From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Feb 1 16:26:44 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 19:26:44 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] abbyy competitive upgrade for $100 Message-ID: heads-up. just got an offer from abbyy for a competitive upgrade for $99.99. -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080201/2d60152f/attachment.htm From traverso at posso.dm.unipi.it Fri Feb 1 22:05:13 2008 From: traverso at posso.dm.unipi.it (Carlo Traverso) Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 07:05:13 +0100 (CET) Subject: [gutvol-d] Corrupted file, Collected Gut Works of Mark Twain In-Reply-To: <20080202040613.GO27342@localhost> (message from Larry Marso on Fri, 1 Feb 2008 20:06:13 -0800) References: <20080202040613.GO27342@localhost> Message-ID: <20080202060513.2C4A393B62@posso.dm.unipi.it> >>>>> "Larry" == Larry Marso writes: Larry> Is this the right list on which to report that the file of Larry> the "collected works" is corrupted? Both the .txt and the Larry> .html contained in the zip file terminate before even the Larry> first Twain text ends. The correct address is errata at pglaf.org (see http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Contact_Information ) This message is CCed to errata, so you don't need to resend. Carlo From greg at durendal.org Sat Feb 2 07:20:39 2008 From: greg at durendal.org (Greg Weeks) Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 10:20:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Shike by Robert J. Shea Message-ID: In case anyone is interested, Shike by Robert J. Shea of the Illuminatus fame has been posted by his son under a Creative Commons license. Mike is interested in having his fathers works available. All Things Are Lights is also up under a CC license. If anyone is interested in pulling these into PG I'll forward an introsuction to Mike for you. I'll be working on three works that haven't been scanned yet. I'll be running them through PGDP. -- Greg Weeks http://durendal.org:8080/greg/ From gpmilliken at ziacles.com Sat Feb 2 08:17:59 2008 From: gpmilliken at ziacles.com (George Milliken) Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:17:59 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Shike by Robert J. Shea In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1201969079.11576.2.camel@zippy> Sure I'll volunteer to help with this. -- Regards, George P. Milliken, DBA Ziacles Corporation On Sat, 2008-02-02 at 10:20 -0500, Greg Weeks wrote: > In case anyone is interested, Shike by Robert J. Shea of the Illuminatus > fame has been posted by his son under a Creative Commons license. Mike is > interested in having his fathers works available. All Things Are Lights is > also up under a CC license. If anyone is interested in pulling these into > PG I'll forward an introsuction to Mike for you. I'll be working on three > works that haven't been scanned yet. I'll be running them through PGDP. > From Bowerbird at aol.com Sun Feb 3 13:54:35 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 16:54:35 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] third-hand discussion Message-ID: i seem to be having a third-hand discussion of some sort with some people over at distributed proofreaders about the mechanics of a "roundless" system. someone said: > It's easy to say a page is "done" when several people consecutively proof it > without making changes but that's inefficient and demotivating to users. i'm glad we at least have an acknowledgment that this is an "easy" measure. otherwise, i'd have to seriously question their grasp of reality over there... in terms of whether such a system is "inefficient" or not, it's probably good to remember that d.p. has an _excess_ of proofers working in the p1 round. these are good people, volunteering their time and energy, doing good work. do they get any thanks? not much, not lately. instead, they being _blamed_ for being too productive, because they've "overloaded" all of the later rounds. at the same time, they're being told they "aren't good enough proofers" to take part in the later rounds, in spite of the fact that all of the experiments have shown that when text goes through multiple passes at p1, it becomes _remarkably_clean_. making good use of a resource you have in abundance is _not_ "inefficient", not by any reasonably intelligent definition of the term. likewise, i don't see how a roundless system is "demotivating" to anyone. what is "demotivating" is telling people that they "aren't good enough" to proof in the later rounds, and subjecting them to blame for doing their job. there's some awfully sloppy thinking going on over there. awfully sloppy... -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080203/74c25c1a/attachment.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Feb 4 00:56:11 2008 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 09:56:11 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] third-hand discussion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi All, How can a proofing job not be inefficient and demotivating. Proofing is very boring. How can one not be good enough for proofing. I have scan alot. Furthermore, in languages that I do not understand and yet they come out 100%. You know you have the original (scan) to compare to!! Then again DP does more than proofing the scans. regards Keith. Am 03.02.2008 um 22:54 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > i seem to be having a third-hand discussion of some sort with some > people > over at distributed proofreaders about the mechanics of a > "roundless" system. > > someone said: > > It's easy to say a page is "done" when several people > consecutively proof it > > without making changes but that's inefficient and demotivating > to users. > > i'm glad we at least have an acknowledgment that this is an "easy" > measure. > otherwise, i'd have to seriously question their grasp of reality > over there... > > in terms of whether such a system is "inefficient" or not, it's > probably good > to remember that d.p. has an _excess_ of proofers working in the p1 > round. > these are good people, volunteering their time and energy, doing > good work. > > do they get any thanks? not much, not lately. instead, they being > _blamed_ > for being too productive, because they've "overloaded" all of the > later rounds. > > at the same time, they're being told they "aren't good enough > proofers" to > take part in the later rounds, in spite of the fact that all of the > experiments > have shown that when text goes through multiple passes at p1, it > becomes > _remarkably_clean_. making good use of a resource you have in > abundance > is _not_ "inefficient", not by any reasonably intelligent > definition of the term. > > likewise, i don't see how a roundless system is "demotivating" to > anyone. > what is "demotivating" is telling people that they "aren't good > enough" to > proof in the later rounds, and subjecting them to blame for doing > their job. > > there's some awfully sloppy thinking going on over there. awfully > sloppy... > > -bowerbird > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080204/9cdd3ffd/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 4 10:05:54 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:05:54 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] third-hand discussion Message-ID: keith said: > How can a proofing job not be inefficient and demotivating. > Proofing is very boring. depends on how you do it, i guess. if you're proofing every word on every page against a scan, then yes, _i_ would consider that boring, beyond all words. i'd also consider it to be inefficient, in almost all cases... my clean-up tools help me to deliver a product that has less than 1-error-in-10-pages -- usually much less -- and i typically do _not_ find this clean-up is boring at all. oh yeah, since i don't remember if i've mentioned it directly, _my_ take on the "confidence-in-page" measure is reflected in my tools. if they don't flag anything on a page, that means that i consider that page to be "good-enough" to end proofing. so, in a very real sense, i've already answered the question that they are now trying to answer over at d.p. > How can one not be good enough for proofing. go over to d.p. and -- once you have enough time on-site, and have proofed enough pages -- you will become eligible to undergo a process to determine if you're "good enough" to graduate from the p1 proofing round to the p2 proofing round. later, after you've proofed more pages, with more time on-site, you can be tested to see if you are "good enough" to be in p3... these tests involve someone looking at pages that you've done; depending on what you have failed to catch, you'll fail the test... > I have scan alot. Furthermore, in languages that I do not > understand and yet they come out 100%. you might think you're getting everything right. people often do _think_ so. but in point of fact, most people usually miss some. it is only after having been shown this, and taken measures to see what they're missing, that people tend to up their accuracy. and there are other forces at work as well. a lot of proofers say they prefer to work in p1 rounds because there is less pressure; since they know that other proofers will do the page after them, they don't feel they have to be "perfect". of course, oftentimes, on many pages, they actually _are_ perfect, so that's a bit ironic. > You know you have the original (scan) to compare to!! yeah, that makes it easier. > Then again DP does more than proofing the scans. well, they do. but all we're talking about now is the proofing step. -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080204/72cd481b/attachment.htm From creeva at gmail.com Mon Feb 4 10:12:38 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:12:38 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] third-hand discussion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2510ddab0802041012u7da7144fy7e9c93551b2c99d8@mail.gmail.com> Then why don't you get in contact with more P1 proofers and make them well aware of the tool (since i'm sure a large portion doesn't read or interact with the mailing list) and make their lives easier. If the proof is in the pudding - add your own milk to the mix and see if they actually start adopting it on some scale. On Feb 4, 2008 1:05 PM, wrote: > keith said: > > How can a proofing job not be inefficient and demotivating. > > Proofing is very boring. > > depends on how you do it, i guess. > > if you're proofing every word on every page against a scan, > then yes, _i_ would consider that boring, beyond all words. > > i'd also consider it to be inefficient, in almost all cases... > > my clean-up tools help me to deliver a product that has > less than 1-error-in-10-pages -- usually much less -- > and i typically do _not_ find this clean-up is boring at all. > > oh yeah, since i don't remember if i've mentioned it directly, > _my_ take on the "confidence-in-page" measure is reflected > in my tools. if they don't flag anything on a page, that means > that i consider that page to be "good-enough" to end proofing. > so, in a very real sense, i've already answered the question that > they are now trying to answer over at d.p. > > > > > How can one not be good enough for proofing. > > go over to d.p. and -- once you have enough time on-site, > and have proofed enough pages -- you will become eligible > to undergo a process to determine if you're "good enough" to > graduate from the p1 proofing round to the p2 proofing round. > > later, after you've proofed more pages, with more time on-site, > you can be tested to see if you are "good enough" to be in p3... > > these tests involve someone looking at pages that you've done; > depending on what you have failed to catch, you'll fail the test... > > > > > I have scan alot. Furthermore, in languages that I do not > > understand and yet they come out 100%. > > you might think you're getting everything right. people often do > _think_ so. but in point of fact, most people usually miss some. > it is only after having been shown this, and taken measures to > see what they're missing, that people tend to up their accuracy. > > and there are other forces at work as well. a lot of proofers say > they prefer to work in p1 rounds because there is less pressure; > since they know that other proofers will do the page after them, > they don't feel they have to be "perfect". of course, oftentimes, > on many pages, they actually _are_ perfect, so that's a bit ironic. > > > > > You know you have the original (scan) to compare to!! > > yeah, that makes it easier. > > > > > Then again DP does more than proofing the scans. > > well, they do. but all we're talking about now is the proofing step. > > -bowerbird > > > > > ************** > Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. > > (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp00300000002548) > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > From hart at pglaf.org Mon Feb 4 10:17:10 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 10:17:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] third-hand discussion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > keith said: >> How can a proofing job not be inefficient and demotivating. >> Proofing is very boring. For those of us who are working on creating a library that billions of people will hopefully use in the future, error correction is highly motivating as we think of billions of times people will use, and hopefully appreciate, our work. This is what motivated me when I was typing in the earlier works by hand, and people asked me then how I could sit in that chair day after day, and night after night, and I had answered then as I do now, I just think of all persons who will ever read these books, and that is the motivation. Not to mention, of course, that _I_ get to use the eBooks! We just want the world to be a better place, and books are the most efficient way I know to bring that about. I am expecting eBooks to change the world as much, or more than did The Gutenberg Press, causing Literacy Revolutions and Scientific Revolutiona and Neo-Industrial Revolutions. THAT is the motivation. . . . Just chaning/saving the world is all. . . . > > depends on how you do it, i guess. > > if you're proofing every word on every page against a scan, > then yes, _i_ would consider that boring, beyond all words. > > i'd also consider it to be inefficient, in almost all cases... > > my clean-up tools help me to deliver a product that has > less than 1-error-in-10-pages -- usually much less -- > and i typically do _not_ find this clean-up is boring at all. > > oh yeah, since i don't remember if i've mentioned it directly, > _my_ take on the "confidence-in-page" measure is reflected > in my tools. if they don't flag anything on a page, that means > that i consider that page to be "good-enough" to end proofing. > so, in a very real sense, i've already answered the question that > they are now trying to answer over at d.p. > > >> How can one not be good enough for proofing. > > go over to d.p. and -- once you have enough time on-site, > and have proofed enough pages -- you will become eligible > to undergo a process to determine if you're "good enough" to > graduate from the p1 proofing round to the p2 proofing round. > > later, after you've proofed more pages, with more time on-site, > you can be tested to see if you are "good enough" to be in p3... > > these tests involve someone looking at pages that you've done; > depending on what you have failed to catch, you'll fail the test... > > >> I have scan alot. Furthermore, in languages that I do not >> understand and yet they come out 100%. > > you might think you're getting everything right. people often do > _think_ so. but in point of fact, most people usually miss some. > it is only after having been shown this, and taken measures to > see what they're missing, that people tend to up their accuracy. > > and there are other forces at work as well. a lot of proofers say > they prefer to work in p1 rounds because there is less pressure; > since they know that other proofers will do the page after them, > they don't feel they have to be "perfect". of course, oftentimes, > on many pages, they actually _are_ perfect, so that's a bit ironic. > > >> You know you have the original (scan) to compare to!! > > yeah, that makes it easier. > > >> Then again DP does more than proofing the scans. > > well, they do. but all we're talking about now is the proofing step. > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. > > (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 > 48) > From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 4 10:33:26 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:33:26 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] third-hand discussion Message-ID: brent said: > Then why don't you get in contact with more P1 proofers > and make them well aware of the tool my tools would actually be used _before_ the book went into the rounds... and when i was permitted to speak in the distributed proofreader forums, i did indeed make all kinds of noises on the huge benefits of precleaning... i also offered to consult with them on the development of their own tools. i had some impact on some individuals, who realized that they could spend a little bit of extra time and save proofers a _ton_ of time. but that was it... i don't feel that i had very much influence on the overall practices at the site. luckily, one of the few individuals on whom i had some impact was dkretz, who is a programmer, so he has written some tools that _could_ eventually be adopted on a larger basis. i might have also had some impact on rfrank, another programmer who has written such tools. people using these tools will -- over the course of time -- discover that they work well, and thus will continue using them and even spread the word to other people, so i remain optimistic for the long-term. but, in the short-term, it's amusing to see these people flail about so... in answer to your questions, though, i _have_ offered to help the d.p. people. repeatedly. because they need help badly. but they don't want help from me. they don't like my "tone"... :+) so what can i say? there's no negative consequence to wasting the time of your volunteers _if_ you have a lot of 'em, _and_ you silence the one person who keeps pointing out that you are wasting the time of your volunteers... -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080204/b6657c22/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 4 10:46:15 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:46:15 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] third-hand discussion Message-ID: michael said: > For those of us who are working on creating a library > that billions of people will hopefully use in the future, > error correction is highly motivating as we think of billions > of times people will use, and hopefully appreciate, our work. there's no question that we need for our books to be correct. there is a big question about how we go about obtaining that. and distributed proofreaders is pursing _all_ the wrong angles... and one consequence of their wrongheadedness is that they are making themselves inadequate to the task, in a number of ways... their biggest failure is the small number of books they digitize... last year d.p. did 2,345 books. on saturday, umichigan reported they now have one million books digitized in the google project. it should be obvious to all that we need to change our workflow... otherwise, the e-book of the future will be defined as a scan-set, by virtue of the simple hard reality of the fact of large numbers... -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080204/fc9a9527/attachment.htm From paulmaas at airpost.net Mon Feb 4 15:35:35 2008 From: paulmaas at airpost.net (Paul Maas) Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:35:35 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: <1202168135.12595.1235062489@webmail.messagingengine.com> bowerbird has a number of very good ideas. Why was he banned from the dp forum? Paul -- Paul Maas paulmaas at airpost.net -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Access all of your messages and folders wherever you are From grythumn at gmail.com Mon Feb 4 15:53:59 2008 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 18:53:59 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: <1202168135.12595.1235062489@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1202168135.12595.1235062489@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50802041553p6c12f252jf7d83f2016abd4a2@mail.gmail.com> http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/2007-June/006709.html http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27473&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=banned&start=0 R C On Feb 4, 2008 6:35 PM, Paul Maas wrote: > bowerbird has a number of very good ideas. > > Why was he banned from the dp forum? > > Paul > -- > Paul Maas > paulmaas at airpost.net > > -- > http://www.fastmail.fm - Access all of your messages and folders > wherever you are > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080204/107c95eb/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 4 16:20:42 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:20:42 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: paul said: > bowerbird has a number of very good ideas. > Why was he banned from the dp forum? for the same reason galileo angered the church... (not that i'm actually comparing us two, mind you. he made a revolution; i merely talk common sense.) but if you upset the status quo of their worshipers, the authorities will decide to deal with you harshly. (this assumes the worshipers don't lynch you first.) it doesn't matter if you are wrong or right. indeed, you're considered more dangerous if you're right... -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080204/1cb73ce5/attachment.htm From donovan at abs.net Mon Feb 4 16:04:12 2008 From: donovan at abs.net (D Garcia) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:04:12 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: <1202168135.12595.1235062489@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1202168135.12595.1235062489@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <200802041904.13158.donovan@abs.net> On Monday 04 February 2008 18:35, Paul Maas wrote: > bowerbird has a number of very good ideas. > > Why was he banned from the dp forum? > Paul This is the relevant email as it went out to gutvol-d: On Thursday 21 June 2007 20:45, Juliet Sutherland wrote: > I have taken the unprecendented step of banning bowerbird from the DP > forums. His behavior there, despite many warnings, has continued to be > insulting. I expect that he will now start posting again here. > > JulietS From creeva at gmail.com Mon Feb 4 17:26:15 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 20:26:15 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2510ddab0802041726u1e156149ra874ea0d9ba17b9b@mail.gmail.com> So they are more Cathedral then Bazaar it seems. On Feb 4, 2008 7:20 PM, wrote: > paul said: > > bowerbird has a number of very good ideas. > > Why was he banned from the dp forum? > > for the same reason galileo angered the church... > (not that i'm actually comparing us two, mind you. > he made a revolution; i merely talk common sense.) > > but if you upset the status quo of their worshipers, > the authorities will decide to deal with you harshly. > (this assumes the worshipers don't lynch you first.) > > it doesn't matter if you are wrong or right. indeed, > you're considered more dangerous if you're right... > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. > > (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp00300000002548) > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > From prosfilaes at gmail.com Mon Feb 4 18:09:11 2008 From: prosfilaes at gmail.com (David Starner) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 21:09:11 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802041726u1e156149ra874ea0d9ba17b9b@mail.gmail.com> References: <2510ddab0802041726u1e156149ra874ea0d9ba17b9b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d99d1fd0802041809l36d9d1c6te025be2c4505c494@mail.gmail.com> On Feb 4, 2008 8:26 PM, Brent Gueth wrote: > So they are more Cathedral then Bazaar it seems. Bowerbird's ban was not regretted by many in DP. I fail to see how a community ban of an individual is cathedral; in a real bazaar, there's a point at which they will remove a disruptive person from the bazaar, with force if necessary. From hart at pglaf.org Mon Feb 4 20:31:38 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 20:31:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802041726u1e156149ra874ea0d9ba17b9b@mail.gmail.com> References: <2510ddab0802041726u1e156149ra874ea0d9ba17b9b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Brent Gueth wrote: > So they are more Cathedral then Bazaar it seems. > > On Feb 4, 2008 7:20 PM, wrote: >> paul said: >> > bowerbird has a number of very good ideas. >> > Why was he banned from the dp forum? >> >> for the same reason galileo angered the church... >> (not that i'm actually comparing us two, mind you. >> he made a revolution; Actually, Galileo made THE revolution, from which the term came to later revolutions from. . . . ;-) >> i merely talk common sense.) >> >> but if you upset the status quo of their worshipers, >> the authorities will decide to deal with you harshly. >> (this assumes the worshipers don't lynch you first.) >> >> it doesn't matter if you are wrong or right. indeed, >> you're considered more dangerous if you're right... >> >> -bowerbird >> >> >> >> ************** >> Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. >> >> (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp00300000002548) >> _______________________________________________ >> gutvol-d mailing list >> gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >> http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >> >> > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 4 20:58:34 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 23:58:34 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: michael said: > Actually, Galileo made THE revolution, > from which the term came to later revolutions from. . . . > ;-) i was hoping someone would catch that reference... ;+) *** brent said: > So they are more Cathedral then Bazaar it seems. ding ding! very clever play on words... :+) but actually, i'd say they created a bazaar, but now have come to worship it, and thus consider it a cathedral, so if you want to repair a wing, they consider you a heretic. :+) -bowerbird p.s. i haven't "insulted" anyone over there either... they might _feel_ that i have, but that has never -- ever -- been my intent. i consider all of the people over there to have good intentions; after all, they're volunteering time and energy to digitize books. juliet has made some bad decisions, but that's probably because she doesn't have time to remove herself sufficiently from all the day-to-day operations so she can think things through clearly. she's way busy running a scanner and doing all kinds of things. in a phrase, she's working too hard. i don't mean to insult her... ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080204/19395b29/attachment.htm From creeva at gmail.com Tue Feb 5 06:04:24 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 09:04:24 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2510ddab0802050604l3f56071dgf5d7af87fe32b2fd@mail.gmail.com> At least someone enjoyed my pun - but on a serious note I understand that bowerbird can be hard to swallow sometimes. I understand him, I'm similar just not as abrupt. That being said I know and accept that they have a write to remove him from their "bazaar" - since I'm not a member of the forum over there I just hope this is the anomaly since disenfranchising volunteers from your goal especially when they want to help (regardless of personal viewpoints or mannerism between them) is never a good thing. If this is the exception to the rule that's fine, just be very careful it doesn't become the rule. Too many things break down because of personal politics that should be kept separate from any organizationals goal. I'll leave it at that and say nothing more on this subject, hopefully the feathers I slightly ruffled will slide gracefully back into place. On Feb 4, 2008 11:58 PM, wrote: > michael said: > > Actually, Galileo made THE revolution, > > from which the term came to later revolutions from. . . . > > ;-) > > i was hoping someone would catch that reference... ;+) > > *** > > brent said: > > So they are more Cathedral then Bazaar it seems. > > ding ding! very clever play on words... :+) > > but actually, i'd say they created a bazaar, but now have > come to worship it, and thus consider it a cathedral, so > if you want to repair a wing, they consider you a heretic. :+) > > -bowerbird > > p.s. i haven't "insulted" anyone over there either... they might > _feel_ that i have, but that has never -- ever -- been my intent. > i consider all of the people over there to have good intentions; > after all, they're volunteering time and energy to digitize books. > juliet has made some bad decisions, but that's probably because > she doesn't have time to remove herself sufficiently from all the > day-to-day operations so she can think things through clearly. > she's way busy running a scanner and doing all kinds of things. > in a phrase, she's working too hard. i don't mean to insult her... > > > > > ************** > Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. > > (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp00300000002548) > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > From joshua at hutchinson.net Tue Feb 5 07:04:11 2008 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 15:04:11 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: <1552393411.91111202223851287.JavaMail.mail@webmail01> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080205/7986a420/attachment-0001.htm From vze3rknp at verizon.net Tue Feb 5 07:44:00 2008 From: vze3rknp at verizon.net (Juliet Sutherland) Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:44:00 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802050604l3f56071dgf5d7af87fe32b2fd@mail.gmail.com> References: <2510ddab0802050604l3f56071dgf5d7af87fe32b2fd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47A88440.9070108@verizon.net> Brent Gueth wrote: > I know and accept > that they have a write to remove him from their "bazaar" - since I'm > not a member of the forum over there I just hope this is the anomaly > since disenfranchising volunteers from your goal especially when they > want to help (regardless of personal viewpoints or mannerism between > them) is never a good thing. > I agree with you whole-heartedly. It has been my policy, following the lead of Charles Franks, DP's founder, to always err on the side of free speech. We have very occasionally asked a volunteer to edit a post that was particularly offensive and even more rarely have done so ourselves. Fortunately the DP forums seem to be largely self-policing and we have relatively little trouble with flame wars, trolls, etc. In the entire history of the DP forums (~6 yrs), we have only ever banned one person. Many volunteers wrote to me requesting that he be banned and I resisted doing so for several years, partly as a matter of principle and partly because he does sometimes have interesting and valid things to say. Finally, when a number of key volunteers were getting ready to leave because of the disruptions he was causing in the forums, and when his posts became insulting, demeaning, and hurtful, I was forced to take the unprecedented step of banning him. We know that he reads the DP forums under other identities and have no problem with that. I sincerely hope that it will be a very long time before anyone else is banned and I hope that I never have to do something like that again. I should also say that bowerbird's only contribution to DP has been constant criticism. He proofed 32 pages while we were still in the 2 round system (that is, over 2.5 yrs ago). It takes time for a large community like DP to make changes, particularly when we have a desperate shortage of developers. bowerbird drops in, makes many logical suggestions, but does no work towards the common good, thus earning no respect from the community, and then mocks and belittles when his suggestions aren't followed. This is not a constructive way to get things to change. bowerbird mentions being banned from the DP forums often enough on this list that I think he is actually proud of it. I still wish it hadn't been necessary. JulietS Distributed Proofreaders From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Tue Feb 5 07:36:39 2008 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 16:36:39 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802050604l3f56071dgf5d7af87fe32b2fd@mail.gmail.com> References: <2510ddab0802050604l3f56071dgf5d7af87fe32b2fd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080205153639.GA20320@ark.in-berlin.de> > ... when they want to help That snippet is a clear sign that you're not long enough on 'the net' to recognize that 'want to help' and 'actually do something useful instead of blathering' is very different. There are enough ideas around but so preciously few people able and willing to create a reality and work at maintaining it. ralf From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 5 20:25:58 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 23:25:58 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: ralf said: > That snippet is a clear sign that > you're not long enough on 'the net' > to recognize that 'want to help' and > 'actually do something useful instead > of blathering' is very different. more garbage. i do lots of research and churn up a _ton_ of actual work, not to mention working _products_... trying to dismiss what i do as "blathering" is one of the weakest replies you can muster... > There are enough ideas around > but so preciously few people > able and willing to create a reality > and work at maintaining it. more garbage. i implement my own ideas; i do my own research, write my own apps... i don't sit around expecting anyone else to. *** on a meta-level, what's interesting here is how these people write these obvious _falsehoods_ -- which they must know i will crush easily -- except they're counting on the fact that their tight little circle routes me to their kill-folders, so they never see the falsehoods being crushed. they're all living in an echo-chamber where the "correction factor" has been tuned out to silence. so their idiocies are perpetuated, even reinforced. -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080205/d2706de6/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Feb 6 10:18:00 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:18:00 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: every story has 2 sides. some stories have 87 sides. :+) josh says that i've also been banned from this listserve. that's kind of true -- i was "officially put on moderation" for a dozen posts or so a few years back -- but it was the same group of people who "complained" here that then -- later -- engineered the "protests" at the d.p. forums... i'm sure people here are well familiar with the way that they used to constantly try to embroil me in conflict here. but i eventually out-argued all of them, and they gave up. free speech is the sunshine that kills off all the bad germs. (thanks for allowing free speech on this listserve, michael.) still, as i have said freely in the past, i _have_ been banned from various listserves at several places across cyberspace. i'm the kind of person who speaks his mind. honestly. plus, once i've decided i don't care if i get banned or not, i'm disinclined to flinch when an administrator pushes it. (that's what gets you banned, by the way. it's _not_ what happens before then, which is given as "official reason"; it is the fact that you have pissed off the "administrator", usually by expressing unconcern over their power to ban; the powerholders want you to kiss the ring of their power.) i'm the kind of person who speaks his mind. honestly. for instance, back in the days when smoking out in public was allowed here in california, i would regularly tell smokers when their cigarette smoke was causing people a problem... (never much bothered me, since my parents smoked, but...) and, over the past few years (they seem to have learned), when people were talking too loud on their cell-phones, i'd be the one person in the crowd saying "quiet down"... when guys try to cut in line, i'm the one saying "no sir", pointing them to the back of the line like everyone else. and when some guy is verbally abusing a woman in public, i am the person who confronts him to "stop being a jerk"... almost _invariably_, these people will then turn on _me_. they tell me to mind my own business, that i am "rude" -- that _i_ am the one being rude, can you believe it?, because i had the audacity to say _they_ were rude -- and they'll yell at me, curse, and try to intimidate me... some of 'em even threaten to escalate it up to violence. this is why the average person won't confront these idiots. but i'm not the average person. not by a long shot... so too with these "responses" from d.p. they want you to believe i'm rude. i'm not rude, i'm honest. and smart enough to figure out where their workflow fails, and i am _brave_ enough to tell them directly, to their face... when it became clear to them that they couldn't intimidate me into silence, they decided to prevent me from speaking. at least in _their_ forums. but cyberspace has lots of mikes. lots of soapboxes from which free speech can be delivered. you can even buy a soapbox. very cheap. dreamhost.com. i don't mean to insult people. or, as josh claims, "hurt" people. but i've also learned that some people will _act_ "insulted" and _pretend_ they are "hurt", just to get you to shut up... ironically, the same people who are busy calling you "rude" will be unbelievably _insulting_ and _hurtful_ to you in return. (which is the way that you can easily expose their hypocrisy.) look at the current exchange, if you need to see an example. i went to graduate school at a major university in social psych, so i know the behavior of most people is dictated largely by the social situation, and not enduring aspects of their "personality". so i bend over backwards to explain the actions of my critics in terms of the situation -- e.g., i'm "challenging their beliefs". meanwhile, they are busy explaining my actions in terms of enduring aspects of my personality, i.e., the call me "rude"... with a straight face, they tell you i _enjoy_conflict_. what b.s. they _create_ the conflict, and then try to pin the blame on me. total b.s. i'm the one who comes in with well-reasoned arguments and tons of evidence from actual research. i'm the one who makes a strong appeal to your common sense. they use name-calling, and say that i am "a troll". but you know what? that line about "not feeding the troll" is instructive. since i've put these people in my spam folder, and stopped responding to their nonsense, because they lost all credibility, the arguments stopped here... you want more irony? there's a post i've already written, sitting in my out-box, where i discuss file-naming in regard to images in a book's scan-set... this is an issue i discussed lots of times, both here on this list and over on the d.p. forums. and one of my biggest antagonists was david starner. the david starner who just weighed in here... except now david is a big supporter of what _i_ always suggested. heck, if you read the current d.p. forum threads, you'd think it was _his_ idea all along. did he "change his mind". or is he a hypocrite? well, you can draw your own conclusion... as i said above, i have an education in social psychology at the level of graduate-school... finally, several of my critics charge that i don't volunteer to help. this is a big steaming pile of crap. i have offered to help d.p. _lots_ of times, on all kinds of things. these offers have been met with stony silence. here was one: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=273937#273937 > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=284440#284440 where i made the offer -- and the silence -- and the subsequent _withdrawal_ of the offer -- explicit, thus obvious to _everyone_... it was another situation where juliet was telling people that they needed a complicated process -- she hoped for university-level computer-science interns to do it for them -- except i was able to describe a very simple procedure for getting the info they wanted, using data that is readily available to them. my exact language: > make a list of the metadata you want to acquire and i'll be happy to > guide you on how you can scrub the o.c.r. and/or the scans to get it. often i go ahead and give elaborate details on those topics here (indeed, i did that for some variables on that metadata subject), knowing full well that d.p. won't implement _anything_ i suggest, not unless/until they can whitewash it as "their own idea", (as per david starner's major file-naming turnaround mentioned above)... heck, i have even gone and programmed web-based prototypes for some of my suggestions, which -- as far as i know -- weren't even _looked_at_. they were most certainly never commented on. here's another reference to an offer that expired: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=283263#283263 as _final_ proof, if anyone wants to talk about any of these topics _right_here_ and _right_now_, i will be happy to extend my help... as long as you're willing to _learn_how_to_fish_ -- rather than just whining because i won't _give_ you a fish -- i'm happy to teach you. so this whole "doesn't help" lie is just another one of their big lies. besides, as i've remarked, most of what i say is _common_sense_: simple ideas needing little elaboration, because they are obvious, and obviously true. so i "help" d.p. by simply _expressing_ them... it's true that i "only" proofed a few pages under the d.p. system. what a nightmare! making the same correction on many pages when it could (and should) be done as a global change _once_... a spellchecker to which you couldn't add words (like _names_), so it continued to flag them over and over and over and over... fixing errors that a clean-up program would fix automatically... crappy scans to proof against, and crappy o.c.r. to begin with... a nightmare! god, i felt like i was losing brain-cells at an ever-increasing rate, quickly becoming an idiot in a system that is designed for idiots, one which clearly does not respect the contributions of volunteers. i have starkly documented the shortcomings in their workflow, so why would i waste my own time and energy doing any work there? proofing every word on every page is a recipe for total irrelevance. do critics of scientology have to join the cult and work their way up in order to criticize it? i don't think so. i think that'd be ridiculous... bottom line, my antagonists cannot argue with my criticism of d.p., so they try to make _me_ the issue. i'm resilient enough to ignore it. the question is whether _you_ are gonna fall for their diversion? quick, answer me, what was my topic of discussion before this? -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080206/ab112405/attachment.htm From paulmaas at airpost.net Wed Feb 6 14:25:27 2008 From: paulmaas at airpost.net (Paul Maas) Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:25:27 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1202336727.884.1235478595@webmail.messagingengine.com> I apologize to all for starting this thread. I got my original question answered, and more On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:18:00 EST, Bowerbird at aol.com said: > every story has 2 sides. > > some stories have 87 sides. :+) > > josh says that i've also been banned from this listserve. > that's kind of true -- i was "officially put on moderation" > for a dozen posts or so a few years back -- but it was the > same group of people who "complained" here that then > -- later -- engineered the "protests" at the d.p. forums... > > i'm sure people here are well familiar with the way that > they used to constantly try to embroil me in conflict here. > but i eventually out-argued all of them, and they gave up. > free speech is the sunshine that kills off all the bad germs. > (thanks for allowing free speech on this listserve, michael.) > > still, as i have said freely in the past, i _have_ been banned > from various listserves at several places across cyberspace. > > i'm the kind of person who speaks his mind. honestly. > > plus, once i've decided i don't care if i get banned or not, > i'm disinclined to flinch when an administrator pushes it. > (that's what gets you banned, by the way. it's _not_ what > happens before then, which is given as "official reason"; > it is the fact that you have pissed off the "administrator", > usually by expressing unconcern over their power to ban; > the powerholders want you to kiss the ring of their power.) > > i'm the kind of person who speaks his mind. honestly. > > for instance, back in the days when smoking out in public > was allowed here in california, i would regularly tell smokers > when their cigarette smoke was causing people a problem... > (never much bothered me, since my parents smoked, but...) > > and, over the past few years (they seem to have learned), > when people were talking too loud on their cell-phones, > i'd be the one person in the crowd saying "quiet down"... > > when guys try to cut in line, i'm the one saying "no sir", > pointing them to the back of the line like everyone else. > > and when some guy is verbally abusing a woman in public, > i am the person who confronts him to "stop being a jerk"... > > almost _invariably_, these people will then turn on _me_. > > they tell me to mind my own business, that i am "rude" > -- that _i_ am the one being rude, can you believe it?, > because i had the audacity to say _they_ were rude -- > and they'll yell at me, curse, and try to intimidate me... > some of 'em even threaten to escalate it up to violence. > > this is why the average person won't confront these idiots. > but i'm not the average person. not by a long shot... > > so too with these "responses" from d.p. > > they want you to believe i'm rude. i'm not rude, i'm honest. > and smart enough to figure out where their workflow fails, > and i am _brave_ enough to tell them directly, to their face... > > when it became clear to them that they couldn't intimidate > me into silence, they decided to prevent me from speaking. > at least in _their_ forums. but cyberspace has lots of mikes. > lots of soapboxes from which free speech can be delivered. > you can even buy a soapbox. very cheap. dreamhost.com. > > i don't mean to insult people. or, as josh claims, "hurt" people. > > but i've also learned that some people will _act_ "insulted" > and _pretend_ they are "hurt", just to get you to shut up... > > ironically, the same people who are busy calling you "rude" > will be unbelievably _insulting_ and _hurtful_ to you in return. > (which is the way that you can easily expose their hypocrisy.) > > look at the current exchange, if you need to see an example. > > i went to graduate school at a major university in social psych, > so i know the behavior of most people is dictated largely by the > social situation, and not