David Mehegan"Free chapter added to saga of e-books"
Project Gutenbergによると、７月４日から１か月間、The World eBook Fairが開催される。期間中、30万点の書籍が無料でダウンロード可能になる。また、書籍だけでなく、音楽ファイル、譜面、フィルムも。なお、この行事は来年以降も継続されるという。
引用の中のHartとは、Project Gutenbergの創設者Michael Hart氏である。
About 95 percent of the books are in the public domain and not subject to copyright law, Hart said. The copyright holders of the remaining 5 percent have given permission for use of their works. Copyright law generally protects a work for 70 years beyond the death of its creator.Roughly 20,000 of the books have been scanned by thousands of Gutenberg volunteers -- and are already available at gutenberg.org -- but the majority will be loaned to Gutenberg for the month by more than 100 e-book libraries, including the World eBook Library, which normally charges a fee for temporary access. As many as 100,000 of the 300,000 books will remain available permanently. Gutenberg plans to offer 500,000 books in next year's fair, 750,000 in 2008, and 1 million in 2009. Still, even these numbers are a fraction of the tens of millions of books that have been published throughout history.
Project Gutenbergって、創設されて既に35年なんですね。
See also http://eunheui.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2006/06/post_2c79.html
