- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by David A. Desrosiers 08 Jan '05

08 Jan '05

This site[1] appears to have converted a large portion of the Gutenberg etexts to Microsoft Reader (.lit) format, and are selling a CD of these for $14.95/cd. They clearly state[2] that they're reusing Gutenberg content directly, reformatted and converted to this other proprietary format. Closer inspection of the actual .lit files themselves still shows several references to Project Gutenberg in various places, but they aren't complying with the Gutenberg License[2], at least sections 1 and 2 that I can see: 1. Commercial use: The "small print" license includes a royalty schedule for commercial use of the Project Gutenberg trademark, including any sort of resale. 2. Modification: Only unmodified copies of these eBooks may be redistributed without limitation. If you make changes to eBooks (other than alteration for different display devices), you are prohibited from including the header or otherwise associating your derivative work with Project Gutenberg. Note especially that if you choose to make changes, then you must remove the header, and you may NOT use the Project Gutenberg trademark. Is this a violation? I only ask, because _another_ company is giving away the .lit books from the first site, on their own site[2] free of charge. I'd hate to have one bad company suck another one in through association. [1] http://freeeliterature.com/index.htm [2] http://freeeliterature.com/CD1%20Contents.htm [3] http://www.gutenberg.org/license [4] http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=free_download David A. Desrosiers desrod(a)gnu-designs.com http://gnu-designs.com

1 0

Re: [gutvol-d] PG-50/70?
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 07 Jan '05

07 Jan '05

In a message dated 1/5/2005 4:45:20 PM Mountain Standard Time, jeroen.mailinglist(a)bohol.ph writes: Once the public has paid the author what was necessary to enable him to create the work This is not a flame. It's a careful exchange of views with whoever I'm quoting. Do I understand correctly that the fellow who works in the steel mill should be paid only what is necessary for the steel to be produced? And the waitress in a restaurant should be paid only enough for the orders to be taken and the food put on the table. Well, let's see, how much is the wear and tear on her shoe leather and her apron and the clothing she wars at the restaurant? For cryin' out loud, YOU CANNOT HAVE LABOR OF ANY KIND, WHITE COLLAR OR BLUE COLLAR, WITHOUT PAYING THE LABORER. Karl Marx and Jesus Christ agree on this, though they disagree as to how it should be done. It is 5:40 PM on a snowy day and we just called the plumber. Why should we have to pay him $35 just for coming here, before he even looks at the problem? Does it cost that much in gasoline? Surely it isn't the cost of the truck, because it's old enough that it's already paid for. I have been working for SIX YEARS on one book. At the moment it's about 200,000 words long. I have thrown away closer to two MILLION words that I wound up tossing and rewriting. Let's see, what is the cost of the paper . . . and the ink . . . and the computer . . . and the printer . . . Does that sum up the cost of writing the book? And I shouldn't get any more than that? WHY? I would make this 100-point type except that it would wind up perfectly ordinary type on other people's machines. Why should the publisher be paid . . . and the bookseller be paid . . . and the ink supplier be paid . . . and the paper supplier be paid . . . and the shipping companies be paid . . . and so on and so forth, for as long as people want to read a book, but the person who wrote the book should fall out of the loop and stop getting paid? Life plus 100, or life plus 70, or life plus 60, is absurd. Life plus 25 is not absurd. That's all I'm asking for. But too many people think I should get royalties for 10 years or 15 years and then no more, even when everybody else is still making money from the book.

5 4

Request for French Spell Checker
by Andrew Sly 07 Jan '05

07 Jan '05

I have a text "Le retour de l'exile" by Louis Frechette, that I have prepared for PG from another online source. It looks as if it is in good shape, but I have found an occasional scanning error in it. Would anyone have a French-language spell check they could run it through? I have tried to download one, but have had trouble installing it. An html version can be found here: http://www.victoria.tc.ca/~sly/RETOUR2.HTM.zip Alternatively, I could provide a plain text version. Thanks, Andrew