enduring aspects of their "personality". > > so i bend over backwards to explain the actions of my critics > in terms of the situation -- e.g., i'm "challenging their beliefs". > > meanwhile, they are busy explaining my actions in terms of > enduring aspects of my personality, i.e., the call me "rude"... > with a straight face, they tell you i _enjoy_conflict_. what b.s. > they _create_ the conflict, and then try to pin the blame on me. > total b.s. > > i'm the one who comes in with well-reasoned arguments and > tons of evidence from actual research. i'm the one who makes > a strong appeal to your common sense. they use name-calling, > and say that i am "a troll". but you know what? that line about > "not feeding the troll" is instructive. since i've put these people > in my spam folder, and stopped responding to their nonsense, > because they lost all credibility, the arguments stopped here... > > you want more irony? > > there's a post i've already written, sitting in my out-box, where > i discuss file-naming in regard to images in a book's scan-set... > > this is an issue i discussed lots of times, both here on this list > and over on the d.p. forums. and one of my biggest antagonists > was david starner. the david starner who just weighed in here... > > except now david is a big supporter of what _i_ always suggested. > heck, if you read the current d.p. forum threads, you'd think it was > _his_ idea all along. did he "change his mind". or is he a hypocrite? > well, you can draw your own conclusion... as i said above, i have > an education in social psychology at the level of graduate-school... > > finally, several of my critics charge that i don't volunteer to help. > this is a big steaming pile of crap. > > i have offered to help d.p. _lots_ of times, on all kinds of things. > > these offers have been met with stony silence. here was one: > > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=273937#273937 > > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=284440#284440 > where i made the offer -- and the silence -- and the subsequent > _withdrawal_ of the offer -- explicit, thus obvious to _everyone_... > > it was another situation where juliet was telling people that they > needed a complicated process -- she hoped for university-level > computer-science interns to do it for them -- except i was able to > describe a very simple procedure for getting the info they wanted, > using data that is readily available to them. my exact language: > > make a list of the metadata you want to acquire and i'll be happy to > > guide you on how you can scrub the o.c.r. and/or the scans to get it. > > often i go ahead and give elaborate details on those topics here > (indeed, i did that for some variables on that metadata subject), > knowing full well that d.p. won't implement _anything_ i suggest, > not unless/until they can whitewash it as "their own idea", (as per > david starner's major file-naming turnaround mentioned above)... > > heck, i have even gone and programmed web-based prototypes > for some of my suggestions, which -- as far as i know -- weren't > even _looked_at_. they were most certainly never commented on. > > here's another reference to an offer that expired: > > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=283263#283263 > > as _final_ proof, if anyone wants to talk about any of these topics > _right_here_ and _right_now_, i will be happy to extend my help... > as long as you're willing to _learn_how_to_fish_ -- rather than just > whining because i won't _give_ you a fish -- i'm happy to teach you. > > so this whole "doesn't help" lie is just another one of their big lies. > > besides, as i've remarked, most of what i say is _common_sense_: > simple ideas needing little elaboration, because they are obvious, > and obviously true. so i "help" d.p. by simply _expressing_ them... > > it's true that i "only" proofed a few pages under the d.p. system. > > what a nightmare! making the same correction on many pages > when it could (and should) be done as a global change _once_... > a spellchecker to which you couldn't add words (like _names_), > so it continued to flag them over and over and over and over... > fixing errors that a clean-up program would fix automatically... > crappy scans to proof against, and crappy o.c.r. to begin with... > > a nightmare! > > god, i felt like i was losing brain-cells at an ever-increasing rate, > quickly becoming an idiot in a system that is designed for idiots, > one which clearly does not respect the contributions of volunteers. > > i have starkly documented the shortcomings in their workflow, so > why would i waste my own time and energy doing any work there? > proofing every word on every page is a recipe for total irrelevance. > > do critics of scientology have to join the cult and work their way up > in order to criticize it? i don't think so. i think that'd be > ridiculous... > > bottom line, my antagonists cannot argue with my criticism of d.p., > so they try to make _me_ the issue. i'm resilient enough to ignore it. > > the question is whether _you_ are gonna fall for their diversion? > quick, answer me, what was my topic of discussion before this? > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. > > (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 > 48) -- Paul Maas paulmaas at airpost.net -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Send your email first class From bzg at altern.org Wed Feb 6 15:50:45 2008 From: bzg at altern.org (Bastien Guerry) Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:50:45 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: (Bowerbird@aol.com's message of "Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:18:00 EST") References: Message-ID: <87k5lhve3u.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> Bowerbird at aol.com writes: > Free speech is the sunshine that kills off all the bad germs. And silence is the night that gives birth to all the good ones. Maybe you could try it sometimes. > I have starkly documented the shortcomings in their workflow, so why > would i waste my own time and energy doing any work there? When it is too hard to convince people to change their workflow, the solution is to start your own project and call for volunteers. If volunteers are clever enough they will join it, right? Good luck, -- Bastien From hart at pglaf.org Wed Feb 6 22:43:39 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 22:43:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: <87k5lhve3u.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> References: <87k5lhve3u.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> Message-ID: On Wed, 6 Feb 2008, Bastien Guerry wrote: > Bowerbird at aol.com writes: > >> Free speech is the sunshine that kills off all the bad germs. > > And silence is the night that gives birth to all the good ones. > Maybe you could try it sometimes. > >> I have starkly documented the shortcomings in their workflow, so why >> would i waste my own time and energy doing any work there? > > When it is too hard to convince people to change their workflow, > the solution is to start your own project and call for volunteers. > If volunteers are clever enough they will join it, right? We are always willing to help people start their own projects, and to help them call for volunteers, using our servers, our Newsletter, etc. Michael > > Good luck, > > -- > Bastien > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Feb 7 09:50:32 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 12:50:32 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: paul said: > I apologize to all for starting this thread.? > I got my original question answered, and more yeah, part of the strategy of the wolf-pack is to reply in mass, so people will quickly get tired of the thread, and won't think, or read, but just react with an "i'm sick of this topic" deletion... and they never respond with _content_ either, just _smears_. kinda reminds me of the political advertising that's going on. *** bastien said: > And silence is the night that gives birth to all the good ones.? i'm not sure i follow your metaphor there, bastien. > Maybe you could try it sometimes. i believe i'll keep practicing what i preach: free speech. :+) > When it is too hard to convince people to change their workflow, > the solution is to start your own project and call for volunteers.? you've made a slight mistake in your reasoning there, bastien. i don't have a desire to "convince" d.p. to change its workflow. it's really no skin off my nose whether they are efficient or not. this is a mistake a lot of people make. they assume i must have an _agenda_, such that i personally want d.p. to be a certain way. but i don't care how they are. i just see some ways for them to be more efficient, to get the job done easier, so i offer help to them. if they don't see the logic behind my advice, then i'll provide that. if they choose to ignore my advice, out of spite, i just laugh at 'em. they're the ones who pay the consequences of that bad decision... i mean, ideally, i'd like to see the time and energy of people who are volunteering to digitize books be used as wisely as possible, but that's no reason for me to start up some _crusade_, ya know. there's a moral issue here -- wasting the time of volunteers -- but i don't have any blood on my hands, thank you very much... so i make the occasional post here, getting things off my chest, so the world at large -- or this little listserve anyway -- becomes aware that there are major questions around the efficacy of d.p. and, as i've outlasted my antagonists, those occasional posts have increasingly become uncontested, which is fine with me. it's not like their arguments earlier carried any weight anyway. which doesn't mean i won't be happy to do elaboration now... a long-winded post on filenaming is buffered at this moment, and i'm always happy to answer questions anyone might have. it's just that most of the time, common sense is pretty obvious. that's why i continue to speak -- reasserting common sense... > If volunteers are clever enough they will join it, right? eventually i will put up my own project -- a mirror of the p.g. e-texts in z.m.l. format, on a wiki for anyone to fix -- but it won't be to _compete_ with d.p. or any other outfit; i wouldn't construe it in that way, or allow anyone else to; it'd be another misinterpretation of my intent as adversarial; i'd rather think of all these projects as being complementary. moreover, i see a rather clear path to a desktop application on which you can drop an o.c.r./scanset combination and -- after answering some questions to resolve ambiguities -- have a proofed and formatted e-book pop out as a result... this is the kind of tool that _individuals_ can use, so a need for a collaborative group project would decline substantially. (it wouldn't go away entirely, because there are some books whose digitization requires input from several specialists...) -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080207/a86bd938/attachment.htm From bzg at altern.org Thu Feb 7 10:14:31 2008 From: bzg at altern.org (Bastien Guerry) Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:14:31 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? In-Reply-To: (Bowerbird@aol.com's message of "Thu, 7 Feb 2008 12:50:32 EST") References: Message-ID: <874pck3a7s.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> Bowerbird at aol.com writes: >> And silence is the night that gives birth to all the good ones.? > > i'm not sure i follow your metaphor there, bastien. I mean: if your goal is to be heard, it might be a good strategy not to overwhelm people with ideas, but to choose the most relevant ones. >> Maybe you could try it sometimes. > > i believe i'll keep practicing what i preach: free speech. :+) Free speech isn't useful is nobody is listening. Speaking plain text is not enough. Be nice. Get an audience. Don't presume it does exist. >> When it is too hard to convince people to change their workflow, >> the solution is to start your own project and call for volunteers.? > > you've made a slight mistake in your reasoning there, bastien. > i don't have a desire to "convince" d.p. to change its workflow. > it's really no skin off my nose whether they are efficient or not. > this is a mistake a lot of people make. they assume i must have > an _agenda_, such that i personally want d.p. to be a certain way. > but i don't care how they are. i just see some ways for them to be > more efficient, to get the job done easier, so i offer help to them. You want to help and you don't want to help. This is confusing. And this is confusing because of your contradiction. Not because so many people are dull. > that's why i continue to speak -- reasserting common sense... I'm pretty sure you think you already know this: ? Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. ? But it's always worth thinking of it again and again. >> If volunteers are clever enough they will join it, right? > > eventually i will put up my own project -- a mirror of the > p.g. e-texts in z.m.l. format, on a wiki for anyone to fix -- > but it won't be to _compete_ with d.p. or any other outfit; Good! -- Bastien From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Feb 8 11:53:24 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 14:53:24 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Why banned? Message-ID: please note that i am limiting myself to one message a day in the threads where my antagonists have ganged up on me... this prolongs the thread, yes, but it also makes the process far less contentious... it's a little trick i learned a long time back. any time you want to dampen a flamewar, just put a 24-hour hold on your responses. say whatever you were gonna say, but then let it sit in your buffer until the next day... your adversaries who respond on emotions rather than rationality, will shrivel and die... (on the other hand, if you _prefer_ to keep them emotional, go ahead and reply fast... they will be unable to control themselves.) *** bastien said: > I mean: if your goal is to be heard, > it might be a good strategy not to > overwhelm people with ideas, but > to choose the most relevant ones. again, bastien, i don't _care_ if i am "heard". i'm putting it on the record. for the future... whether or not anyone listens right now is totally immaterial to me. believe it or not... (but believe you me, d.p. hears me. loudly, if not clearly. they just choose to ignore me.) now, of course i believe that i have things that are worthwhile. or i would not post... you have to earn people's ears. and i do... i take my posts seriously. write 'em carefully. make sure they're well-argued and read well. i want them to look nice, and be free of typos. because my topic is the digitization of books, the p.g. listserve seems to be the right place. plus i post here as a present to michael hart. when the future _does_ come looking for me and my posts, i want them to be found by the researcher smart enough to look right _here_. michael hart was the pioneer of the cyberlibrary. at the same time, i don't expect anyone else to care as deeply about these technicalities as i do. not even here on the project gutenberg listserve. probably takes people _one-tenth_ as much time to _read_ these posts as it takes me to _write_ 'em, and i expect even _that_ is too much time for many. fine, so be it. i understand. we're all busy people. it was satisfying to me just to write it. > Free speech isn't useful is nobody is listening. > Speaking plain text is not enough.? Be nice.? > Get an audience.? Don't presume it does exist. i have all the audience i need, thank you very much. and i don't have to "presume" that my audience exists. i get plenty of feedback. oftentimes more than i want... and wanna know something else? about half of the places where i've been "banned" have eventually invited me back; they realized they made a mistake, and tried to set it right. i never went back to any of 'em, but that's beside the point. (never took back girlfriends who broke up with me either...) > You want to help and you don't want to help. where do you get your evidence for the last half of that? > This is confusing. not at all. i am _willing_ to help distributed proofreaders... specifically, i am willing to help d.p. by giving them _advice_ on the best way to change their workflow for better efficiency. i'm willing to help d.p. by answering any _questions_ they have about the advice that i give, since i have extensive evidence for my policies, gathered from both research and long experience. i've also programmed the routines to implement my workflow, so i'm willing to show working tools that _prove_ my pudding, and i am willing to help d.p. by guiding _their_ programming... i will even -- in some cases -- provide my code to them directly, although i am _much_ more inclined to _teach_a_person_to_fish_ than to _give_them_fish_, because it's a wiser long-term strategy. it's also the case that since i program in basic, they can't really even _use_ my code. they'd have to translate it, and they could likely more easily translate my pseudo-code than my real code. what's most valuable to them are my ideas, which cut through the mental clutter they've built around most of their thinking... *** nor are these offers to help d.p. _limited_ to them in particular... if anyone else wants to start a digitization project, i'll help them. heck, if someone just want to _discuss_ the issues, because they seem _entertaining_, i'll be happy to join in a discussion with 'em. i obviously find the topic interesting, or i wouldn't be pursuing it. heck, you might even remember that i offered to lead an effort _right_here_on_this_listserve_ to create an open-source tool that would do conversions into various formats, an effort that i actually started and ran for a little while, until it was obvious that no one here was going to do any work on it... fine. poof! so i'm quite willing to help, distributed proofreaders or anyone... but... distributed proofreaders doesn't want any help from me. i offer it. place it on a silver tray. they reject it. fine. suit yourself. no sweat off my nose. :+) so... i'm not sure what you want me to do, bastien. should i _whine_ because d.p. doesn't listen to me? by the way, i'm also willing to let britney lay her shaved head on my pillow to give her weary mind a rest from her troubles. but she doesn't want my help either. shall i whine about that? and if she _did_ want me to "help" her by calling the paparazzi and telling them where she'll be this afternoon, should i do it? what if, when i refuse, she says that "bowerbird won't help me"? should i lose any sleep over that? d.p. seems to want volunteers to show up, suit up, and shut up. um, sorry, that's not my modus operandi. > I'm pretty sure you think you already know this: > ? Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing > in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed > with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy > in all other matters are not in the habit of > desiring more of it than they already have. ? > But it's always worth thinking of it again and again. look, i think that i'm being pretty self-effacing when i say that most of my suggestions boil down to simple common-sense... in other words, i usually don't claim much "special knowledge". (sometimes, yes, when i've done research into a specific topic, then i'll claim something out of the ordinary, but not usually.) so if you want to _challenge_ my claims to "common sense", i'm willing to accept your challenge. for anything that i say, if you have a different opinion, let's put up my argument and yours, and let people _vote_ as to which is "common sense"... for instance, i say it's "common sense" to name an image-file so that the number in the filename is the exact same number as the page-number on the page represented by that image... that is, i contend that it's _stupid_ to name a file "017.png" when that file is the scan of page number _1_ in the book... not just stupid, but _really_ stupid. even really really stupid. my position is you should name that file "xxxxxp001.png". furthermore, i say all of this is only "common sense". now, perhaps you will disagree. people on this very listserve _have_ disagreed with that very position, some _vehemently_. nonetheless, i maintain that this is "common sense". (in fact, i'd say if you disagree that _this_ is "common sense", then you really should consider having your head examined; this goes beyond "common sense" into being "a no-brainer".) so, we would put up our two positions, and arguments for 'em, and let people vote. the common-sense one will be a runaway. i'm willing to do that any time, bastien, with any of my positions i describe as "common sense"... let me know if you wanna play... -bowerbird ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080208/a63431a4/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Feb 8 14:39:33 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 17:39:33 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] start the weekend on an up Message-ID: let's go into the weekend with a positive thrust, ok? :+) a typical finding is that an average proofer will find and fix 80% of the errors on a page. now, you might think that it's pretty serious to overlook 20% of the errors on a page, but -- looking at it from the bright side instead -- what that means is that if you route that page to a second proofer, they will find 80% of the _remaining_ errors on the page. so if you start with 100 errors, the first proofer will catch 80 of them, and the next proofer will catch 16 of the remaining 20, which means that 2 rounds already detected _96% _ of the errors... and -- of the remaining 4 errors on the page -- the next proofer will -- on average -- find _3_, so three rounds have caught _99%_ of the errors. so if even _one_ of those first 3 proofers are just _a_little_bit_ better than "average", and catch just _one_additional_error_, you've got a perfect page. and even if not, there's an 80% chance that that final error will be caught by the _next_ proofer... in other words, if you keep proofing at the 80% rate, eventually you'll create a perfect page. _eventually_. (unlike zeno's paradox, which some of you might be thinking of, these errors come in _discrete_ units, so you will not be stuck always _approaching_ perfection yet never _attaining_ it... once you have detected that last pesky error, you're home free, not halfway there.) so the march to perfection isn't hard. not at all, folks. all it takes is the dedication to continue until you finish. and a predictor as to whether you've caught all the errors? that's easy: were there any errors caught in the last round? if so, then you must assume there are still some remaining. just good old common sense... -bowerbird p.s. it's also good to flag changes made in the last round, so the next proofer can verify them, as this ensures that no errors are inadvertently introduced, which can happen... more good old common sense... ************** Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080208/92376cca/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 11 15:53:49 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:53:49 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] page-images Message-ID: oh please, this is just all too rich... you might remember our past discussions concerning _file-naming_. it is the case that file-naming is an extremely important consideration. a good file-naming convention is gold, while a bad one is a bad dream. and yes -- how'd you ever guess? -- over at distributed proofreaders, they do _not_ use a good file-naming convention. indeed, they have no file-naming convention _at_all_. people just do it however they feel. and when i suggested that they might want to consider a convention, you just wouldn't believe how much flack was thrown at me in return... at any rate... at a certain point in time, josh decided he would be responsible for uploading the d.p. page-images to p.g. but p.g. would not accept the d.p. hodge-podge of filenames, so josh had to rename the files. this has produced some "interesting" anomalies in the e-texts, but there's no need to discuss those right now. but to see one example: > http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22398/22398-h/22398-h.htm#png.151 what page do you guess that jumps to? if you said 151, you're wrong. anyway... josh just announced that the uploading job is too time-consuming -- which frequently happens when you do things the wrong way -- and he's falling far behind on it, so he won't be doing it any more... in describing his renaming procedure, he "credits" it to _marcello_. > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=420152#420152 what a pile of crap. i was the person who originated most of that. all marcello did was introduce some wrinkles, and bad ones at that. and, sure enough, josh picked up every one of those bad wrinkles. honestly, if you read the rules that josh gives in the post noted above, you should also know much of it is bad advice. here are corrections: 1. first of all, a file needs to have a _name_ that distinguishes it from all other files. if you name a scan "p124.png", how can you tell it apart from _another_ scan name "p124.png"? by its folder? yeah, right. and then what happens when you put a bunch of files in the wrong folder? you gave yourself a big headache, that's what. name that file "flingp124.png" instead, so you know what book it is. and then, +sure_, put all the scans from the book in a "fling" folder, so you know just by looking at the _folder-name_ what book it is... but also bask in the comfort that if you see the "flingp124.png" name, you will know (1) which book it belongs to, and (2) which page it is... 2. after that book-prefix, yes, you need another prefix that tells which page-numbering system you're in, and "c" for cover-scans, and "f" for forward-matter, and "p" for the book's pages are all fine. anything that _follows_ the regular page-numbering should have another prefix, and it should be a free letter after "p" alphabetically, but ignore josh's practice of using "z", because that would preclude anyone from adding additional sections _after_that_. instead, use "r" (for reference) or some other letter with breathing room after it. (you don't want to use "q", because that would preclude someone from introducing a section _between_ the "p" and the "q" sections.) 