Greg Newby wrote:
More: If we decide to change the wording, we need a new one ("Free lunch" would anger the libertarian even more :-) ) that conveys the idea that PG is not just a free book download service.
Any forward progress on this, Marcello? I don't like "free as in beer," and have mentioned it once or twice.
I think there are plenty of alternatives: "Fostering the Public Domain" "Expanding the Public Domain" "Thousands of Free eBooks" "The World's Great Literature" "Produced by Thousands of Volunteers"
What about a rotating marquee?
Presently the PG site is just a place where people go to download books. I think we should make more of a political stance with the PG web site. Disney employs a few senators to "Shrink the Public Domain", we should at least leverage the popularity of PG to build up awareness in the population that "Public Domain" is not a thing that comes to you like the sunrise after a slept-thru night. "Expanding the Public Domain" is a good slogan, but first you have to explain what "Public Domain" is, that it isn't about downloading freebies but about the people owning and using the literary works their culture is built upon. What I really want to do is to put up a good paragraph on the main page (maybe a teaser on every page) and build a section about the cultural/educational/economical advantages of short copyright terms (and maybe some serious discussion about DRM / proprietary vs. open source / software patents etc.) -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org