- PGCanada - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [PGCanada] eBooks in French
by Wallace J.McLean 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Carlo Traverso <traverso(a)dm.unipi.it> Date: Monday, November 29, 2004 4:28 pm Subject: Re: [PGCanada] eBooks in French > >>>>> "Michael" == Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> writes: > > Michael> Will there be a particular interest in doing eBooks in > Michael> French? > > Michael> If so, would you be willing to cooperate with volunteers > Michael> who actually live in France [and other French speaking > Michael> countries]? > > > We had a meeting in Paris last saturday, exactly on this issue, to > arrive at a coordination of all francophone PG-like projects. The > outcome might be a site in french, located in Canada, and a close > coordination of PG/DP activities in french with > http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ ; PG clearance procedures are > currently the main obstacle to having more french books in PG, with > clearance tailored on Life+50 we could reach 1000 in a short time. There are several non-DP, non-PG efforts in Canada: http://www.uqac.uquebec.ca/zone30/Classiques_des_sciences_sociales/ http://jydupuis.apinc.org/ http://www.bnquebec.ca/numtextes/accueil.htm The first might be amenable to co-operation and co-ordination. The second, from my dealings with him, wouldn't be. Someone else may have better luck in opening a dialogue. The third, through Rénald Lévesque and other DP volunters, has already contributed some works to DP/PG by providing scans that were stored at the BNQ as PDF files. I was actually going to start work on this title before I noticed Rénald had beaten me to the punch: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/3/14030/14030-h/14030-h.htm Life+50 does open up a good number of works, but the PG/US rules, with everything pre-1923 up for grabs, also open up the use of what must be at least several hundred, if not thousand, Canadian books in French alone; that's not even considering other francophone countries (most of which are life+70); or non-monographs, esp. magazines and other serials. I find the main problem for a lot of European imprints and the existing DP site is the infuriating lack of a publication date anywhere in the front or end matter. I would have picked up a lot of books in LOTE, including French, at recent sales; as it was I had to restrict myself to material that was either dated, or very very clearly pre-1923.

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eBooks in French
by Michael Hart 29 Nov '04

29 Nov '04

Will there be a particular interest in doing eBooks in French? If so, would you be willing to cooperate with volunteers who actually live in France [and other French speaking countries]? -(;-)

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Re: [d@DCC] Mr. James Rajotte and Hon. Liza Frulla speak in support of WIPO treaty ratification...
by Darryl Moore 28 Nov '04

28 Nov '04

Russell McOrmond wrote: > http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/584 > >>From the Hansard for Friday, November 26, 2004. Obviously letters from > constituents and other Canadians are needed to inform these members that > what the recording industry is asking for will not help Canadian > musicians, but harm them. > ---cut--- > > Hon. Liza Frulla (Minister of Canadian Heritage and Minister responsible > for Status of Women, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, we have also met with members of > the music industry. The whole copyright issue is indeed a critical one. We > are currently drafting a copyright bill with the Minister of Industry. We > intend to submit it to cabinet before Christmas, so that it can be > referred to a committee during the next session. > I'm am drafting bylaws and articles of incorporation now for Project Gutenberg. James Linden will be back this week and hopefully we can get the infrastructure up quickly. My hope and short term goal is that if we can have an established charitable corporation who's mandate is to protect public access to intellectual works, we will be more likely to be called as a witness before any such committee and our concerns will be taken more seriously. We will also be more likely to get media exposure. Question will be of course, how long will it take to get charitable status? I will try to get these documents up on a wiki somewhere this week so that others can offer suggestions as well. The corporation will have need of directors. I am hoping James and Wallace will both offer their services in this capacity. I have yet to ask. If anybody else is interested please let me know.

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Bad WIPO News
by Michael Hart 26 Nov '04

26 Nov '04

"In an October 15 speech, the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Jonathan Dudas, vowed that the U.S. government will `fight' proposals that aim to `fundamentally change the WIPO charter and philosophy' away from its current focus on the promotion of intellectual property."

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Re: [PGCanada] Re: Gutenberg site
by Wallace J.McLean 26 Nov '04

26 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: James Linden <jlinden(a)projectgutenberg.ca> Date: Thursday, November 25, 2004 2:59 pm Subject: [PGCanada] Re: Gutenberg site > Copying the existing sites from PG-USA or PG-AUS is a poor way to > get a > website up. Their sites are static and hell to maintain. I > personally > have no intention of building yet another headache. If we can wait > a few > days, I'll be back home and we can get something better going. Don't know about the site structure itself, but there are certainly a good many PG-US and PG-Aus titles which will qualify for inclusion in a PG-Can site; and many of them, at least on PG-US, are actually CanCon. So whatever the structure, I do hope we'll pilfer the content for all it's worth! ;)