3. ignore the "advice" that a blank page doesn't need a file; it does. 4. an unnumbered full-page illustration should be given a name which alphabetizes it _appropriately_ in a filename list. therefore, josh's suggestion that an illustration that is facing "flingp124.png" be named "abcdep124-insert.png" should be absolutely rejected; an "-insert" filename sorts _above_ the name for the regular page. the file should be named something like "flingp124g01a.png"... 5. the _blank_verso_ side of an unnumbered full-page illustration, like every _other_ blank page, must be represented by its own file. the verso of the above file would be named "flingp124g01b.png". 6. i'm not sure what josh means by "image position on the page". if he's talking about a scan of just _part_ of the page, rather than a full-page illustration, that file shouldn't even _be_ in this sequence. it should be named with a name that clearly indicates it as different. 7. do not name the back-cover and spine scans using a "c" prefix. the back-covers come _after_ the body of the book, so they should have names that continue the "p" series, or have a prefix _after_ "p". in general, though, you don't need to scan back-covers or spines... so, now let me relate you the _rationale_ behind all of these rules... there are basically _3_ methodologies which programmers use to determine the _order_ of the page-image-files in a scan-set: 1. an alphabetic sort of the filenames. 2. the numbers within the filenames. 3. an independent list giving the order. any of these 3 will work equally well, if everyone agrees to use it. however, we don't have such an agreement. and likely never will. so then, the best course of action is to ensure that a _triangulation_ of all 3 methods gives the _exact_same_answer_, so that someone can use _any_ of the methods and come out with the correct answer. this _triangulation_ isn't hard to achieve. indeed, it's almost trivial, assuming that you follow the rules as i've "corrected" them above... but when you _do_ have the _triangulation_, you'll always get a book that has all recto/verso pages done correctly, and in the right order. *** oh yeah, in case you haven't figured it out yet, all those "wrinkles" mean many of the scan-sets that josh has uploaded to the p.g. site are significantly flawed, and therefore must be repaired before use, at least any of the uses that _i_ have anticipated for these scan-sets, where it's important to have the _numbering_ of the pages be right, with recto/verso differentiation done right, and in the right order... *** still, it _is_ good of josh to at least have renamed the vast majority of the scans to a reasonable file-naming convention. thanks, josh! *** of course, it would have been even better if the files would've been intelligently named in the first place. that way josh would not have had to even do all that work. plus, the volunteers at d.p. would've had the benefit of working with intelligently-named files all along. in this regard, i am quite happy to note that -- as i often predicted -- d.p. people have increasingly come around to realize the convention that i suggested (and which most of 'em originally rejected) is best... more and more providers have started using intelligent filenames, and the volunteers reaped the benefits, and now appreciate them. indeed, david starner was one of my most vocal critics on this, but i see that recently he's been posting like it was _his_ idea all along: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=407344#407344 > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=407371#407371 i don't remember that carlo was an early supporter, but now he is: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=407495#407495 and other people who i can't recall their position, are now on-board: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=407427#407427 > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=407504#407504 kraester always was a supporter of intelligent filenames, and still is: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=407499#407499 even relative newbies on the scene realize that it's the right way to go: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=407511#407511 yeah, sooner or later, d.p. will come around on all of my old "causes"... if they were smart, they'd make it sooner rather than later... but... so, there you have it... thanks... -bowerbird p.s. josh probably wouldn't have found the uploading job so onerous if he had renamed the files on the d.p. server, and the cross-loaded them to the p.g. server. but he would download them to his machine, rename and upload, wearing out both his bandwidth and his patience. but when you do things the hard way, all you do is burn yourself out... p.p.s. tomorrow, we'll check in on those researchers who are trying to determine a "confidence-in-page" measure, to see how they're doing... ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. 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URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080211/145bf7ca/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 11 20:58:20 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:58:20 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] you might remember Message-ID: you might remember we discussed the author -- paulo coelho -- who had "pirated" his own books, thereby increasing their sales... well, of course, the smell of money on the table to a capitalist is the exact same as the smell of blood in the water to a shark, so coelho's publisher -- harpercollins -- has just announced a new program where they are putting the content of some of their books online, in their entirety, so people can "sample" 'em. > In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers > will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books > on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and > a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine. > > The idea is to give readers the opportunity to sample the books > online in the same way that prospective buyers can flip through > books in a bookstore. > > ?It?s like taking the shrink wrap off a book,? said Jane Friedman, > chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide. > ?The best way to sell books is to have the consumer > be able to read some of that content.? that's from the new york times: > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/business/media/11harper.html those publishers. what a bunch of imaginative people. it kinda makes you wonder what they'll think of next... > http://www.harpercollins.com -bowerbird ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. 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URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080211/9a760db0/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 12 02:02:30 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:02:30 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] start the weekend on an up Message-ID: i said: > and a predictor as to whether you've caught all the errors? > that's easy: were there any errors caught in the last round? > if so, then you must assume there are still some remaining. > just good old common sense... so let's engage in a bit more common sense, ok? if the most recent proofing of a page did _not_ detect an error, an average-proofer-accuracy of 80% informs us that we should predict that there is a 20% chance that there's a lingering error. however, if the last _two_ proofings have not located any errors, then we would predict only a _4%_ chance of a remaining error. (4% chance of an error on a page means 1-error-in-25-pages, which -- to my mind -- is an acceptable rate for public release, assuming we have a good public-bug-reporting infrastructure, so the e-texts stay firmly grounded on the march to perfection.) if our people go _three_ proofings without correcting any errors, then (if they are average, no better, no worse) we should predict that there is only a _.2%_ chance that there is still an error there (meaning there's a 50% chance of 1 error in a 250-page book)... remember, that's 3 rounds where no more errors were detected, not 3 rounds total... but it's also true we can have _all_ of those rounds performed by (the relatively plentiful) "average" proofers. and you know what? even if you can jack up the accuracy to 90%, you don't improve the odds that much. some, yes, but not much. but, honestly, we don't have that many people who can do 90%... (likewise, even if accuracy drops to 70%, the figures stay similar.) furthermore, this is assuming we use the _brain-dead_ method of comparing every word on every page against the page-image. given good clean-up tools, which help focus the attention of our proofers on trouble-spots, they would be _much_ more efficient. -bowerbird ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080212/0ffa1364/attachment-0001.htm From bzg at altern.org Tue Feb 12 02:15:28 2008 From: bzg at altern.org (Bastien) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:15:28 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] start the weekend on an up In-Reply-To: (Bowerbird@aol.com's message of "Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:02:30 EST") References: Message-ID: <871w7ibhvj.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> Bowerbird at aol.com writes: >> and a predictor as to whether you've caught all the errors? >> that's easy: were there any errors caught in the last round? >> if so, then you must assume there are still some remaining. >> just good old common sense... > > so let's engage in a bit more common sense, ok? Sorry Bowerbird, but talking to yourself for the fourth email in a row is not what I call common sense. When people want to write things without being disturbed they usually write books. Since your ideas are mostly here "for the record", why don't you write a book? And yes, I *am* serious! -- Bastien From creeva at gmail.com Tue Feb 12 06:47:08 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:47:08 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] you might remember In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2510ddab0802120647x75ebe124o24540020ae69c7df@mail.gmail.com> The thing I'm not sure of is if they are reading them on the website or available to download? I'm sure they are figuring that this may increase sales and they can make ad revenue. On Feb 11, 2008 11:58 PM, wrote: > you might remember we discussed the author -- paulo coelho -- > who had "pirated" his own books, thereby increasing their sales... > > well, of course, the smell of money on the table to a capitalist > is the exact same as the smell of blood in the water to a shark, > so coelho's publisher -- harpercollins -- has just announced > a new program where they are putting the content of some of > their books online, in their entirety, so people can "sample" 'em. > > > In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers > > will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books > > on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and > > a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine. > > > > The idea is to give readers the opportunity to sample the books > > online in the same way that prospective buyers can flip through > > books in a bookstore. > > > > "It's like taking the shrink wrap off a book," said Jane Friedman, > > chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide. > > "The best way to sell books is to have the consumer > > be able to read some of that content." > > that's from the new york times: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/business/media/11harper.html > > those publishers. what a bunch of imaginative people. > it kinda makes you wonder what they'll think of next... > > > http://www.harpercollins.com > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL > Music. > (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > From creeva at gmail.com Tue Feb 12 06:51:20 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:51:20 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] start the weekend on an up In-Reply-To: <871w7ibhvj.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> References: <871w7ibhvj.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> Message-ID: <2510ddab0802120651q741db8c1l2e70d6757026d686@mail.gmail.com> I'm sure he is putting it here for the record and writing out loud for him to record his thoughts and immediately share it. On a side not this brings up an interesting question unrelated to this thread, but interesting, if you talk to yourself that eccentric - if you answer yourself your crazy. If you email yourself, your taking notes to remember - but what about when you reply to your own emails? Yes I do e-mail and reply to myself. On Feb 12, 2008 5:15 AM, Bastien wrote: > Bowerbird at aol.com writes: > > >> and a predictor as to whether you've caught all the errors? > >> that's easy: were there any errors caught in the last round? > >> if so, then you must assume there are still some remaining. > >> just good old common sense... > > > > so let's engage in a bit more common sense, ok? > > Sorry Bowerbird, but talking to yourself for the fourth email in a row > is not what I call common sense. > > When people want to write things without being disturbed they usually > write books. Since your ideas are mostly here "for the record", why > don't you write a book? > > And yes, I *am* serious! > > -- > Bastien > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 12 10:06:03 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:06:03 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] harvard votes on open access Message-ID: arts and sciences faculty at harvard vote today whether all their scholarly articles should be available for free online immediately upon publication. robert darnton, the director of the university library said: > In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up > the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn. It will be a first step > toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers > by making it freely available on our own university repository. notable for the sentiment, and the bold use of the bold word "stranglehold". it's about _time_ librarians got the courage to speak the truth to the world... -bowerbird ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080212/bcafb4a6/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Tue Feb 12 12:31:41 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:31:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! Message-ID: After all these years of saying free eBooks were anethema to the Olde Boye Networke of the publishing world. . . . The publishers are finally realizing that when eBooks are given away free of charge actually increase paper sales-- not that there weren't any number of academic studies and articles saying this from the very beginning. So, if any Project Gutenberg volunteers ever needed kinds of vindication, it doesn't get much better than this. . . at least until we find there are more eBook going out for consumption than paper books. . . . Again my HUGE thanks to ALL Project Gutenberg volunteers! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/10/2041235.shtml === Tor Books Is Giving Away E-Books http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/10/213221.shtml "Tor Books is launching a new site and running a campaign in which they are giving away e-books (free as in beer) until the site goes live. To get in on the deal, fill out the form at their site, and each week you will receive a newsletter containing links to download a new book. The first two books are Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson followed by Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Scalzi's site says: 'My understanding is that they don't have DRM on them. Or at least, mine isn't supposed to have, and I don't think they're planning mine to be special in that regard.'" /// This only a day or so after HarperCollins appear in the NYTimes doing the same thing. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/business/media/11harper.html From paulmaas at airpost.net Tue Feb 12 15:06:18 2008 From: paulmaas at airpost.net (Paul Maas) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:06:18 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1202857578.5540.1236534757@webmail.messagingengine.com> O'Reilly has had this model for a number of years. This is not something new. On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:31:41 -0800 (PST), "Michael Hart" said: > > After all these years of saying free eBooks were anethema > to the Olde Boye Networke of the publishing world. . . . > > The publishers are finally realizing that when eBooks are > given away free of charge actually increase paper sales-- > not that there weren't any number of academic studies and > articles saying this from the very beginning. > > So, if any Project Gutenberg volunteers ever needed kinds > of vindication, it doesn't get much better than this. . . > at least until we find there are more eBook going out for > consumption than paper books. . . . > > Again my HUGE thanks to ALL Project Gutenberg volunteers! > > > Michael S. Hart > Founder > Project Gutenberg > > > http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/10/2041235.shtml > > === > > Tor Books Is Giving Away E-Books > > http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/10/213221.shtml > > "Tor Books is launching a new site and running a campaign in which > they are giving away e-books (free as in beer) until the site goes > live. To get in on the deal, fill out the form at their site, and each > week you will receive a newsletter containing links to download a new > book. The first two books are Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson followed > by Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Scalzi's site says: 'My understanding > is that they don't have DRM on them. Or at least, mine isn't supposed > to have, and I don't think they're planning mine to be special in that > regard.'" > > > /// > > > This only a day or so after HarperCollins appear in the NYTimes > doing the same thing. > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/business/media/11harper.html > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -- Paul Maas paulmaas at airpost.net -- http://www.fastmail.fm - And now for something completely different From jared.buck at gmail.com Tue Feb 12 15:17:25 2008 From: jared.buck at gmail.com (Jared Buck) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:17:25 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! In-Reply-To: <1202857578.5540.1236534757@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1202857578.5540.1236534757@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: I added myself to Tor's list, i hope to be able to get ebooks from them regularly now, they're my second-favorite sci-fi/fantasy publisher after Baen, which offers plenty of their books free as ebooks. On Feb 12, 2008 3:06 PM, Paul Maas wrote: > O'Reilly has had this model for a number of years. This is not > something new. > > On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:31:41 -0800 (PST), "Michael Hart" > said: > > > > After all these years of saying free eBooks were anethema > > to the Olde Boye Networke of the publishing world. . . . > > > > The publishers are finally realizing that when eBooks are > > given away free of charge actually increase paper sales-- > > not that there weren't any number of academic studies and > > articles saying this from the very beginning. > > > > So, if any Project Gutenberg volunteers ever needed kinds > > of vindication, it doesn't get much better than this. . . > > at least until we find there are more eBook going out for > > consumption than paper books. . . . > > > > Again my HUGE thanks to ALL Project Gutenberg volunteers! > > > > > > Michael S. Hart > > Founder > > Project Gutenberg > > > > > > http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/10/2041235.shtml > > > > === > > > > Tor Books Is Giving Away E-Books > > > > http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/10/213221.shtml > > > > "Tor Books is launching a new site and running a campaign in which > > they are giving away e-books (free as in beer) until the site goes > > live. To get in on the deal, fill out the form at their site, and each > > week you will receive a newsletter containing links to download a new > > book. The first two books are Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson followed > > by Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Scalzi's site says: 'My understanding > > is that they don't have DRM on them. Or at least, mine isn't supposed > > to have, and I don't think they're planning mine to be special in that > > regard.'" > > > > > > /// > > > > > > This only a day or so after HarperCollins appear in the NYTimes > > doing the same thing. > > > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/business/media/11harper.html > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -- > Paul Maas > paulmaas at airpost.net > > -- > http://www.fastmail.fm - And now for something completely different? > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080212/4e8ce361/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 12 15:30:03 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:30:03 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! Message-ID: paul said: > O'Reilly has had this model for a number of years. um, i don't think so. do you have a pointer? o'reilly has a subscription model -- "safari"... you might be thinking about _baen_ instead. and this giveaway by tor is simply _marketing_ for a new site. it says clearly that they will be ending the thing once that new site goes live... of course, the experiment from harpercollins is also _marketing_. if they don't see it helping to increase their p-book sales, they will end it. i don't see e-books replacing p-books _totally_. we'll always have a need for printed-out books... i see e-books replacing p-books _substantially_, though, and i _don't_ see the publishing industry continuing to exert a strong presence in e-books. on the contrary, i see the capitalists _abandoning_ the ship as soon as they stop making any money. because, you know, that's why they _do_it_ at all... and when authors and audience interact directly -- finding each other via collaborative filtering -- there's no room for a middleman to make money. i don't see any future for the recording companies either, as musicians and audience hook up directly. all this flailing around while the capitalists try to find "a business model" in the digital world is just amusing. they are dinosaurs, and they are doomed to extinction. the _interesting_ question is "what kind of power plays is their money going to allow them to pull off, and what will be the damage from the fallout from those bombs?" -bowerbird ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080212/fcee551c/attachment.htm From paulmaas at airpost.net Tue Feb 12 17:20:35 2008 From: paulmaas at airpost.net (Paul Maas) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:20:35 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1202865635.27671.1236553461@webmail.messagingengine.com> Several books published by O'Reilly over the years have been freely accessible online. I've referenced several of these books a number of times. The paper versions are sold the usual way. On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:30:03 EST, Bowerbird at aol.com said: > paul said: > > O'Reilly has had this model for a number of years. > > um, i don't think so. do you have a pointer? > o'reilly has a subscription model -- "safari"... > > you might be thinking about _baen_ instead. > > and this giveaway by tor is simply _marketing_ > for a new site. it says clearly that they will be > ending the thing once that new site goes live... > > of course, the experiment from harpercollins > is also _marketing_. if they don't see it helping > to increase their p-book sales, they will end it. > > i don't see e-books replacing p-books _totally_. > we'll always have a need for printed-out books... > > i see e-books replacing p-books _substantially_, > though, and i _don't_ see the publishing industry > continuing to exert a strong presence in e-books. > > on the contrary, i see the capitalists _abandoning_ > the ship as soon as they stop making any money. > because, you know, that's why they _do_it_ at all... > > and when authors and audience interact directly > -- finding each other via collaborative filtering -- > there's no room for a middleman to make money. > > i don't see any future for the recording companies > either, as musicians and audience hook up directly. > > all this flailing around while the capitalists try to find > "a business model" in the digital world is just amusing. > they are dinosaurs, and they are doomed to extinction. > > the _interesting_ question is "what kind of power plays > is their money going to allow them to pull off, and what > will be the damage from the fallout from those bombs?" > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy > Awards. Go to AOL Music. > > (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) -- Paul Maas paulmaas at airpost.net -- http://www.fastmail.fm - A fast, anti-spam email service. From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 12 19:41:27 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:41:27 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! Message-ID: paul said: > Several books published by O'Reilly over the years > have been freely accessible online. I've referenced > several of these books a number of times. well, i don't disbelieve you; i've just never heard of it. again, are there any that you can point to right now? and could it have been the case that you were looking at books to which your company (for instance) subscribed? -bowerbird ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080212/1102bb6c/attachment.htm From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Wed Feb 13 08:42:29 2008 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:42:29 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! In-Reply-To: <1202857578.5540.1236534757@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1202857578.5540.1236534757@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20080213164229.GA29167@ark.in-berlin.de> Paul Maas wrote > O'Reilly has had this model for a number of years. This is not > something new. You may have responded to what Michael Hart wrote but you didn't read the first slashdot link. Did anyone? Of course, some people knew for years that something was coming, and called it Web 2.0, but not many know what that really means. > On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:31:41 -0800 (PST), "Michael Hart" > said: > > http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/10/2041235.shtml I think it means also that every non-fiction work published in PG counts tenfold /wrt fiction. Regards, ralf From traverso at posso.dm.unipi.it Wed Feb 13 10:27:17 2008 From: traverso at posso.dm.unipi.it (Carlo Traverso) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:27:17 +0100 (CET) Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! In-Reply-To: (Bowerbird@aol.com) References: Message-ID: <20080213182717.321E6102B6@posso.dm.unipi.it> >>>>> "Bowerbird" == Bowerbird writes: Bowerbird> paul said: >> Several books published by O'Reilly over the years have been >> freely accessible online. I've referenced several of these >> books a number of times. Bowerbird> well, i don't disbelieve you; i've just never heard of Bowerbird> it. again, are there any that you can point to right Bowerbird> now? Bowerbird> and could it have been the case that you were looking Bowerbird> at books to which your company (for instance) Bowerbird> subscribed? Bowerbird> -bowerbird http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ Another great free book of another publisher (CRC Press) is http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Feb 13 12:38:08 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:38:08 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! Message-ID: carlo said: > http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ thanks. looks like it's mostly books that have gone out-of-print, so it's not quite the same as what we were talking about here, but nonetheless, the books might continue to be useful to the people who are still using the technology discussed in a particular book... the reason i was so curious is because tim o'reilly is one of the publishers insistent on the use of "free" as a _marketing_tool_, rather than as a philosophical cornerstone, and -- these days -- he's rather skeptical how well "free" _works_ as a marketing tool, at least as far as i can tell. indeed, here's a summary of the speech that tim gave _yesterday_ at his "tools of change" conference for the publishing industry: > http://www.georgewalkley.com/2008/02/12/tools-of-change-tuesday-morning/ the title of the speech is "free is more complicated than you think". i believe you'll see that for tim, "free" is a matter of dollars and cents... (which, you know, um, doesn't make him _a_bad_person_, or anything.) -bowerbird ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080213/d6198ebf/attachment.htm From klofstrom at gmail.com Wed Feb 13 14:11:38 2008 From: klofstrom at gmail.com (Karen Lofstrom) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:11:38 -1000 Subject: [gutvol-d] Free eBooks from Major Publishers!!! In-Reply-To: <20080213182717.321E6102B6@posso.dm.unipi.it> References: <20080213182717.321E6102B6@posso.dm.unipi.it> Message-ID: <1e8e65080802131411i3c69330ci9ea25d49b68caea7@mail.gmail.com> On Feb 13, 2008 8:27 AM, Carlo Traverso wrote: > Another great free book of another publisher (CRC Press) is > http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ I think the real model here is not computer publishing, but science fiction publishing. Cory Doctorow has given his books away for years and is making a good living, thank you. Baen Books gives away free science fiction and fantasy novels: http://www.baen.com/library/ They're also doing quite well, thank you. When they put a book online, sales of paper copies often increase. Other publishers have taken note. -- Karen Lofstrom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080213/f74f5339/attachment.htm From julio.reis at tintazul.com.pt Fri Feb 15 07:18:29 2008 From: julio.reis at tintazul.com.pt (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FAlio?= Reis) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:18:29 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] Creative Commons license sample letter Message-ID: <1203088709.17572.51.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> Hi all I have negotiated with the Bible Society of Portugal the publication of a 2001 text of the Bible in Project Gutenberg. I feel this would be a very good addition since there isn't any Portuguese Bible there. They have gladly allowed it, and in fact I already have the XML file in my possession. They want to release it under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license. I have a question regarding the sample letter. The example on the web site is for releasing in the public domain only, right? So I tried mixing that with the CC restriction, and I want to know how the example below reads legally. The SBP is the sole proprietor of the rights, and there are no authors other than the original translation, deceased in the 18th century. Parts within [ ] brackets are bits I have to complete or decide upon yet. * * * To: Michael Hart, etc. Lisbon, 15 February 2008 Dear Sir, We are the sole copyright holders for the book, ?B?blia Sagrada [complete title].? It gives us pleasure to grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive rights to distribute this book in electronic form through Project Gutenberg Web sites, CDs or other current and future formats. No royalties are due for these rights. [Use of such files is|End users of such web sites should use these files] subject to the terms of the license Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 2.5 Portugal. The full text of the license can be found at the Internet address: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/pt/ Sincerely, For the Board of the Sociedade B?blica de Portugal, Tim?teo Armelim Cavaco, Secretary-general * * * So, is that letter all right? Do we safeguard whatever it is we need to safeguard for Gutenberg? And also, do we impose the CC licensing on every user of PG? Bonus points for giving me pointers into some software to massage the XML, preferably under Linux, or under XP. Thanks J?lio aka Tintazul. From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Fri Feb 15 09:20:30 2008 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:20:30 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] EU artists to collect royalties for 95 years Message-ID: <9c6138c50802150920i71f961a5pd34a6c342217d6ee@mail.gmail.com> European internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy today announced his intention to propose to the College that the term of copyright protection for European performers be increased from 50 to 95 years. Summarising the main thrust of the proposal, Commissioner McCreevy stated: "I strongly believe that copyright protection for Europe's performers represents a moral right to control the use of their work and earn a living from their performances. I have not seen a convincing reason why a composer of music should benefit from a term of copyright which extends to the composer's life and 70 years beyond, while the performer should only enjoy 50 years, often not even covering his lifetime It is the performer who gives life to the composition and while most of us have no idea who wrote our favourite song ? we can usually name the performer." On the same day that the commission announced its intention to boost artists incomes from royalties, it also said it would have another look at the levies applied to blank compact discs, cassettes, hard drives, printers and other equipment used to copy artists' works. (Via Europa and EU Observer.) http://euobserver.com/9/25669 http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/240&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en Ricardo From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Feb 15 13:24:43 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:24:43 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: i'll be going to the california international antiquarian book fair this weekend, so let me know if you want me to buy you anything. :+) -bowerbird ************** The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080215/54ab0970/attachment.htm From creeva at gmail.com Fri Feb 15 13:35:25 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:35:25 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> A gutenberg bible would be nice. On Feb 15, 2008 4:24 PM, wrote: > i'll be going to the california international antiquarian book fair > this weekend, so let me know if you want me to buy you anything. :+) > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL > Music. > (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > From julio.reis at tintazul.com.pt Fri Feb 15 14:26:08 2008 From: julio.reis at tintazul.com.pt (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FAlio?= Reis) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:26:08 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] EU artists to collect royalties for 95 years In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1203114368.3452.21.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> > European internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy today announced > his intention to propose to the College that the term of copyright > protection for European performers be increased from 50 to 95 years. Sure, poor studio musicians and all, have the right to live off the income of their early-day retirement. What about bakers? Why can't they live off the income of the bread they made in their youth? They can't, simply because you can't eat the same bread twice. Unfair. I mean, don't we all pay welfare so that people who can't earn money anymore can still have an income? Why should someone think that Ricardo, where can a EU citizen talk back? Do you know a place? I'd like to debate this issue; maybe someone can talk some long-copyright sense into me, but so far I don't see any gain for the "little folk," just more money for big money. Can't artists enjoy the fruit of their creation / performance for a sensible time and then just offer it up? I myself would like to see all copyright change the other way around: to 50 years after creation / performance. But maybe that's just me. From walter.van.holst at xs4all.nl Fri Feb 15 14:46:20 2008 From: walter.van.holst at xs4all.nl (Walter van Holst) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:46:20 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] EU artists to collect royalties for 95 years In-Reply-To: <1203114368.3452.21.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> References: <1203114368.3452.21.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> Message-ID: <47B6163C.30903@xs4all.nl> J?lio Reis wrote: > Ricardo, where can a EU citizen talk back? Do you know a place? I'd like > to debate this issue; maybe someone can talk some long-copyright sense The European Parliament of course. Anyway, us people at Scriptum Libre / Vrijschrift (http://scriptumlibre.org) want to start a lobbying effort against this misguided proposal. Feel free to join. Regards, Walter From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Fri Feb 15 15:16:33 2008 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:16:33 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] EU artists to collect royalties for 95 years In-Reply-To: <1203114368.3452.21.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> References: <1203114368.3452.21.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> Message-ID: <9c6138c50802151516h23ae1848o109cd37103c0f629@mail.gmail.com> 2008/2/15, J?lio Reis : > Ricardo, where can a EU citizen talk back? Do you know a place? I'd like > to debate this issue; You can write to the commissioner himself http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/mccreevy/contact_en.htm To debate the future of Europe: http://europa.eu/debateeurope/index_en.htm To get informed and debate EU's Information Society http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/index_en.htm Pay special attention to i2010 and Digital Libraries iniciatives. Your messages can be written in any EU's official language (e.g.: Portuguese). Ricardo From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Fri Feb 15 15:23:06 2008 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:23:06 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] EU artists to collect royalties for 95 years In-Reply-To: <9c6138c50802151516h23ae1848o109cd37103c0f629@mail.gmail.com> References: <1203114368.3452.21.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> <9c6138c50802151516h23ae1848o109cd37103c0f629@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9c6138c50802151523x1ed21431wb4e8b1ea2953e400@mail.gmail.com> You may also be interested in reading what other PG volunteers have written to the Comission: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/doc/replies_online_consultation/replies/hellingman_a302420.pdf Ricardo From hart at pglaf.org Fri Feb 15 23:13:52 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:13:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I would like even just one page from ANY pre-Gutenberg book[s], or just one page from ANY Gutenberg book[s]. . . . Michael On Fri, 15 Feb 2008, Brent Gueth wrote: > A gutenberg bible would be nice. > > On Feb 15, 2008 4:24 PM, wrote: >> i'll be going to the california international antiquarian book fair >> this weekend, so let me know if you want me to buy you anything. :+) >> >> -bowerbird >> >> >> >> ************** >> The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Go to AOL >> Music. >> (http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565) >> _______________________________________________ >> gutvol-d mailing list >> gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >> http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >> >> > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Sat Feb 16 01:41:16 2008 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 09:41:16 -0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Michael Hart Sent: 16 February 2008 07:14 To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Cc: Bowerbird at aol.com Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair | I would like even just one page from ANY pre-Gutenberg book[s], | or just one page from ANY Gutenberg book[s]. . . . As a collector of pre-gutenberg books :-) in facsimile/CDROMS :-( I have three questions/problems. What does PG think of the publicly funded museums policy of allowing *one* set photographs on pre-gutenberg Books and then claiming copyright on the whole book which was produced in say AD 900 or 1320? I have heard of an Out of US Copyright facsimile of the Book of Kells. Does anyone know where a copy of this may exist, and is there a chance of scanning one There are an increasing number scans of Pre-Gutenberg books on the web sites of universities or museums. These are AFAIK said to be copyright of whoever did the scanning. How does this square with the US "sweat of the brow does not count" rule Dave Fawthrop MH if this does not get on Gutvol-d please sent it there, my system has problems. From jeroen.mailinglist at bohol.ph Sat Feb 16 07:44:30 2008 From: jeroen.mailinglist at bohol.ph (Jeroen Hellingman (Mailing List Account)) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:44:30 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] EU artists to collect royalties for 95 years In-Reply-To: <9c6138c50802151523x1ed21431wb4e8b1ea2953e400@mail.gmail.com> References: <1203114368.3452.21.