2 1

Re: [gutvol-d] PG-50/70?
by Wallace J.McLean 07 Jan '05

07 Jan '05

> Note: Not trying to be a smart@ss. > > Why do we need the bulwark specifically in an English-speaking country? > > Josh A) Because without one, the entire Commonwealth is going to fall to the life+70 empire. B) Because the sooner we get started on a Canadian life+50 project, the more harm we can demonstrate to policy-makers and potential allies in the broader community, when the full-court press for life+70 is brought down. > 2.Because Canada has NOT made it's copyright laws more restrictive > over and over and over. The wimps who make our copyright policy are under EXTREME pressure to extend the term, and, contrary to what you write, MH, have made some incredibly stupid and restrictive policy decisions in respect of other CR matters, other than term, in the past little while. > 4. Even more specifically to host Gone With The Wind, after the > lawyers' onslaught about it recently. And also, if we can hold off till January 1 2007, the A.A. Milne corpus. > 5. Project Gutenberg of Canada also should encourage more French eBooks, > as well as just in English. Absolument! There's already a surprisingly robust PD movement in Quebec, and many of the projects I've created on PGDP have been in French, with more to come. The source scans from other sites (canadiana.org, BNQ, etc.) also provide ample French-language content to work from. > 6. The more Project Gutenbergs the better. . . . So when do we -- whoever WE is -- get PG-Canada, under life+50 rules, up and running?

4 5

Outdated information
by Andrew Sly 07 Jan '05

07 Jan '05

Hmmm.... It's interesting to note that as a result of still having the old promo.net webpage active, and turning up high on the list in search engines, I can find a reference to Project Gutenberg like the following: * Project Gutenberg -- Index One of the oldest and largest of electronic text archives, Project Gutenberg contained 6,267 eBooks as of November 2002 (the latest published figure as of December 2004). I think I'll look for a contact email, and send them a message... Andrew

1 0

Re: [gutvol-d] PG-50/70?
by D. Starner 07 Jan '05

07 Jan '05

"Robert Shimmin" <shimmin(a)uiuc.edu> writes: > If someone finally gets around to producing a PDA that's as much joy to read as a printed book, > and ebooks become a major part of the publishing industry, we may see titles that were only ever > available via download. What do you mean, "we may see"? <http://www.rpgnow.com/> has a number of volumes available by download only. It's not that uncommon in the roleplaying industry. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

1 0

Most relaxed?
by Wallace J.McLean 07 Jan '05

07 Jan '05

I wouldn't say MOST relaxed, there are a few African countries that take that prize, but we're good for several reasons: - physical proxmity to the US provides logistical and $ savings for volunteers; - part of the Anglo-American law world; we can, for now, stand as a bulwark against the extensionists, and the presence of such a library, will, if large enough, allow for the mobilization of a defence of the public domain; - English- and French-speaking; can make liaisons and bridges with the longer-life-plus-term UK and Ireland as well as the wierd-term US (there are thousands of PD books under the pre-1923 rule in the US that are NOT PD in life+ countries, including Canada; - large immigrant communities, and "heritage language" communities, among whose numbers we can recruit to help give the collection more internationality; - excellent net.infrastructure, esp. as compared to those countries with even less copyright; - several PD and digital library initiatives already in progress; - some potential corporate contributors; - already a strong base of PG/DP support, with one of the largest non- US contingents already involved. We can build a life+/CanCon version, and hopefully, by growing incrementally as PGDP I has, do so without destabilizing the Mothership. DRAWBACK: - Collective copyright administration; the literary, artistic and musical collective agencies will watch us like hawks. Scratch that; VULTURES. Which is why we have to have a failsafe clearance mechanism. I've got as good a knowledge of Canadian CR law, esp. as pertains to the undefined, in Canadian law, expression "public domain", as any non- lawyer does, and I've volunteered to help with the clearances. So, I repeat the call: Where are the tech people who can make this happen, and sooner rather than later? I'd start processing titles from Project Gutenberg Mothership according to their Life+50 eligibility as soon as the site is in place. We need a friendly host. ----- Original Message ----- >From Jonathan Ingram <jonathan_ingram(a)yahoo.com> Date Thu, 6 Jan 2005 09:55:52 -0800 (PST) To Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> Subject Re: [gutvol-d] PG-50/70? We need a centralised PGUS-style storage system for life+X books that can be easily mirrored in other life+X countries, and that should preferably be based in the country with the most relaxed laws -- Canada. -- Jon Ingram

