November 2004 - PGCanada - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [PGCanada] Re: [Fwd: Re: !@!Re: PG Canada]
by Wallace J.McLean 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

On 18:19:07 Darryl Moore wrote: > > > That would help. But the most helpful would be an endorsement by > prominent Canadian authors such as Pierre Button, Margaret > Atwood, What's the point of this again? I seem to have missed the email that sparked this. If it's to get them to endorse something with a view towards protecting the public domain, and resisting the extension of copyright, forget it: Pierre Berton and Margaret Atwood are typical members of the CanLit gliterati: they don't mind pilfering the public domain, but God forbid their works should ever enter into it. Atwood is very clearly in favour of term extension; Pierre Berton seems to be tacitly so for reasons I don't wish to disclose in public.

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Re: [PGCanada] Re: [Fwd: Re: !@!Re: PG Canada]
by Wallace J.McLean 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Russell McOrmond <russell(a)flora.ca> Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 11:31 am Subject: Re: [PGCanada] Re: [Fwd: Re: !@!Re: PG Canada] > > On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Michael Hart wrote: > > > I'm wondering if we should host PG Canada on a US site, > > I'm sure that will upset the lawyers, especailly those > > involved with Gone With The Wind. > > I assume you mean that we shouldn't be doing so, and that this > list is hosted in the US? Hosting a PG-Canada in a place that attorns to the jurisdiction of a country with a copyright law different from that of Canada, is like painting a big "Sue Me!" on your ass. If PG was hosted in Canada, Access Copyright would have sued it years ago.

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Re: [PGCanada] A bit of everything....
by Wallace J.McLean 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: James Linden <jlinden(a)projectgutenberg.ca> Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 6:16 pm Subject: [PGCanada] A bit of everything.... > I do have to point out that I'm > opposed to using ANY of the main PG site. It's been hacked > together over the > course of a decade, and is only getting worse. Marcello has been > doing a great job on the site, but has a long way to go. I think we should build the "storage" facility from the ground up, too. > Regarding backend: I'm very opposed to basing PG Canada on the > current PG system, which does not meet even minimal requirements for > cataloging and does not rely on a master XML document. Can you elaborate on this point a little for the non-techies, myself included?

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Re: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc.
by Wallace J.McLean 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

Also: How vulnerable is Serbia to the life+50+more movement? What happens if it joins the European Union, and how close is EU membership, if at all?

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Re: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc.
by Wallace J.McLean 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Carlo Traverso <traverso(a)dm.unipi.it> Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 5:44 pm Subject: Re: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc. > Some of the more affectionate users of DP-EU are canadian, both > english and french speaking. I'm occasionally one of them! (Have accounts at both DPs, with a much higher count at DP-Int and some PPing work as well.) > Wallace> On the Project Gutenberg business itself, setting aside > Wallace> the big and valuable and important work done by the DP > Wallace> annex, a Canadian branch plant would allow the "Canadian > Wallace> editions" of PG texts -- whether transferred from PG > Wallace> where eligible, or created under life+ rules outside the > Wallace> US -- to get (free) ISBNs for those editions. This may > Wallace> have usefulness down the road, as has been discussed on > Wallace> the DP forums. > > ISBN would be great. I strongly support PG-CA, just DP-CA is IMHO a > little premature, until DP-EU is further grown. Can DP-EU be "evolved" into DP-50?

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Re: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc.
by Wallace J.McLean 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Carlo Traverso <traverso(a)dm.unipi.it> Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 2:43 pm Subject: Re: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc. > Does this have a technical motivation? (for example, avoid the > complications of UTF-8 being life+50) Or just to have a companion to > PG-CA? A legal one: Stuff that would be eligible for a PG-Canada, and hence likely to draw even more Canadian volunteers, can't always legally be done through DP-INT. There are thousands of PD works under life+50 in Canada that won't be eligible under the PG/DP American copyright rules. We could do them in an all-Canadian site, but not the existing PG/DP site. Or, we can funnel it all through DP-EU, assuming that there are no further complications legally. Do they operate under life+50, and if so where are they depositing their texts? > The effort to bring up a DP site is non negligeable, much more > than overcoming the utf-8 barier; DP-EU still has space to grow, and > will surely welcome new forces. For example, our waiting lists are > empty, anything that you want to post is welcome. When DP-EU has > grown, and canadian squirrels matured, detaching a canadian clone > might be much easier. Currently, a division of efforts might create > problems to both. And on the other hand, an all-Canadian, or an international non- national life+50 version of DP might help draw more volunteers out of the woodwork. On the Project Gutenberg business itself, setting aside the big and valuable and important work done by the DP annex, a Canadian branch plant would allow the "Canadian editions" of PG texts -- whether transferred from PG where eligible, or created under life+ rules outside the US -- to get (free) ISBNs for those editions. This may have usefulness down the road, as has been discussed on the DP forums.