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> <9c6138c50802151516h23ae1848o109cd37103c0f629@mail.gmail.com> <9c6138c50802151523x1ed21431wb4e8b1ea2953e400@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47B704DE.2040706@bohol.ph> Thank you for pointing at my older contribution. I am also straight on top of this one, and writing a press release to follow this up ASAP: I am currently drafting a response at http://wiki.vrijschrift.org/concept_reactie_van_Vrijschrift It would be could if EU Gutenberg volunteers would address EMPs about this in similar words. --- ScriptumLibre opposes neighbouring rights term extension With great concern ScriptumLibre / Vrijschrift learned about the commissions proposal to extend neighboring rights from 50 to 95 years after the date of performance. Such proposals have been made earlier, and have been rejected by the European parliament, and various national parliaments as unnecessary and not serving any public purpose, such as the promotion of culture and arts. They merely stem from rent-seeking behavior from a small group of rights-holders who wish to maintain a stream of royalty income on works near the end of their current term. No sound economical benefit of such an extension has been demonstrated. The emotional plea, supported by a number of well known artists also is misleading, as all these artists have already been able to receive royalties on their performances for fifty years, and often continue to control the dissemination of their work through copyrights on the underlying works. The argument that terms for neighboring rights need to be extended to match longer copyrights, and then proposing a term still different (but in force in the US) makes little sense. Furthermore, outside the small but influential circle of large corporate rights-holders and their agents, there is a growing consensus that current copyrights terms are way too long, and as a result are obstructing, rather than promoting a diverse and vibrant creative culture. In particular artists themselves suffer from the growing burden to clear copyrights in an environment where rights are continuously expanded. It is time to reverse this trend. This particular proposal will restrict access to all performances since the onset of the first world war, often recorded on obsolete and fragile media. Extended neighboring rights will seriously hinder their preservation. Due to technological advances, most of these recordings have limited commercial value; they are an irreplaceable part of our cultural heritage, and are important to research. To purposely block the conservation of these historical works is little short of wanton destruction of cultural heritage. The current copyright regime has turned into a private tax on culture, which restricts the access of citizens to cultural heritage, and even blocks its preservation. An increasingly small fraction of these taxes actually end up with artists and authors. We strongly urge the commission and the European Parliament to refrain from adding further undue burdens on our culture. --- Ricardo F Diogo wrote: > You may also be interested in reading what other PG volunteers have > written to the Comission: > > http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/doc/replies_online_consultation/replies/hellingman_a302420.pdf > From creeva at gmail.com Sat Feb 16 09:49:02 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:49:02 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> Message-ID: <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> Theoretically what the copyright is on is the pictures - this would include the data that is within the pictures the book itself would not be extended in copyright. The rub would be the fact that you couldn't do your own scans or transcription unless you got a physical copy of the book. WIth out having a physical copy you have to use their scans for transcription, thereby violating their copyright. On Feb 16, 2008 4:41 AM, Dave Fawthrop wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org > [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Michael Hart > Sent: 16 February 2008 07:14 > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Cc: Bowerbird at aol.com > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > > > | I would like even just one page from ANY pre-Gutenberg book[s], > | or just one page from ANY Gutenberg book[s]. . . . > > As a collector of pre-gutenberg books :-) in facsimile/CDROMS :-( I have > three questions/problems. > > What does PG think of the publicly funded museums policy of allowing *one* > set photographs > on pre-gutenberg Books and then claiming copyright on the whole book which > was produced in > say AD 900 or 1320? > > I have heard of an Out of US Copyright facsimile of the Book of Kells. > Does anyone know where a copy of this may exist, and is there a chance of > scanning one > > There are an increasing number scans of Pre-Gutenberg books on the web sites > of universities or museums. > These are AFAIK said to be copyright of whoever did the scanning. How does > this square with the US > "sweat of the brow does not count" rule > > Dave Fawthrop > > MH if this does not get on Gutvol-d please sent it there, my system has > problems. > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From grythumn at gmail.com Sat Feb 16 10:03:22 2008 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:03:22 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50802161003n5dcf762bj27b7bfdf7eb45fac@mail.gmail.com> Those scan sets should be clearable in the US, assuming you clear them work by work to avoid any collection copyright. Depending on how access to the scans is provided, there may be contractual issues, but that is another subject altogether. There are a lot of bogus copyright claims out there. As always, though, submit them to the PGLAF copyright clearance site with full details for a definitive answer... R C On Feb 16, 2008 12:49 PM, Brent Gueth wrote: > Theoretically what the copyright is on is the pictures - this would > include the data that is within the pictures the book itself would not > be extended in copyright. The rub would be the fact that you > couldn't do your own scans or transcription unless you got a physical > copy of the book. WIth out having a physical copy you have to use > their scans for transcription, thereby violating their copyright. > > On Feb 16, 2008 4:41 AM, Dave Fawthrop wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org > > [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Michael Hart > > Sent: 16 February 2008 07:14 > > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > Cc: Bowerbird at aol.com > > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > > > > > > | I would like even just one page from ANY pre-Gutenberg book[s], > > | or just one page from ANY Gutenberg book[s]. . . . > > > > As a collector of pre-gutenberg books :-) in facsimile/CDROMS :-( I have > > three questions/problems. > > > > What does PG think of the publicly funded museums policy of allowing > *one* > > set photographs > > on pre-gutenberg Books and then claiming copyright on the whole book > which > > was produced in > > say AD 900 or 1320? > > > > I have heard of an Out of US Copyright facsimile of the Book of Kells. > > Does anyone know where a copy of this may exist, and is there a chance > of > > scanning one > > > > There are an increasing number scans of Pre-Gutenberg books on the web > sites > > of universities or museums. > > These are AFAIK said to be copyright of whoever did the scanning. How > does > > this square with the US > > "sweat of the brow does not count" rule > > > > Dave Fawthrop > > > > MH if this does not get on Gutvol-d please sent it there, my system has > > problems. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080216/40557502/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Sat Feb 16 11:29:02 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:29:02 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: brent said: > WIth out having a physical copy you have to use > their scans for transcription, thereby violating their copyright. transcribing the text in a photo doesn't violate the photo's copyright... and there aren't any licensing terms they could impose to prevent that. -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080216/6e081bb2/attachment.htm From joshua at hutchinson.net Sun Feb 17 06:58:21 2008 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:58:21 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: <1773126952.546641203260301913.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080217/d30b1cd2/attachment.htm From marcello at perathoner.de Sun Feb 17 11:27:39 2008 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:27:39 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de> Brent Gueth wrote: > Theoretically what the copyright is on is the pictures - this would > include the data that is within the pictures the book itself would not > be extended in copyright. The rub would be the fact that you > couldn't do your own scans or transcription unless you got a physical > copy of the book. WIth out having a physical copy you have to use > their scans for transcription, thereby violating their copyright. Bzzzt. Wrong. *If* there is a valid copyright on repro pictures (like in Europe) this copyright does not extend to the subjects photographed. If you can legally obtain a copy of the pictures (eg. buying the CD) you are free to transcribe any text they might contain. The copyright just prevents you from redistributing the pictures in whole or in part. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From hart at pglaf.org Sun Feb 17 13:49:31 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:49:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <1773126952.546641203260301913.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> References: <1773126952.546641203260301913.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> Message-ID: Look up "Misuse of Copyright". . .you CAN sue them for that. I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. mh On Sun, 17 Feb 2008, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > > Well, according to the Greg, they may "claim" a copyright, > but according to US law, the copyright is bogus. > > ? > > Unfortunately, US law doesn't really have a penalty for > claiming a copyright that doesn't exist (other than if > someone challenges it, you can't really do anything about > it). > > ? > > So, while a museum may SAY that their scans of a rare book is > copyrighted, it's not. > > ? > > However, extra meta data ABOUT the scans may be copyrighted. > > ? > > Josh > > ? > > PS I am not a lawyer and what I typed above should not be > used as a defense in a real court of law!? ;) > > ? > > ? > > On Feb 16, 2008, hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org > [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On > Behalf Of Michael Hart > Sent: 16 February 2008 07:14 > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Cc: Bowerbird at aol.com > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international > antiquarian book fair > > > | I would like even just one page from ANY > pre-Gutenberg book[s], > | or just one page from ANY Gutenberg book[s]. . > . . > > As a collector of pre-gutenberg books :-) in > facsimile/CDROMS :-( I have > three questions/problems. > > What does PG think of the publicly funded museums > policy of allowing *one* > set photographs > on pre-gutenberg Books and then claiming > copyright on the whole book which > was produced in > say AD 900 or 1320? > > I have heard of an Out of US Copyright facsimile > of the Book of Kells. ? > Does anyone know where a copy of this may exist, > and is there a chance of > scanning one > > There are an increasing number scans of > Pre-Gutenberg books on the web sites > of universities or museums. > These are AFAIK said to be copyright of whoever > did the scanning. ? How does > this square with the US > "sweat of the brow does not count" rule > > Dave Fawthrop > > MH if this does not get on Gutvol-d please sent > it there, my system has > problems. > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > > From gbnewby at pglaf.org Sun Feb 17 15:24:30 2008 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:24:30 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <1773126952.546641203260301913.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> References: <1773126952.546641203260301913.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> Message-ID: <20080217232430.GA8209@mail.pglaf.org> On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 02:58:21PM +0000, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > Well, according to the Greg, they may "claim" a copyright, but according to US > law, the copyright is bogus. Our "no sweat of the brow copyright" HOWTO was written mostly by me, but vetted by 3 different highly qualified copyright lawyers. For the US, I believe it's right. There might be other lawyers (qualified or not) at other institutions telling people that they CAN get copyright for the stuff our HOWTO says cannot be copyrighted: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:No_Sweat_of_the_Brow_Copyright Since the HOWTO says most of what I know (or think I know, not being a lawyer either!) about this, you can just take a look there. Our "harvesting" HOWTO basically says that from OUR point of view (i.e., the PG copyright clearances) we will stand by "no sweat of the brow copyright." Thus, we believe that such copyright claims may be ignored, and our "harvesting" HOWTO mentions a process for harvesting such items. Whether YOU ignore them for uses other than PG's is up to you. BTW, we recently added a brief HOWTO mentioning that 2D photos of 2D art are not copyrightable (see the HOWTO). This opens up some great possibilities for art books and lithographs. *Collections* of such things would have a copyright (since making a collection involves an intellectual selection process) -- unless, of course, it's a "complete works" collection, which involves no intellectual selection process. Whew! -- Greg > Unfortunately, US law doesn't really have a penalty for claiming a copyright > that doesn't exist (other than if someone challenges it, you can't really do > anything about it). > > > > So, while a museum may SAY that their scans of a rare book is copyrighted, it's > not. > > > > However, extra meta data ABOUT the scans may be copyrighted. > > > > Josh > > > > PS I am not a lawyer and what I typed above should not be used as a defense in > a real court of law!?? ;) > > > > > > On Feb 16, 2008, hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org > [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Michael Hart > Sent: 16 February 2008 07:14 > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Cc: Bowerbird at aol.com > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > > > | I would like even just one page from ANY pre-Gutenberg book[s], > | or just one page from ANY Gutenberg book[s]. . . . > > As a collector of pre-gutenberg books :-) in facsimile/CDROMS :-( I have > three questions/problems. > > What does PG think of the publicly funded museums policy of allowing *one* > set photographs > on pre-gutenberg Books and then claiming copyright on the whole book which > was produced in > say AD 900 or 1320? > > I have heard of an Out of US Copyright facsimile of the Book of Kells. ?? > Does anyone know where a copy of this may exist, and is there a chance of > scanning one > > There are an increasing number scans of Pre-Gutenberg books on the web > sites > of universities or museums. > These are AFAIK said to be copyright of whoever did the scanning. ?? How > does > this square with the US > "sweat of the brow does not count" rule > > Dave Fawthrop > > MH if this does not get on Gutvol-d please sent it there, my system has > problems. > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From creeva at gmail.com Sun Feb 17 17:57:44 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:57:44 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> <47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <2510ddab0802171757o17152480r9d51e55b4ec5c0e2@mail.gmail.com> Notice I said theoretically figuring their justification. I'm not going out on any limbs to claim I'm an authority on who/what/where/is/or how copyright works. My understanding is at a high level. The parent had stated a fact and I did my best from a theory standpoint to interpret the logic behind it. On Feb 17, 2008 2:27 PM, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Brent Gueth wrote: > > > Theoretically what the copyright is on is the pictures - this would > > include the data that is within the pictures the book itself would not > > be extended in copyright. The rub would be the fact that you > > couldn't do your own scans or transcription unless you got a physical > > copy of the book. WIth out having a physical copy you have to use > > their scans for transcription, thereby violating their copyright. > > Bzzzt. Wrong. > > *If* there is a valid copyright on repro pictures (like in Europe) this > copyright does not extend to the subjects photographed. If you can > legally obtain a copy of the pictures (eg. buying the CD) you are free > to transcribe any text they might contain. The copyright just prevents > you from redistributing the pictures in whole or in part. > > > > -- > Marcello Perathoner > webmaster at gutenberg.org > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Sun Feb 17 23:52:03 2008 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:52:03 -0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> <47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> Marcello Perathoner wrote >Bzzzt. Wrong. >*If* there is a valid copyright on repro pictures (like in Europe) this >copyright does not extend to the subjects photographed. If you can >legally obtain a copy of the pictures (eg. buying the CD) you are free >to transcribe any text they might contain. The copyright just prevents >you from redistributing the pictures in whole or in part. Arguably taking *Photographs* requires skill, so copyright on photographs sounds reasonable, but simple scanning is a different matter. The stuff I am interested in mostly in UK Museums or universities. Dave F From hart at pglaf.org Mon Feb 18 02:12:21 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:12:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> <000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk> <2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com> <47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de> <000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> Message-ID: Even photographs, ones that attempt a faithful reproduction of a two dimensional medium, cannot be copyrighted. . . . It is ONLY the addition of "intellectual property" that can give a NEW copyright to an old work. Faithful reproduction is NOT added "intellectual property." As per: The closest U.S. case law I know of is Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corporation (1999). There, a U.S. District Court ruled that photographic reproductions of two-dimensional works of art, where the goal is to make as accurate a reproduction of the work as possible, were not 'original works,' and therefore not copyrightable. By no means does this apply to all photographs of artwork, but only those where the artistic capacity of the photographer in choosing angle, composing the subject matter, selecting lighting, etc., has been subjugated to the overarching goal of reproducing the artwork as accurately as possible. I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. mh From nwolcott2ster at gmail.com Mon Feb 18 07:54:24 2008 From: nwolcott2ster at gmail.com (Norm Wolcott) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:54:24 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com><000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk><2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com><47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de><000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> Message-ID: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> What is the US copyright position (in the best opinion)on an 1860 2d photo posted on the internet by the Victoria and Albert museum, presumably scanned from the photo or copied with digital camera, where Crown copyright is claimed for the internet image??? Does the limitation to 2d mean that a photo of a statue for example is copyrightable?? or its internet image? nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Hart" To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 5:12 AM Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > > Even photographs, ones that attempt a faithful reproduction > of a two dimensional medium, cannot be copyrighted. . . . > > It is ONLY the addition of "intellectual property" that can > give a NEW copyright to an old work. > > Faithful reproduction is NOT added "intellectual property." > > As per: > > The closest U.S. case law I know of is Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. > Corel Corporation (1999). There, a U.S. District Court ruled that > photographic reproductions of two-dimensional works of art, where > the goal is to make as accurate a reproduction of the work as > possible, were not 'original works,' and therefore not > copyrightable. > > By no means does this apply to all photographs of artwork, but only > those where the artistic capacity of the photographer in choosing > angle, composing the subject matter, selecting lighting, etc., has > been subjugated to the overarching goal of reproducing the artwork > as accurately as possible. > > > > I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. > > IANAL = I am not a lawyer. > > > > mh > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From julio.reis at tintazul.com.pt Mon Feb 18 12:11:38 2008 From: julio.reis at tintazul.com.pt (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FAlio?= Reis) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:11:38 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] [Fwd: Creative Commons license sample letter] Message-ID: <1203365498.14051.10.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> Guys, that's all very well about the antiques and EU legislation, but anyone for my other post about a sample letter for Creative Commons licensing? Or am I asking in the wrong place? > Hi all > > I have negotiated with the Bible Society of Portugal the publication of > a 2001 text of the Bible in Project Gutenberg. I feel this would be a > very good addition since there isn't any Portuguese Bible there. They > have gladly allowed it, and in fact I already have the XML file in my > possession. They want to release it under the Creative Commons > Attribution Non-commercial license. > > I have a question regarding the sample letter. The example on the web > site is for releasing in the public domain only, right? So I tried > mixing that with the CC restriction, and I want to know how the example > below reads legally. The SBP is the sole proprietor of the rights, and > there are no authors other than the original translation, deceased in > the 18th century. Parts within [ ] brackets are bits I have to complete > or decide upon yet. > > * * * > > To: Michael Hart, etc. > > Lisbon, 15 February 2008 > > Dear Sir, > > We are the sole copyright holders for the book, ?B?blia Sagrada > [complete title].? It gives us pleasure to grant Project Gutenberg > perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive rights to distribute this book in > electronic form through Project Gutenberg Web sites, CDs or other > current and future formats. No royalties are due for these rights. > > [Use of such files is|End users of such web sites should use these > files] subject to the terms of the license Creative Commons Attribution > Non-commercial 2.5 Portugal. The full text of the license can be found > at the Internet address: > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/pt/ > > Sincerely, > > For the Board of the Sociedade B?blica de Portugal, > Tim?teo Armelim Cavaco, Secretary-general > > * * * > > So, is that letter all right? Do we safeguard whatever it is we need to > safeguard for Gutenberg? And also, do we impose the CC licensing on > every user of PG? > > Bonus points for giving me pointers into some software to massage the > XML, preferably under Linux, or under XP. > > Thanks > > J?lio aka Tintazul. From lee at novomail.net Mon Feb 18 13:02:53 2008 From: lee at novomail.net (Lee Passey) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:02:53 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com><000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk><2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com><47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de><000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> Message-ID: <47B9F27D.8040607@novomail.net> Norm Wolcott wrote: > What is the US copyright position (in the best opinion) on an 1860 2d > photo posted on the internet by the Victoria and Albert museum, > presumably scanned from the photo or copied with digital camera, > where Crown copyright is claimed for the internet image??? Does the > limitation to 2d mean that a photo of a statue for example is > copyrightable?? or its internet image? First a word about jurisdictions. As every serious student of copyright knows, copyright laws, and their subsequent monopolies, are uniquely a product of legislative action. In common-law countries (the U.K., the U.S., Canada and most current and former members of the British Commonwealth) there is no such thing as a common-law copyright. The scope and subject matter of copyright is entirely a product of legislation in the subject jurisdiction, and as such may vary widely from country to country. In the United States, Congress has rejected the notion of /droit morale/ ("moral right") which permeates copyright law in Europe. Here, "the primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' [citations omitted.] To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. . . . This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art." /Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co/., 499 U.S. 340, 350-351 (1991), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm. Thus, in the United States the subject matter of copyright is limited to "original works of authorship", and to only those portions of such works as may reflect the author's originality and creativity. In /Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises/, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/471_US_539.htm, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated: "No author may copyright facts /or ideas/. The copyright is limited to those aspects of the work -- termed 'expression' -- that display the /stamp of the author's originality/. "Copyright does not prevent subsequent users from copying from a prior author's work those constituent elements that are not original -- for example . . . facts, or materials in the public domain -- as long as such use does not unfairly appropriate the author's /original contributions/." 