and remembers your last position
in a cookie so you can later resume reading where you left off.
Please test it. It should work with any book that has a text file
where the encoding is known.
*
MACHINE TRANSLATION
We are seeking as much information as possible on the various
approaches to Machine Translation. Any brand names or contact
information would be greatly appreciated.
***
Please use our new site for downloading DVD and CD images, etc.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject
and
The PG bittorrent tracker is up and running.
Aaron Cannon has placed the CD and DVD there if anyone wants to test.
You can access it by visiting
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We can set you up with images, or snail you these DVDs
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Project Gutenberg's CEO, Greg Newby <gbnewby AT pglaf.org> ,
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This is much more important than many of us realize!
***Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders
In the first 05.25 months of this year, we produced 1469 new eBooks.
It took us from July 1971 to Aug 1998 to produce our first 1469 eBooks!
That's 22 WEEKS as Compared to ~27 Years!
62 New eBooks This Week
69 New eBooks Last Week
62 New eBooks This Month [June]
~280 Average Per Month in 2005
336 Average Per Month in 2004
355 Average Per Month in 2003
203 Average Per Month in 2002
103 Average Per Month in 2001
1469 New eBooks in 2005
4049 New eBooks in 2004
4164 New eBooks in 2003
2441 New eBooks in 2002
1240 New eBooks in 2001
====
13363 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001
That's Only 53.25 Months!
About 250 books per month
16,425 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks
12,885 eBooks This Week Last Year
====
3,540 New eBooks In Last 12 Months
446 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia
*
PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE:
Since starting production in October 2000,
Distributed Proofreaders has contributed
6,864 eBooks to Project Gutenberg.
Sorry, the site seems to be down for an upgrage at the moment:
"Username for 'DP is unavailable for a Site Upgrade' at server
'www.pgdp.net' "
For more complete DP statistics, visit:
http://www.pgdp.net/c/stats/stats_central.php
*
Check out our website at www.gutenberg.org, and see below to learn how
you can get INSTANT access to our eBooks via FTP servers even before
the new eBooks listed below appear in our catalog.
eBooks are posted throughout the week. You can even get daily lists.
Info on subscribing to daily, weekly, monthly Newsletters, listservs:
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http://www.gutenberg.org/subs.shtml
***
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
Please note the addition of the Internet Archive
marked with <<< below.
PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings
of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as:
Alex-Wire Tap Collection, 2,036 HTML eBook Files
Black Mask Collection, 12,000 HTML eBook Files
The Coradella Bookshelf Collection, 141 eBook Files
DjVu Collection, 272 PDF and DJVU eBook Files
eBooks at Adelaide Collection, 27,709 eBook Files
Himalayan Academy, 3,400 HTML eBook Files
Internet Archive ~30,000 eBook Files [In Progress] <<<
Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files
Logos Group Collection, ~34,000 TXT eBook Files
Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files
Project Gutenberg Collection, 15,035 eBook Files
PGCC Chinese eBook Collection ~300 eBook files <<< Note Name Change
Renaisscance Editions Collection, 561 HTML eBook Files
Swami Center Collection, 78 HTML eBook Files
Tony Kline Collection, 223 HTML eBook Files
Widger Library, 2,600 HTML eBook Files
CIA's Electronic Reading Room, 2,019 Reference Files
=======Grand Total Files=========~137,142 Total Files=====
Average Size of the Collections 8,067.18 Total Files
These eBooks are catalogued as per the instructions of
their donors: some are one file per book; some have a
file for each chapter; and some even have a file for a
single page or poem. . .or are overcounted for reasons
I have not mentioned. . .each of which could cause the
overcounting or duplication of numbers.
If we presume 2 out of 3 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~45,714 Unique eBooks
If we presume 3 out of 4 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~34,286 Unique eBooks
***
Please also note that over 23,000 eBooks are listed via
The Online Books Page, of which over 5,300 are from PG.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
In addition: The Internet Public Library had a similar
listing which is now in limbo. If anyone knows what is
happening with the IPL, please let us know. Inquiries,
made months ago, and again recently, have not turned up
any current information.
