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USA
25 April 2007
Michael S. Hart*

WIPO DAY RESPONSE

I have spent my entire career in fear of copyright, and rightfully so... as it appears that copyright has been extended specifically for purposes of stopping my career, and those like it. This may sound a bit egotist, but I am quite sure that my efforts to create a world public library for the purpose of helping people turn parts of their "personal computer" to a "personal library."

Before Johannes Gutenberg average people could own zero books.

Before Project Gutenberg average people could own zero libraries.

This is the course of history I am trying to emulate. As I see it books changed the world as much or more than anything else in the last 500, or so, years, first creating a revolution in literacy, which, under a cruel tutelage of The Stationers Guilds, languished at ~1%. Then subsequently that literacy revolution created The Scientific Revolution, which created the technology for The Industrial Revolution.

Sadly, most historians do not have a perspective that includes 300 years of span for any events, so they fail to see the connections above.

Nonetheless, I am confident that eBooks, the focus of my career, will be the same kind of catalyzing force as books of The Gutenberg Press were-- and that we will see a global rise in literacy, following by scientific, followed by technology to create "The Neo-Industrial Revolution."

The Neo-Industrial Revolution will change Mass Production into to a Neo-Mass Production starting with eBooks, as eBooks are literally a new make and model of distribution... killing off the "Limited Distribution" few and replacing it with the "Unlimited Distribution" many... as anyone is capable of creating and distributing all the eBooks anyone could want.

WIPO sees this as "The End of the World" just as The Stationers Company, in past times, saw The Gutenberg Press as the end of their world.

Since they could not COMPETE with the new technology of Gutenberg, their course of action was to try to make it ILLEGAL.

I probably don't have the space in this forum to go into all the detail, but The Stationers lobbied through a dozen monarchies before they got in with a weak enough person, Queen Anne, to get their law passed.

Since then, we have been stuck with a copyright law that everyone would/could not sign from ~1460 to ~1710... 250 years of "NO" to a "YES" that stifled the world of books ever since.

In the U.S., where I live, we have had the following:

1830 High Speed Steam Printing Press Stifled by the 1831 U.S. Copyright.

1900s High Speed Electric Printing Press Stifled by 1909 U.S. Copyright.

1960's Xerox Machine Technology Printers Stifled by 1976 U.S. Copyright.

1990's Internet Publishing Technoogies Stifled by 1998 U.S. Copyright.

All in all we have had FIVE possible "Information Ages" and each one has been very carefully smothered by the intrusion of legal manipulations to keep it from bringing masses of information to the masses of people.

My own efforts with Project Gutenberg over the past 36 years have been a victim TWICE of these copyright manipulations that removed MILLIONS of a public domain library of books from being included on the Internet.

I have much more to say on this subject, and will, with encouragement.

Thank You!!!

Give the world eBooks in 2007!!!

*Founder, Project Gutenberg, Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org