471 U.S., at 547-548 (citation omitted; emphasis added). The Supreme Court baldly stated in /Feist/, "originality is a constitutionally mandated prerequisite for copyright protection." This was the language that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan relied upon in deciding /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm. Essentially, Judge Kaplan held that if party creates a work which it then represents to the world as being a faithful reproduction of the original (which is not copyrighted) it cannot then claim the "'creative spark' which is the /sine qua non/ of originality." In /Bridgeman/, the "plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances." 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 @ paragraph 25. In the case of a photographic reproduction of an original 1860 photo, the question has nothing to do with the subject matter of the photo. Rather, the question is whether the new photo possesses that modicum of creativity that permits it to be copyrightable. According to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/., 536 F.2d 486 (2d Cir.) (in banc), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 857 (1976), Only "a distinguishable variation" -- something beyond technical skill -- will render the reproduction original. The court there stated: "Absent a genuine difference between the underlying work of art and the copy of it for which protection is sought, the public interest in promoting progress in the arts -- indeed, the constitutional demand [citation omitted] -- could hardly be served. To extend copyrightability to minuscule variations would simply put a weapon for harassment in the hands of mischievous copiers intent on appropriating and monopolizing public domain work. Even in /Mazer v. Stein/, [347 U.S. 201 (1954)], . . . the Court expressly held that the objects to be copyrightable, 'must be original, that is, the author's tangible expression of his ideas." 536 F.2d at 490-91. The requisite "distinguishable variation," moreover, is not supplied by a change of medium, as "production of a work of art in a different medium cannot by itself constitute the originality required for copyright protection." /Past Pluto Productions v. Dana/, 627 F. Supp. 1435, 1441 (S.D.N.Y. 1986) (citing /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/). "There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection. 'Elements of originality . . . may include posing the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the desired expression, and almost any other variant involved.' [/Rogers v. Koons/, 960 F.2d 301, 307 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 934 (1992).] But 'slavish copying,' although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify." /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., /supra/ @ paragraph 24. So, the question you must answer is, does the digital reproduction demonstrate a tangible, distinguishable variation from the original photograph, and is that variation attributable to individual creativity and not merely "minor but unintentional variations between the copies and the works copied"? /see/ /Hearn v. Meyer/, 664 F. Supp. 832 (S.D.N.Y. 1987). While I am completely unfamiliar with the photographs to which you make reference, my guess is that neither the original photo nor its modern reproductions are copyrightable in the United States. Note, however, that I am also completely unfamiliar with copyright law in other jurisdictions, so the claim of Crown copyright in other national jurisdictions may, in fact, be legitimate, and not merely an attempt to commit a fraud on the public, as would appear at first blush. From lee at novomail.net Mon Feb 18 10:16:55 2008 From: lee at novomail.net (Lee Passey) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:16:55 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com><000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk><2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com><47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de><000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> Message-ID: <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> Norm Wolcott wrote: > What is the US copyright position (in the best opinion) on an 1860 2d > photo posted on the internet by the Victoria and Albert museum, > presumably scanned from the photo or copied with digital camera, > where Crown copyright is claimed for the internet image??? Does the > limitation to 2d mean that a photo of a statue for example is > copyrightable?? or its internet image? First a word about jurisdictions. As every serious student of copyright knows, copyright laws, and their subsequent monopolies, are uniquely a product of legislative action. In common-law countries (the U.K., the U.S., Canada and most current and former members of the British Commonwealth) there is no such thing as a common-law copyright. The scope and subject matter of copyright is entirely a product of legislation in the subject jurisdiction, and as such may vary widely from country to country. In the United States, Congress has rejected the notion of /droit morale/ ("moral right") which permeates copyright law in Europe. Here, "the primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' [citations omitted.] To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. . . . This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art." /Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co/., 499 U.S. 340, 350-351 (1991), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm. Thus, in the United States the subject matter of copyright is limited to "original works of authorship", and to only those portions of such works as may reflect the author's originality and creativity. In /Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises/, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/471_US_539.htm, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated: "No author may copyright facts /or ideas/. The copyright is limited to those aspects of the work -- termed 'expression' -- that display the /stamp of the author's originality/. "Copyright does not prevent subsequent users from copying from a prior author's work those constituent elements that are not original -- for example . . . facts, or materials in the public domain -- as long as such use does not unfairly appropriate the author's /original contributions/." 471 U.S., at 547-548 (citation omitted; emphasis added). The Supreme Court baldly stated in /Feist/, "originality is a constitutionally mandated prerequisite for copyright protection." This was the language that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan relied upon in deciding /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm. Essentially, Judge Kaplan held that if party creates a work which it then represents to the world as being a faithful reproduction of the original (which is not copyrighted) it cannot then claim the "'creative spark' which is the /sine qua non/ of originality." In /Bridgeman/, the "plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances." 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 @ paragraph 25. In the case of a photographic reproduction of an original 1860 photo, the question has nothing to do with the subject matter of the photo. Rather, the question is whether the new photo possesses that modicum of creativity that permits it to be copyrightable. According to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/., 536 F.2d 486 (2d Cir.) (in banc), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 857 (1976), Only "a distinguishable variation" -- something beyond technical skill -- will render the reproduction original. The court there stated: "Absent a genuine difference between the underlying work of art and the copy of it for which protection is sought, the public interest in promoting progress in the arts -- indeed, the constitutional demand [citation omitted] -- could hardly be served. To extend copyrightability to minuscule variations would simply put a weapon for harassment in the hands of mischievous copiers intent on appropriating and monopolizing public domain work. Even in /Mazer v. Stein/, [347 U.S. 201 (1954)], . . . the Court expressly held that the objects to be copyrightable, 'must be original, that is, the author's tangible expression of his ideas." 536 F.2d at 490-91. The requisite "distinguishable variation," moreover, is not supplied by a change of medium, as "production of a work of art in a different medium cannot by itself constitute the originality required for copyright protection." /Past Pluto Productions v. Dana/, 627 F. Supp. 1435, 1441 (S.D.N.Y. 1986) (citing /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/). "There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection. 'Elements of originality . . . may include posing the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the desired expression, and almost any other variant involved.' [/Rogers v. Koons/, 960 F.2d 301, 307 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 934 (1992).] But 'slavish copying,' although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify." /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., /supra/ @ paragraph 24. So, the question you must answer is, does the digital reproduction demonstrate a tangible, distinguishable variation from the original photograph, and is that variation attributable to individual creativity and not merely "minor but unintentional variations between the copies and the works copied"? /see/ /Hearn v. Meyer/, 664 F. Supp. 832 (S.D.N.Y. 1987). While I am completely unfamiliar with the photographs to which you make reference, my guess is that neither the original photo nor its modern reproductions are copyrightable in the United States. Note, however, that I am also completely unfamiliar with copyright law in other jurisdictions, so the claim of Crown copyright in other national jurisdictions may, in fact, be legitimate, and not merely an attempt to commit a fraud on the public, as would appear at first blush. From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Tue Feb 19 01:05:36 2008 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:05:36 -0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com><000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk><2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com><47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de><000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> Message-ID: <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> OK so how does all this affect a real case. I have *bought* an absolutely fabulous PDF CDROM of the Macclesfield Psalter produced c 1320. http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/ and http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/cd/ which records "Copyright the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge." The scans are clearly from very high quality photographs. The whole CDROM is password protected The CDROM *only* allows printing for private Study and research. I have done this and because the *extremely* high scanning rate of the PDF file, the prints are absolutely fabulous. Scanning in these prints are still of *very* high quality. Could these scans of prints be used by PG, at least in theory? Not that I would ever try to take on the University of Cambridge in the UK courts. :-) Perhaps someone in the USA could buy a copy. I have left the whole of Lee Passey's post quoted below. Dave Fawthrop in the UK -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Lee Passey Sent: 18 February 2008 18:17 To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Norm Wolcott wrote: > What is the US copyright position (in the best opinion) on an 1860 2d > photo posted on the internet by the Victoria and Albert museum, > presumably scanned from the photo or copied with digital camera, > where Crown copyright is claimed for the internet image??? Does the > limitation to 2d mean that a photo of a statue for example is > copyrightable?? or its internet image? First a word about jurisdictions. As every serious student of copyright knows, copyright laws, and their subsequent monopolies, are uniquely a product of legislative action. In common-law countries (the U.K., the U.S., Canada and most current and former members of the British Commonwealth) there is no such thing as a common-law copyright. The scope and subject matter of copyright is entirely a product of legislation in the subject jurisdiction, and as such may vary widely from country to country. In the United States, Congress has rejected the notion of /droit morale/ ("moral right") which permeates copyright law in Europe. Here, "the primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' [citations omitted.] To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. . . . This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art." /Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co/., 499 U.S. 340, 350-351 (1991), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm. Thus, in the United States the subject matter of copyright is limited to "original works of authorship", and to only those portions of such works as may reflect the author's originality and creativity. In /Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises/, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/471_US_539.htm, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated: "No author may copyright facts /or ideas/. The copyright is limited to those aspects of the work -- termed 'expression' -- that display the /stamp of the author's originality/. "Copyright does not prevent subsequent users from copying from a prior author's work those constituent elements that are not original -- for example . . . facts, or materials in the public domain -- as long as such use does not unfairly appropriate the author's /original contributions/." 471 U.S., at 547-548 (citation omitted; emphasis added). The Supreme Court baldly stated in /Feist/, "originality is a constitutionally mandated prerequisite for copyright protection." This was the language that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan relied upon in deciding /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm. Essentially, Judge Kaplan held that if party creates a work which it then represents to the world as being a faithful reproduction of the original (which is not copyrighted) it cannot then claim the "'creative spark' which is the /sine qua non/ of originality." In /Bridgeman/, the "plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances." 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 @ paragraph 25. In the case of a photographic reproduction of an original 1860 photo, the question has nothing to do with the subject matter of the photo. Rather, the question is whether the new photo possesses that modicum of creativity that permits it to be copyrightable. According to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/., 536 F.2d 486 (2d Cir.) (in banc), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 857 (1976), Only "a distinguishable variation" -- something beyond technical skill -- will render the reproduction original. The court there stated: "Absent a genuine difference between the underlying work of art and the copy of it for which protection is sought, the public interest in promoting progress in the arts -- indeed, the constitutional demand [citation omitted] -- could hardly be served. To extend copyrightability to minuscule variations would simply put a weapon for harassment in the hands of mischievous copiers intent on appropriating and monopolizing public domain work. Even in /Mazer v. Stein/, [347 U.S. 201 (1954)], . . . the Court expressly held that the objects to be copyrightable, 'must be original, that is, the author's tangible expression of his ideas." 536 F.2d at 490-91. The requisite "distinguishable variation," moreover, is not supplied by a change of medium, as "production of a work of art in a different medium cannot by itself constitute the originality required for copyright protection." /Past Pluto Productions v. Dana/, 627 F. Supp. 1435, 1441 (S.D.N.Y. 1986) (citing /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/). "There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection. 'Elements of originality . . . may include posing the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the desired expression, and almost any other variant involved.' [/Rogers v. Koons/, 960 F.2d 301, 307 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 934 (1992).] But 'slavish copying,' although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify." /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., /supra/ @ paragraph 24. So, the question you must answer is, does the digital reproduction demonstrate a tangible, distinguishable variation from the original photograph, and is that variation attributable to individual creativity and not merely "minor but unintentional variations between the copies and the works copied"? /see/ /Hearn v. Meyer/, 664 F. Supp. 832 (S.D.N.Y. 1987). While I am completely unfamiliar with the photographs to which you make reference, my guess is that neither the original photo nor its modern reproductions are copyrightable in the United States. Note, however, that I am also completely unfamiliar with copyright law in other jurisdictions, so the claim of Crown copyright in other national jurisdictions may, in fact, be legitimate, and not merely an attempt to commit a fraud on the public, as would appear at first blush. _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Tue Feb 19 04:32:35 2008 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:32:35 -0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] Abbyy Finereader CDROM free to a good home UK In-Reply-To: <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com><000001c87080$193d6d40$4bb847c0$@co.uk><2510ddab0802160949h72da7611r57e21e18ae053e46@mail.gmail.com><47B88AAB.4050905@perathoner.de><000901c87203$277b27b0$76717710$@co.uk> <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> Message-ID: <000601c872f3$85d669a0$91833ce0$@co.uk> I recently bought a an Epson scanner/printer/copier which came with an Abbyy Finereader Sprint CDROM, version unknown. As I already have a copy of Abbyy Finereader 8 the unused CDROM is available free to anyone in the UK who wants it. Dave Fawthrop From greg at durendal.org Tue Feb 19 04:29:34 2008 From: greg at durendal.org (Greg Weeks) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:29:34 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] [Fwd: Creative Commons license sample letter] In-Reply-To: <1203365498.14051.10.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> References: <1203365498.14051.10.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, J?lio Reis wrote: > Guys, that's all very well about the antiques and EU legislation, but anyone for my other post about a sample letter for Creative Commons licensing? Or am I asking in the wrong place? I expected Greg Newby to reply. My understanding is if you want to use a creative commons license you don't use the PG permissions letter at all. A letter that lists the works and the verbatim text of the CC license you are using. You can do both also. A straight PG permissions letter for PG and distribute under CC from somewhere else. -- Greg Weeks http://durendal.org:8080/greg/ From gbnewby at pglaf.org Tue Feb 19 07:14:17 2008 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:14:17 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> Message-ID: <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 09:05:36AM -0000, Dave Fawthrop wrote: > OK so how does all this affect a real case. > > I have *bought* an absolutely fabulous PDF CDROM of the Macclesfield Psalter > produced c 1320. > http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/ and > http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/cd/ > which records "Copyright the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge." > The scans are clearly from very high quality photographs. > The whole CDROM is password protected > > The CDROM *only* allows printing for private Study and research. > I have done this and because the *extremely* high scanning rate > of the PDF file, the prints are absolutely fabulous. > Scanning in these prints are still of *very* high quality. > > Could these scans of prints be used by PG, at least in theory? Yes. Per our no sweat of the brow, & harvesting HOWTOs -- which you should review. It is possible that retrieving the scans violates some sort of license. I can't think why that would trump copyright. -- Greg > Not that I would ever try to take on the University of Cambridge > in the UK courts. :-) > > Perhaps someone in the USA could buy a copy. > > I have left the whole of Lee Passey's post quoted below. > > Dave Fawthrop in the UK > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org > [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Lee Passey > Sent: 18 February 2008 18:17 > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > > Norm Wolcott wrote: > > > What is the US copyright position (in the best opinion) on an 1860 2d > > photo posted on the internet by the Victoria and Albert museum, > > presumably scanned from the photo or copied with digital camera, > > where Crown copyright is claimed for the internet image??? Does the > > limitation to 2d mean that a photo of a statue for example is > > copyrightable?? or its internet image? > > First a word about jurisdictions. As every serious student of copyright > knows, copyright laws, and their subsequent monopolies, are uniquely a > product of legislative action. In common-law countries (the U.K., the > U.S., Canada and most current and former members of the British > Commonwealth) there is no such thing as a common-law copyright. The > scope and subject matter of copyright is entirely a product of > legislation in the subject jurisdiction, and as such may vary widely > from country to country. > > In the United States, Congress has rejected the notion of /droit morale/ > ("moral right") which permeates copyright law in Europe. Here, "the > primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, > but 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' [citations > omitted.] To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their > original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the > ideas and information conveyed by a work. . . . This result is neither > unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the > progress of science and art." /Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural > Telephone Service Co/., 499 U.S. 340, 350-351 (1991), > http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm. > > Thus, in the United States the subject matter of copyright is limited to > "original works of authorship", and to only those portions of such works > as may reflect the author's originality and creativity. In /Harper & > Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises/, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), > http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/471_US_539.htm, the U.S. > Supreme Court reiterated: > > "No author may copyright facts /or ideas/. The copyright is limited to > those aspects of the work -- termed 'expression' -- that display the > /stamp of the author's originality/. > > "Copyright does not prevent subsequent users from copying from a prior > author's work those constituent elements that are not original -- for > example . . . facts, or materials in the public domain -- as long as > such use does not unfairly appropriate the author's /original > contributions/." 