You can try a new IPL service at:
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/
It would appear that The Internet Public Library ended
its first incarnation with about 22,284 entries, which
has now been surpassed by the Online Books Page.
Still looking for more Internet Public Library info.
***
Today Is Day #154 of 2005
This Completes Week #22 and Month #05.25 [364 days this year]
210 Days/34 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year]
3,475 Books To Go To #20,000
[Our production year begins/ends
1st Wednesday of the month/year]
67 Weekly Average in 2005
78 Weekly Average in 2004
79 Weekly Average in 2003
47 Weekly Average in 2002
24 Weekly Average in 2001
41 Only 41 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers list
[Used to be well over 100]
*** Permanent Requests For Assistance:
DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS NEEDS CONTENT, PROOFERS AND SCANNER TYPES
Please visit the site:
http://www.pgdp.net
for more information about how you can help a lot by
simply proofreading just a few pages per day, or more.
If you have a book that has been scanned, but not yet run
through OCR (optical character recognition) or proofed,
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Also, DP is seeking public domain books not already in the
Project Gutenberg collection. To see what is already online,
visit http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/GUTINDEX.ALL (a text file)
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***
Statistical Review
In the 22 weeks of this year, we have produced 1469 new eBooks.
It took us from 7/71 to 9/98 to produce our FIRST 1469 eBooks!!!
That's 22 WEEKS as Compared to ~27 YEARS!!!
*
Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet???
With 16,425 eBooks online as of June 08, 2005 it now takes an average
of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.94 from each book.
1% of the world population is 64,465,195 x 16,425 x $.94 = ~$1 trillion]
[Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.]
With 16,425 eBooks online as of June 08, 2005 it now takes an average
of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.61 from each book,
This "cost" is down from about $.78 when we had 12,885 eBooks a year ago.
100 million readers is only ~1.5% of the world's population!
At 16,425 eBooks in 33 Years and 11.25 Months We Averaged
~484 Per Year
40.3 Per Month
1.33 Per Day
At 1469 eBooks Done In The 154 Days Of 2005 We Averaged
10 Per Day
67 Per Week
280 Per Month
The production statistics are calculated based on full weeks'
production; each production-week starts/ends Wednesday noon,
starts with the first Wednesday of January. January 5th was
the first Wednesday of 2005, and thus ended PG's production
year of 2004 and began the production year of 2005 at noon.
This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week.
***
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
SPAM FIGHTERS FORM NEW COALITION
A new group tentatively called the Anti-Spyware Coalition plans to
publish guidelines to define spyware, best practices for software
development, and a lexicon of common terms by the end of the summer.
The guidelines will be open to public comment. The Center for Democracy
and Technology, a public advocacy group based in Washington, is running
the new initiative. The coalition formed two months after the collapse
of the Consortium of Anti-Spyware Technology Vendors, which admitted a
company suspected of making adware. According to David Fewer, staff
counsel at the Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Policy and Public
Interest Clinic, which is affiliated with the new consortium, judging
whether software is spyware comes down to notice, consent, and control.
Many adware and spyware products fail to meet all three requirements.
Silicon.com, 3 June 2005
http://software.silicon.com/malware/0,3800003100,39130956,00.htm
APPLE TO SWITCH TO INTEL
Apple Computer reportedly plans to use Intel processors in Macintosh
computers, ending a multiyear relationship with IBM and Motorola.
Analysts speculate that a major factor behind the shift is the failure
of IBM to develop new Power PC chips that produce less heat. Low heat
generation is critical for notebook computers, which have less room for
heat-dissipating features than desktop systems. The move follows
Microsoft's decision to build its own computer hardware with
assistance from IBM--a shift from its previous Windows-Intel
alliance--and IBM's sale of its PC business to Lenovo. One key
challenge facing Apple is persuading software developers to rewrite
their code to work with Intel chips.