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forward from another list
by Laura Murray 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

Hi all. Sorry to drop in out of the blue like this. Russell McO sent an email to another list I'm on--fyi, this is what it generated--he thought it might be useful to you. I'm afraid that I have no time or expertise to lend to PGCanada, but do encourage those who do to contact some of the people mentioned below at CIHM, UofT, etc. I don't know the backgrounds of the people on this list, so please don't take this as a criticism, but in general I tend to think that there is greater point AND greater legal safety in a project that comes demonstrably out of a genuine desire to share literature than one that is mainly trying to make a point. If somebody wants to go and put GWTW up there online, that's fine, but I would think that PG would want to protect its brand name as it were and see a full-fledged site going even if it takes longer. Maybe there are Canlit people there who want such a site. You might try to contact Can lit profs--two at my university are Tracy Ware and Leslie Ritchie--and see if it's something they'd need or like to see or like to help with, and/or how it would complement existing resources. Grad students in English would be a great group to tap too. Or Library Science students. I'd love to see it there but I have to limit myself to spectatorship at the moment. All the very best, L. On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Wallace J.McLean wrote: >> I've previously posted a link to the second-largest Canadian "public >> domain" project I know of, Classiques des sciences sociales: >> >> http://www.uqac.uquebec.ca/zone30/Classiques_des_sciences_sociales/ >> html/ >> biblio_accueil.html >> >> The largest is, of course, canadiana.org CIHM has an understanding >> with >> Project Gutenberg in the US that PG can use any of their book scans of >> works which are eligible under the PG copyright rules (the US law). In >> fact, a PG volunteer has produced a wonderful program called "Snatch" >> which automates the process of downloading public-domain book scans >> from various sites around the world, including canadiana.org, to >> accellerate the conversion process. These scans are then run through >> Distributed Proofreading: www.pgdp.net >> >> This infrastructure has already been "exported" to a similar project >> in >> Europe. However, even though the single largest national "team" of >> PDGP >> volunteers is Team Canada, PG-Canada just doesn't seem to want to fly. >> >> There's also ourroots.ca, which is a mishmash of PD- and non-PD >> material, but I understand Snatch has been re-written to extract page >> scans from that site as well. ourroots.ca concentrates on local >> histories (which may or may not be PD), while canadiana.org >> concentrates on historic Canadian of all types (most of which is PD, >> and CIHM has an "unlocatable" license to cover its ass in the outlying >> cases.) And from me earlier the same day: Hi. I'd recommend contacting Ian Lancashire at UofT who does the Representative Poetry project (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/index.cfm) If he isn't interested in hosting/helping, he will know others. I don't know who Daryl is, but it would be nice to get some literary people involved so it wasn't just done to make a point, but rather to make literary materials available... ;-). There are probably Canadian literary ezines out there who might be into it. Or check out Coach House Press? All for now, L. Laura J. Murray Associate Professor Department of English Queen's University Kingston, Canada K7L 3N6 phone: 613-533-6000 x74438 fax: 613-533-6872 email: LM19(a)post.queensu.ca website: www.faircopyright.ca

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Re: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc.
by Wallace J.McLean 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Andrew Sly <sly(a)victoria.tc.ca> Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 1:17 pm Subject: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc. > And yes, Project Gutenberg is a totally separate entity. > As a volunteer organization, PG in the United States simply > could not deal with the legal complications that would be > brought up in becoming a "multi-national". > > I believe the only legal relationship is that PG of Canada has been > granted the right to use the "Project Gutenberg" trademark. I think that's correct as well. The other thing that would/should have to be done, would be to open up a relationship with Distributed Proofreaders to create a third DP site (in addition to PGDP and DP-EU). That's more technical than legal, as the (amazing) DP infrastructure is developed on a share-and-share-alike basis.

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website
by Darryl Moore 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

I looked through some of the archives and saw that quite a bit of thought has been put into the technical issues of the website itself. Rather than reinvent the wheel can we just copy the entire Gutenberg html code and scripts and use that as a template? What is the copyright status of that? Once we have the site working, I'd say we go through every item in the Gutenberg database and add those items which are public domain according to Canadian law. Though I think I might start with "Gone with the Wind" :-). Concurrent to all this of course, we can working on getting all our legal ducks in a row. Comments would be appreciated.

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Re: [PGCanada] Re: [Fwd: Re: !@!Re: PG Canada]
by Wallace J.McLean 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 12:51 pm Subject: Re: [PGCanada] Re: [Fwd: Re: !@!Re: PG Canada] > As I see it, this list is currently operated through pglaf.org > which is in the US. . .should we move to a Canadian host? I'd invoke "ain't broke" here. Unless you think it is.

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