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Re: [PGCanada] eBooks in French
by Wallace J.McLean 26 Nov '04

26 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> Date: Thursday, November 25, 2004 6:41 pm Subject: [PGCanada] eBooks in French > > Will there be a particular interest in doing eBooks in French? > > If so, would you be willing to cooperate with volunteers who > actually live in France [and other French speaking countries]? There's an outfit in Quebec that produces e-texts of public domain works, who I'd like to get involved once we're up and running. As for myself, I have PGDPed in French on a regular basis, and have Snatched content from Canadiana.org for use as future PGDP projects. I think once PG Canada is up and running, a lot of the volunteer interest may come from francophone regions of the country, esp. Quebec.

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Gutenberg site
by Darryl Moore 25 Nov '04

25 Nov '04

Hi James, I've had a really busy week, but I want to get back to doing what I can for PG Canada. It seems to me, that you have done some work already on the web site, you and Russell both have ISPs that can host it, and I and others in the forum have time we are willing to donate, so there is no technical reason we cannot move forward. Additionally, I have found a lawyer who will give us a deal on setting up a federal not-for-profit corp. Such an organization will provide a degree of legitimacy that just might help when Parliament gets around to discussing extending terms of copyright (which they will inevitably do!). I think we need to work on both of these in tandem. Can we start by copying the US or Australian site with some minor modifications for Canada and Canadian copyright laws? This I think, would get a working site up within weeks. I'm willing to do as much of the technical work to this end as I am capable. Then we can start looking at XML versions of the material for a new site. From what I've seen there is still a lot of discussion required for this to proceed. Also we need to talk about corporate plans and registration documents. Is there a Wiki we can use some place where we can start drafting these documents? A Wiki would be great because then everybody here can participate easily. Russell has one. Russell could we use a small corner for PG Canada? James, I asked before if you could act as a treasurer of sorts and collect/record/track some of the money we will need to set up this corporate entity. Can you do that? I'd start doing it all myself now except that I don't really think I can set up another site and start calling PG Canada without somebody's permission. Whos? And I don't have a server. I will however look into doing some draft corporate registration documentation, then when we get a Wiki up I'll share them. cheers, darryl

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Re: [PGCanada] James website and more news
by Wallace J.McLean 22 Nov '04

22 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> Date: Sunday, November 21, 2004 11:27 am Subject: Re: [PGCanada] James website and more news > > We shouldn't always be assuming that traditional creators and > smaller> publishers will never "see the light" and want to join > us. As a creator > > myself I believe in a strong and growing public domain, and find > that once > > they spend adequate time to think about it most other creators > do as well. > > You also never know what they might do to get addition publicity. > . . . Providing us with the content that charging-for-access is one of their main business lines, is not likely to be one of them.

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Re: [PGCanada] James website and more news
by Wallace J.McLean 21 Nov '04

21 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Jon Noring <jon(a)noring.name> Date: Thursday, November 11, 2004 11:47 am Subject: Re: [PGCanada] James website and more news > Well, it shows PG-Canada can find partners in the long-term endeavor > to convert the public domain works of Canadiana into high quality > digital texts. We're not likely to get partnership with Cold North Wind, who are in the business of selling content, although, who knows, they might donate some tech stuff if asked. PG/DP-int already have informal agreements with Canadiana.org and ourroots.ca. I've Project-Managed two Canadiana.org works onto the PG- int site already, with two more in my queue for post-processing.

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A bit of everything....
by James Linden 19 Nov '04

19 Nov '04

Hey list! Instead of doing to 4 line reply to each topic, I'm going to throw it all in on here. My apologies for being slow to reply. I'm currently on a working vacation in Utah, and only getting my email once or twice a day. I'm James Linden, currently the one trying to get PG Canada going. I have to say, it's great to see other people on the same side. :-) Regarding the website: Currently, the site is hosted by my own company, located in Barrie, ON. CompuSOLVE are the guys providing my 'net pipe, but they don't have anything to do with the site or the server it's on. I've not had a whole lot of time recently to do anything with the PG site, mostly because I've had to work like mad to make this 4 week trip possible around contracts, etc. Any ideas/help are great. 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. Regarding non profit: I have not been able to locate a lawyer, so that news is good news. I'll see what I can do about chipping in to cover the fees. 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. If my ideas are too much for the PG Canada group that is coming together here, I'll step aside and not get in the way. I'd rather learn the appropriate lessons from PG's experiences, and do something better, which, I must point out, it not hard. I realize this information is not complete, and I'll get more thoughts together ASAP... :-) Good to see everyone here on the list!!!!!!! Regards, James Linden jlinden(a)projectgutenberg.ca

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