New York Times, 6 June 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/technology/06apple.html
UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS DEVELOPING BROWSER TO FIGHT TERRORISM
Researchers at the University of Buffalo (UB) are developing browser
technology that endeavors to identify hidden connections in vast
collections of documents. Rather than simply looking for matches to
specified query terms, which is what typical search engines do, the UB
technology seeks to uncover connections between ideas. According to
John McCarthy, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford
University, a tool that successfully links concepts could be an
important breakthrough. A number of federal agencies, including the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), are investing in the research,
which they hope can be used to find the sorts of connections that will
aid efforts to fight terrorism. The project has been used to search the
report from the 9/11 Commission as well as public Web pages, looking
for connections regarding the hijackers. The tool searches for concepts
such as names, dates, and places and maps the connections it finds,
potentially resulting in trails of evidence useful to investigators or
other authorities.
CNET, 2 June 2005
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5730176.html
You have been reading excerpts from Edupage:
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***
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
GM has "placed" this statistic all over the major media
for a few weeks now, presumably hoping people will feel
sorry for them, as per their high prices:
$1500 from every car sold goes to employee health cost,
and we heard it straight from the horses mouth in more
media coverage just yesterday.
However, GM made 5.2 million vehicles in North America
during 2004, and at $1500 each, that would have placed
$12.3 Billion into their health care plan while source
information from The Detroit News indicates only $5.6B.
"If General Motors was just selling a million more cars
per years, you wouldn't be hearing these complaints
about high health and pension costs."
Sources:
Detroit News, Sunday, May 8, 2005
www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/ 0505/08/A01-175048.htm
and
CSM
The AP also credits GM with only ~$5 billion in health care:
and
PBS
*
Google claims to now be the largest media company,
as per the value of its stock, which is now trading
at triple the original price at a total of ~$81 B,
thus surpassing AOL Time-Warner at ~78 B.
However, cash flow into the company was only $3.x B
last year, as compared with over 10 times as much at
AOL Time Warner at ~$42 B.
*
The Pentagon has apparently conspired to artificially
increases prices paid to Boeing for passenger planes
converted into tankers, with several officials having
already taken the fall for what has been termed as an
unofficial Boeing bailout effort that may now turn to
an effort to bail these parties out of trouble if not
out of jail.
Meanwhile, Airbus and Northrop have teamed up to make
an offer the Pentagon can't refuse under scrutiny.
Sources: Seattle Times and The Washington Post
*
When the whole MCI-Worldcom-Citigroup thing hit the fan,
one of the major players, a Mr. Grubman was fined $15 M
and fired. However, that fine was only half of what he
got from his diamond-encrusted-platinum-parachute clause,
not to mention the $20 million per year he received for
at least four years of work on that project.
*STRANGE WORDS OF THE WEEK
Republican Presidential Quotations
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment
insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of
that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group,
of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas
oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other
areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954
Source : The Eisenhower Presidential Papers,
Document #1147; November 8, 1954
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower,
Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way
Part VI: Crises Abroad, Party Problems at Home;
September 1954 to December 1954
November 8, 1954
DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
The United Nations, for whom most of us have always had
the utmost respect, fell a number of rungs off a ladder
recently when it officially adopted "World Intellectual
Property Organization's" masthead as part of its own.
While the UN is famous for assisting those in need from
countries all over the world, WIPO is equally infamous,
for its hundreds of years of public domain repressions,
all the way back to the Gutenberg Press, when, under an
assortment of previous names, this organization felt it
would oppose any new technology that would/could/should
bring relatively unlimited information to the masses.
My own copyright situation reflects at least these five
copyright laws, each designed to eliminate competitions
from technologies that were capable of bringing as much
information to the masses as was available to the elite
only a few short years before.
1. "The Statute of Mary" in 1557 Anti-Gutenberg Press
2. The Statute of Anne in 1709 Anti-Gutenberg Press
3. The US Copyright Act of 1909 Anti-Steam/Electric
4. The US Copyright Act of 1976 Anti-Xerox Machines
5. The US Copyright Act of 1998 Anti-Internet/Web
The first two laws were written and lobbied through The
Stationers' Guild, later The Stationers' Company, in an
obvious political power struggle that took generations,
but eventually, after 150 years of the Gutenberg Press,
the Stationers [scribes] got back their monopoly status
over all publishing under British law.