1 0

German texts and the m-dash
by Karl Eichwalder 06 Jan '05

06 Jan '05

Thanks for posting Pater Filucius by Wilhelm Busch (http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/3/4/14340) Unfortunately, the m-dash treatment is wrong--spaces are missing. Is this a common problem for texts prepared by DP-PG? -- http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/ | ,__o | _-\_<, | (*)/'(*) Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4 AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C

4 5

Re: [gutvol-d] DocBook
by Joshua Hutchinson 06 Jan '05

06 Jan '05

There is an ongoing effort to move to a master XML format, but instead of DocBook, we've tentatively chosen TEI (or rather, more specifically, a subset of TEI). If you'd like more information about it, please see this website: http://www.gutenberg.org/tei/ Also, if you have specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: Pupeno <pupeno(a)pupeno.com> To: gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org Subject: [gutvol-d] DocBook Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 04:08:22 -0300 > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hello, > I'm new to the Gutenberg project and I think it's awesome, so much > information, literature, on-line, for free. > The only thing I don't like is the format, plain text doesn't seem very good > for storing books. Then some books are in HTML, that's even worst. I > personally prefeer DocBook[1] for storing books. For those of you that > doesn't know what DocBook is: it is an xml-based format designed exclusively > for storing books where no information about how the book will be seen in a > graphical screen is stored but information about what things are. It has tags > for separating chapters, appendices, prefaces, parts, books (in sets of > books), etc. > This is not just a complain. I'd like to know if you'd be intrested in > adopting DocBook, at least as one of the possible formats (being that > DocBooks can be turned easily into HTML, PDF and Plain text [2], I would > recomend DocBook as the main format); if so, I'm willing to donate some of my > time to the cause in researching and developing a way to offer DocBooks > (specially, how the current books can be turned into DocBook). If you'd like > to know more about this, I already have some ideas but I didn't want to write > a kilometer long email, just tell me and I'll elaborate more. > Thank you. > - -- > Pupeno: pupeno(a)pupeno.com - http://www.pupeno.com > Reading Science Fiction ? http://sfreaders.com.ar > > [1] http://www.docbook.org > [2] Take a look to Science Fiction Reader's library: > http://sfreaders.com.ar/library , all the files except the DocBooks are > automatically created. > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFB3OPpfW48a9PWGkURAmajAJ4wlsRAIR+bN5hnv8jZiB/pS1pbgwCfYElo > v0dlFn9z+fjGXenXOWffI90= > =4sRX > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d

4 3

Re: [gutvol-d] PG-50/70?
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 06 Jan '05

06 Jan '05

In a message dated 1/6/2005 9:58:30 AM Mountain Standard Time, holden.mcgroin(a)dsl.pipex.com writes: I'd not argue that some people in creative industries do work for similar reasons as your steelworker and waitress above. However, I would argue that the vast majority of people create not because they make a living that way but because they enjoy the act of creation. Every day, I meet people who write books (even ones that I'd consider worth publishing) but never send off a copy to any publishers or agents. Every day, I meet people who write, perform and record music not because they're secretly hoping for a contract from the record industry but because they enjoy making music and they enjoy that they can give people a little entertainment. Goodie for them. I WRITE FULLTIME. Making a living is important to me. I am no longer physically capable of doing any other work. And I am sick and tired of this patronizing attitude from somebody who knows absolutely nothing whatever of the kind of work I do or the fact that it is extremely HARD work. If I gave a complete answer to this I would set fire to the internet. So I will simply say that you are totally and completely out of your mind. It is quite obvious that you hate anybody who wants to make a living in the arts. As long as YOU get paid for whatever YOUR paid work is, you care far too little what happens to anybody else. Knowing somebody who writes books is not the same as writing books yourself. When I was a teacher, I got paid monthly. When I was selling telephone systems to businesses, I got paid biweekly. When I was a cop, I got paid biweekly. As a writer, I get paid whenever some editor decides to get up off her butt and send me a check. If my book sits on her desk for a year because she's too lazy to open it and look at the first three pages, which is all it takes to say "No, I don't want this," that's my problem, as is the fact that most editors won't look at simultaneous proposals at all. Greg, I'm sorry. I know you like me to stay current with what's going on in the mailing lists. But I'm taking four blood-pressure meds already. I'm bailing out. I will do all the things that I am committed to doing, and you know what they are. But I'm not going to read this crap anymore. Anne

3 2