Of course, during that 150 years more books had already
been printed by the Gutenberg Presses than had been all
the previous years of hand-written history, and the die
had already been cast by Gutenberg for the upcoming new
Industrial Revolution, and thus there was no going back
to the previous feudal system of total guild monopolies
as had been written into these first two laws.
However, at least momentarily, the number of books made
available in the U.K. fell to ~600 after the Statute of
Anne from ~6,000 before the Statute of Anne; censorship
by the government and The Stationers was back, and in a
very big way.
The 14 year copyright with a possible 14 year extension
as stated in The Statute of Anne was adopted later from
British law to the laws of the revolutionary new places
created by the Americans and the French. I should note
that the author still had to be alive for such extended
copyright periods in the original laws, and a copyright
belonged to the publisher, The Stationers' Company in a
first 14 year copyright period. We should also note it
was written into the first of these five laws that such
copyrights would apply retroactively to every word ever
written, not matter by whom, or how long ago.
The original copyright law was designed to put all work
under copyright ownership by The Stationers Company.
This law was egocentric on the parts of The Stationers'
Guild members and it was held in such ill repute by all
concered that it was never enforced or obeyed, thus the
law was replaced by second, The Statute of Anne. These
changes allowed for copyright only on new works and for
the second copyright period to be owned by the authors.
This was deemed a great victory by the authors, but the
reality was that The Stationers' Company were giving up
very little, as hardly any books were still in print in
the second 14 years of their existence, and not so many
authors were still alive 14 years after writing some of
the best sellers that were still in print.
However, not all countries were bound by these laws and
the total number of titles and copies continued in some
fashion or form around the world.
200 years after The Statute of Anne came the third law,
one that was again designed by the olde garde publisher
network to elimination competition from the new boyes.
At the end of the 19th Century, more steam and electric
press books were being published than anyone had seen--
again, more books than had ever been made before, again
the monopoly of the olde boye network was threatened.
What to do?
Simple!
Just do what ye olde boyes did to the Gutenberg Press.
Pass a law that wipes out the new competition.
Since the new boys WERE new, they didn't have contracts
to publish the new authors, so they reprinted all those
books over 28 years old and most books over 14 years as
90% of all copyrights were never renewed, so copyrights
were really mostly only for 14 years.
By placing one of these new steam or electric presses a
few feet from the new transcontinental railroad lines a
new boy publisher could fill an entire boxcar literally
overnight and have it shipped anywhere in the country a
few days later. . .and they did exactly that.
Combining these new technologies with new Rural Federal
Delivery mail system, Sears & Roebuck delivered a whole
768 page catalog to nearly everyone in the U.S., a feat
that would have been impossible earlier.
This made the other publishers sit up and take notice--
if Sears could do this inexpensively enough to send the
millions of catalogs all over the country, then any new
publisher could do the same, only sell the books at low
prices the olde boye networke couldn't compete with via
their now antiquated business plans.
Thus the U.S Copyright Act of 1909 was created with the
specific goal of wiping out all those new reprint house
publishers by making it illegal to reprint simply via a
new copyright law that voided the old one, and made the
new copyrights twice as long as the old ones.
This is why you can find so many collections of reprint
books dated around the turn of the 19th Century but the
number drops off precipitously after 1909.
Got competition?
Buy a law against it!
This was the third time such a stragegy was employed.
The fourth time was in 1976 when a similar law was made
to extend the maximum copyright term from 56 years as a
copyright had been since 1909, to 75 years, but perhaps
even more importantly, the requirement for copyright to
to be extended was eliminated, even though 90% of those
copyrights had never been extended before.
Thus this law was nine times more repressive than those
previous laws had been: eliminating from public domain
access ALL books for 75 years, not just those books the
publishers could still make a profit on.
This is a great example of spite, where these publisher
refuse access to others even what they don't want to do
anything with themselves.
The true nature of copyright once again is revealed, an
act that keeps information from flowing to the public--
even when it is deemed worthless by the publishers.
But the story isn't quite over yet. . . .
"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Not satisfied with nearly complete control for 75 years
the publishers reacted in the same manner when Internet
access to public domain books became obvious to them in
the 1990's, and once again they extended copyrights, to
95 years this time, so that virtually no one could ever
be able to reprint anything that was published in their
lifetimes. . .thus cutting the umbilical cord between a
civilization and its past, except for what was deemed a
proper historical perpective by "in loco parentis," the
ugly heads of the three headed censorship again.
The end result was to change the public domain from the
50/50 proposition it was a century ago to the new world
order of 999/1 proposition of the new copyright laws.
That's right, by the time the first of the copyrights a
new world order created in 1998 expires, you will see a
copyrighted to public domain ratio that leaves you this
1 book out of 1,000 in the now endangered public domain
species that appears to be on the verge of extinction.
The publishers are not shy about saying they want a law
that specifies copyright should be permanent, that this
public domain that has long been the link between pasts
and futures of various societies throughout history, is
now targeted squarely in the crosshairs of the hunters,
and your access to information is the target.
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
Eventually the cell phone will take over the functions of the
PDA [Personal Digital Assistants, such as Palm, Handspring, etc],
the PPC [Pocket Personal Computer, such as Sony, Compaq, etc.].
However, watch out for more per minute charges than you expect,
as some functions you think may be local to you may actually be
billed as if you were logged in for those minutes.
Google, Yahoo, ebooks, email, stock trading, movies, music, etc.,
are all now being tailor-made for cell phone use.
Believe it or not, even during a week in which three major bands
released a new CD, a ringtone beat out everything else in the UK
as the best seller in the music world, just this current week.
By the way, at the other end of the scale, have you noticed yet
how TV programs are being shot from wider and wider angles, for
the presumed purpose of forcing viewers to buy larger screens--
just so they can see the facial expressions they used to get in
the more close-up shots?
Not to mention the finer and finer print being displayed in the
corners and on the runners across the bottom of the screen.
Ever tried to read those on a 15" TV via normal broadcasting?
This is all part of the pressure tactics to force HDTV on us,
and watch for the government to step in and declare that your
old TV sets will no longer have any programs suitable to them.
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
Today there are 10 times as many commercials on television as
50 years ago. . .~20 minutes per hour compared with ~2 minutes.
In addition, you also hear 10 times as many "non-commercials"
on PBS and NPR.
By the way, this does NOT include those HUGE blocks of time
known as "infomercials" or "pledge drives" which are obviously
just about infinitely greater than 50 years ago when they had
little or no existence.
By the way, when I watch U.S. TV programs in other countries,
many of the commercial breaks are left out, since they don't
have nearly as many commericals, yet they still seem to make
plenty of money, just not by U.S. standards.
"It's all about the money."
"The first rule of reporting? Follow the money."
However, under this model, it's not the upper class who pays.
*
The average of the pop stars on todays' Top 40 is 20 years old.
*
The average prescription drug costs twice as much in the U.S.
Medical costs are cited as the cause of more people going into
bankruptcy than any other cause in the U.S.
In Europe it is legal for companies to buy prescription drugs
in one country, relabel them, and resell them in another, all
the while under government supervision, just to save money on
personal prescriptions. It is less efficient work-wise, but
it costs less cash-wise.
*
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following. There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date,
as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer
then there would be only 60 million people in the world who
owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States
households have computers, out of over 100 million households.
Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in
the United States.
I just called our local reference librarian and got the number
of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at:
111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports.
If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households
is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million,
and that's counting just one computer per household, and not
counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc.
I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate
given above, and would like some help researching these and other
such figures, if anyone is interested.
BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic
that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old.
This means that basically 90% of the world's population would
never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations
offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US
population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich
live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer
than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is
distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they
can receive more per year, but because they will live more years
to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never
receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in.
*
POEM OF THE WEEK
city at dawn
queen of high heels goes to work
legs like those of svelte bridges
rivers of asphalt flow beneath
the chill mornings the flesh quivers
streets are red silky fashion caprices
everybody's watching life with desire
Copyright 2005 by Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart
***
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