471 U.S., at 547-548 (citation omitted; emphasis added). > > The Supreme Court baldly stated in /Feist/, "originality is a > constitutionally mandated prerequisite for copyright protection." > > This was the language that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan relied upon in deciding > /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 > (S.D.N.Y. 1999), > http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm. > Essentially, Judge Kaplan held that if party creates a work which it > then represents to the world as being a faithful reproduction of the > original (which is not copyrighted) it cannot then claim the "'creative > spark' which is the /sine qua non/ of originality." > > In /Bridgeman/, the "plaintiff by its own admission has labored to > create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be > assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of > originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the > underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in > these circumstances." 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 @ paragraph 25. > > In the case of a photographic reproduction of an original 1860 photo, > the question has nothing to do with the subject matter of the photo. > Rather, the question is whether the new photo possesses that modicum of > creativity that permits it to be copyrightable. According to the Second > Circuit Court of Appeals in /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/., 536 F.2d 486 (2d > Cir.) (in banc), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 857 (1976), Only "a > distinguishable variation" -- something beyond technical skill -- will > render the reproduction original. The court there stated: > > "Absent a genuine difference between the underlying work of art and the > copy of it for which protection is sought, the public interest in > promoting progress in the arts -- indeed, the constitutional demand > [citation omitted] -- could hardly be served. To extend copyrightability > to minuscule variations would simply put a weapon for harassment in the > hands of mischievous copiers intent on appropriating and monopolizing > public domain work. Even in /Mazer v. Stein/, [347 U.S. 201 (1954)], . . > . the Court expressly held that the objects to be copyrightable, 'must > be original, that is, the author's tangible expression of his ideas." > 536 F.2d at 490-91. > > The requisite "distinguishable variation," moreover, is not supplied by > a change of medium, as "production of a work of art in a different > medium cannot by itself constitute the originality required for > copyright protection." /Past Pluto Productions v. Dana/, 627 F. Supp. > 1435, 1441 (S.D.N.Y. 1986) (citing /L. Batlin & Son, Inc/). > > "There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming > majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for > copyright protection. 'Elements of originality . . . may include posing > the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the > desired expression, and almost any other variant involved.' [/Rogers v. > Koons/, 960 F.2d 301, 307 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 934 (1992).] > But 'slavish copying,' although doubtless requiring technical skill and > effort, does not qualify." /Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corp/., > /supra/ @ paragraph 24. > > So, the question you must answer is, does the digital reproduction > demonstrate a tangible, distinguishable variation from the original > photograph, and is that variation attributable to individual creativity > and not merely "minor but unintentional variations between the copies > and the works copied"? /see/ /Hearn v. Meyer/, 664 F. Supp. 832 > (S.D.N.Y. 1987). > > While I am completely unfamiliar with the photographs to which you make > reference, my guess is that neither the original photo nor its modern > reproductions are copyrightable in the United States. Note, however, > that I am also completely unfamiliar with copyright law in other > jurisdictions, so the claim of Crown copyright in other national > jurisdictions may, in fact, be legitimate, and not merely an attempt to > commit a fraud on the public, as would appear at first blush. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From steven at desjardins.org Tue Feb 19 08:07:44 2008 From: steven at desjardins.org (Steven desJardins) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:07:44 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> On Feb 19, 2008 10:14 AM, Greg Newby wrote: > On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 09:05:36AM -0000, Dave Fawthrop wrote: > > OK so how does all this affect a real case. > > > > I have *bought* an absolutely fabulous PDF CDROM of the Macclesfield Psalter > > produced c 1320. > > http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/ and > > http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/cd/ > > which records "Copyright the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge." > > The scans are clearly from very high quality photographs. > > The whole CDROM is password protected > > > > The CDROM *only* allows printing for private Study and research. > > I have done this and because the *extremely* high scanning rate > > of the PDF file, the prints are absolutely fabulous. > > Scanning in these prints are still of *very* high quality. > > > > Could these scans of prints be used by PG, at least in theory? > > Yes. > > Per our no sweat of the brow, & harvesting HOWTOs -- which > you should review. > > It is possible that retrieving the scans violates some sort > of license. I can't think why that would trump copyright. It would seem that this work is in fact copyrighted in the United States, under Rule 4: "Works created before January 1, 1978 but not published before that date are copyrighted under rules similar to rules 2 and 3 above, except that in no case will the copyright on a work not published prior to January 1, 1978 expire before December 31, 2002. If the work *is* published before December 31, 2002, its copyright will not expire before December 31, 2047. (This rule copyrights a lot of manuscripts that we would otherwise think of as public domain because of their age.)" The FAQ doesn't say what the copyright term for works first published after December 31, 2002, as this psaltery was, but the U.S. copyright office circular says "However, all works in this category are guaranteed at least 25 years of statutory protection. " From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 19 09:39:25 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:39:25 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: dave said: > OK so how does all this affect a real case. why make all this so complicated? the original poster posed a question about making _a_transcription_ of _text_ present in a photograph... _of_course_ he can. any copyright on the photograph applies to the photograph qua photograph, not its text. -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080219/5ed096dd/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 19 12:11:21 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:11:21 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] three weeks in, how's our confidence-in-page measure? Message-ID: how's our confidence-in-page measure over at distributed proofreaders? > http://www.pgdp.net/w/index.php?title=Confidence_in_Page_analysis if you get the impression of anything being solid, please explain it to me... -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080219/9c89c03e/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Tue Feb 19 13:14:00 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:14:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > dave said: >> OK so how does all this affect a real case. > > why make all this so complicated? > > the original poster posed a question about making > _a_transcription_ of _text_ present in a photograph... > > _of_course_ he can. any copyright on the photograph > applies to the photograph qua photograph, not its text. > > -bowerbird The reason is to muddy the waters as much as possible to use fear of copyright infringement to keep persons from exercising their rights to the few remaining old pieces of the public domain as the new extensions for the old copyright laws make copyright permanent.... mh From hart at pglaf.org Tue Feb 19 13:23:22 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:23:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] [Fwd: Creative Commons license sample letter] In-Reply-To: References: <1203365498.14051.10.camel@abetarda.mshome.net> Message-ID: There have been plenty of times people used both licenses. mh On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Greg Weeks wrote: > On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, J?lio Reis wrote: > >> Guys, that's all very well about the antiques and EU >> legislation, but > anyone for my other post about a sample letter for Creative > Commons > licensing? Or am I asking in the wrong place? > > I expected Greg Newby to reply. > > My understanding is if you want to use a creative commons license > you don't use the PG permissions letter at all. A letter that > lists the works and the verbatim text of the CC license you are > using. You can do both also. A straight PG permissions letter for > PG and distribute under CC from somewhere else. > > -- > Greg Weeks > http://durendal.org:8080/greg/ > From hart at pglaf.org Tue Feb 19 13:29:59 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:29:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: It doesn't matter what the date of the copyright is, you simply can't copyright a plain reproduction from works already in the public domain. . .period. At least in the U.S., where "sweat of the brow" will not get a new copyright on olde materials. It doesn't matter that it is high resolution. Perhaps if something were added. . . . But, even then, the olde part is NOT covered in some new copyright that covers prologues, introductions-- and all sorts of commentaries. A picture or scan or xerox or whatever of some of an already public domain work is still public domain. No matter how high resolution. Now, if you mixed and matched some x-ray pictures to ultra-violet pictures to some infra-red pictures for the purposes of revealing something NEW, that should be copyrightable, in my humble opinion. I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. mh On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Steven desJardins wrote: > On Feb 19, 2008 10:14 AM, Greg Newby wrote: >> On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 09:05:36AM -0000, Dave Fawthrop wrote: >>> OK so how does all this affect a real case. >>> >>> I have *bought* an absolutely fabulous PDF CDROM of the Macclesfield Psalter >>> produced c 1320. >>> http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/ and >>> http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/cd/ >>> which records "Copyright the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge." >>> The scans are clearly from very high quality photographs. >>> The whole CDROM is password protected >>> >>> The CDROM *only* allows printing for private Study and research. >>> I have done this and because the *extremely* high scanning rate >>> of the PDF file, the prints are absolutely fabulous. >>> Scanning in these prints are still of *very* high quality. >>> >>> Could these scans of prints be used by PG, at least in theory? >> >> Yes. >> >> Per our no sweat of the brow, & harvesting HOWTOs -- which >> you should review. >> >> It is possible that retrieving the scans violates some sort >> of license. I can't think why that would trump copyright. > > It would seem that this work is in fact copyrighted in the United > States, under Rule 4: > > "Works created before January 1, 1978 but not published before that > date are copyrighted under rules similar to rules 2 and 3 above, > except that in no case will the copyright on a work not published > prior to January 1, 1978 expire before December 31, 2002. If the work > *is* published before December 31, 2002, its copyright will not expire > before December 31, 2047. (This rule copyrights a lot of manuscripts > that we would otherwise think of as public domain because of their > age.)" > > The FAQ doesn't say what the copyright term for works first published > after December 31, 2002, as this psaltery was, but the U.S. copyright > office circular says "However, all works in this category are > guaranteed at least 25 years of statutory protection. " > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From creeva at gmail.com Tue Feb 19 13:35:59 2008 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:35:59 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2510ddab0802191335o143bb52ehe023e80a1d3663b9@mail.gmail.com> theoretically even if they discovered something new - ie an old painting under and existing one or hidden text in a manuscript by method of x-ray or infrared - wouldn't the item that is being discovered already have been in the public domain? Since we are discussing antiquities I would assume anything discovered would be public domain as long as it's created date date was pre-(insert your country here) copyright cut off date? Discovering something wouldn't make it new - ont he other hand creating (lack of better term) a Mash-Up could be copyrighted. This may have been where you were going - I'm just clarifying for the arm chair public domain quarterbacks. On Feb 19, 2008 4:29 PM, Michael Hart wrote: > > It doesn't matter what the date of the copyright is, > you simply can't copyright a plain reproduction from > works already in the public domain. . .period. > > At least in the U.S., where "sweat of the brow" will > not get a new copyright on olde materials. > > It doesn't matter that it is high resolution. > > Perhaps if something were added. . . . > > But, even then, the olde part is NOT covered in some > new copyright that covers prologues, introductions-- > and all sorts of commentaries. > > A picture or scan or xerox or whatever of some of an > already public domain work is still public domain. > > No matter how high resolution. > > Now, if you mixed and matched some x-ray pictures to > ultra-violet pictures to some infra-red pictures for > the purposes of revealing something NEW, that should > be copyrightable, in my humble opinion. > > > I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. > > IANAL = I am not a lawyer. > > mh > > > > On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Steven desJardins wrote: > > > On Feb 19, 2008 10:14 AM, Greg Newby wrote: > >> On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 09:05:36AM -0000, Dave Fawthrop wrote: > >>> OK so how does all this affect a real case. > >>> > >>> I have *bought* an absolutely fabulous PDF CDROM of the Macclesfield Psalter > >>> produced c 1320. > >>> http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/ and > >>> http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/macclesfield/cd/ > >>> which records "Copyright the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge." > >>> The scans are clearly from very high quality photographs. > >>> The whole CDROM is password protected > >>> > >>> The CDROM *only* allows printing for private Study and research. > >>> I have done this and because the *extremely* high scanning rate > >>> of the PDF file, the prints are absolutely fabulous. > >>> Scanning in these prints are still of *very* high quality. > >>> > >>> Could these scans of prints be used by PG, at least in theory? > >> > >> Yes. > >> > >> Per our no sweat of the brow, & harvesting HOWTOs -- which > >> you should review. > >> > >> It is possible that retrieving the scans violates some sort > >> of license. I can't think why that would trump copyright. > > > > It would seem that this work is in fact copyrighted in the United > > States, under Rule 4: > > > > "Works created before January 1, 1978 but not published before that > > date are copyrighted under rules similar to rules 2 and 3 above, > > except that in no case will the copyright on a work not published > > prior to January 1, 1978 expire before December 31, 2002. If the work > > *is* published before December 31, 2002, its copyright will not expire > > before December 31, 2047. (This rule copyrights a lot of manuscripts > > that we would otherwise think of as public domain because of their > > age.)" > > > > The FAQ doesn't say what the copyright term for works first published > > after December 31, 2002, as this psaltery was, but the U.S. copyright > > office circular says "However, all works in this category are > > guaranteed at least 25 years of statutory protection. " > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From steven at desjardins.org Tue Feb 19 13:45:49 2008 From: steven at desjardins.org (Steven desJardins) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:45:49 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <2510ddab0802191335o143bb52ehe023e80a1d3663b9@mail.gmail.com> References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> <2510ddab0802191335o143bb52ehe023e80a1d3663b9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <41fd8970802191345h3755e646kee0bcc6dd44575c5@mail.gmail.com> On Feb 19, 2008 4:35 PM, Brent Gueth wrote: > theoretically even if they discovered something new - ie an old > painting under and existing one or hidden text in a manuscript by > method of x-ray or infrared - wouldn't the item that is being > discovered already have been in the public domain? Since we are > discussing antiquities I would assume anything discovered would be > public domain as long as it's created date date was pre-(insert your > country here) copyright cut off date? > > Discovering something wouldn't make it new - ont he other hand > creating (lack of better term) a Mash-Up could be copyrighted. No, my point was that under U.S. law, works created before 1978 but first published after 1978 get (at least) 25 years of copyright protection. This seems to apply to the psaltery, a hand-created book which was not published until a few years ago. The stuff about whether the scans of a public domain work is copyrighted is a red herring, as far as the psaltery is concerned; the issue is whether the psaltery itself is protected by copyright. Under the facts given, it would seem that it is. From hart at pglaf.org Tue Feb 19 14:01:42 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:01:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <41fd8970802191345h3755e646kee0bcc6dd44575c5@mail.gmail.com> References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> <2510ddab0802191335o143bb52ehe023e80a1d3663b9@mail.gmail.com> <41fd8970802191345h3755e646kee0bcc6dd44575c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I don't think you can copyright a reissue of The Psalms, period. You might be able to copyright the fonts you used. Perhaps even trademark or copyright the colors of ink chosen. The real question would depend on this sort of think, but NOT on the date it was published. . .since the ORIGINAL date was before there was even copyright. Just WHAT is it about THIS Psalter YOU think is copyrightable under U.S. law??? I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. mh On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Steven desJardins wrote: > On Feb 19, 2008 4:35 PM, Brent Gueth wrote: >> theoretically even if they discovered something new - ie an old >> painting under and existing one or hidden text in a manuscript by >> method of x-ray or infrared - wouldn't the item that is being >> discovered already have been in the public domain? Since we are >> discussing antiquities I would assume anything discovered would be >> public domain as long as it's created date date was pre-(insert your >> country here) copyright cut off date? >> >> Discovering something wouldn't make it new - ont he other hand >> creating (lack of better term) a Mash-Up could be copyrighted. > > No, my point was that under U.S. law, works created before 1978 but > first published after 1978 get (at least) 25 years of copyright > protection. This seems to apply to the psaltery, a hand-created book > which was not published until a few years ago. The stuff about whether > the scans of a public domain work is copyrighted is a red herring, as > far as the psaltery is concerned; the issue is whether the psaltery > itself is protected by copyright. Under the facts given, it would seem > that it is. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From steven at desjardins.org Tue Feb 19 15:30:50 2008 From: steven at desjardins.org (Steven desJardins) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:30:50 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> <2510ddab0802191335o143bb52ehe023e80a1d3663b9@mail.gmail.com> <41fd8970802191345h3755e646kee0bcc6dd44575c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <41fd8970802191530n6ff4f503l82f03ac3d1a123cd@mail.gmail.com> On Feb 19, 2008 5:01 PM, Michael Hart wrote: > > I don't think you can copyright a reissue of The Psalms, period. > > You might be able to copyright the fonts you used. > > Perhaps even trademark or copyright the colors of ink chosen. > > The real question would depend on this sort of think, but NOT > on the date it was published. . .since the ORIGINAL date was > before there was even copyright. > > > Just WHAT is it about THIS Psalter YOU think is copyrightable > under U.S. law??? The artwork. Possibly the text, if it varies significantly from other version of the Psalms. To quote from Wikipedia: *** The Macclesfield Psalter is a lavishly illuminated manuscript from the English region of East Anglia, written in Latin and produced around 1330. The psalter, or book of Psalms, contains 252 beautifully illustrated pages and is named after its most recent owner, the Earl of Macclesfield. Having rested unrecognised on the shelves of Shirburn Castle for several centuries, finally revealed when the library was catalogued for sale, the Macclesfield Psalter was put up for auction at Sotheby's in 2004. Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum attempted to purchase the Psalter, but the initial bid was won by the Getty Museum of Malibu, California, for ?1.7 million. The Psalter subsequently became a cause c?l?bre as, under British law, the American museum had to gain permission to export the Psalter. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art gave the Psalter a starred rating and a temporary export bar was placed on the Psalter until February 10, 2005. In response, the Fitzwilliam Museum, with a contribution from the National Art Collections Fund raised the funds necessary to buy the Psalter (noted for its gaudy, vivid images and its coarse Pythonesque humour) in the United Kingdom. The Psalter can now be viewed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Like other luxury psalters, the Macclesfield Psalter was likely intended for private reading instead of public use in church. It is thought to be by the same scribe as two other psalters from the so-called East Anglian group, the Stowe Breviary and the Douai Psalter. The chief splendour of the Psalter, however, is indisputably the illumination, which is unusually lavish. There are some full-page miniatures at the start, and throughout the book each new verse begins with a small gilded initial against an ornate background of rose and pink. The initials at the traditional major divisions of the Psalms take up most of the page, and as is usual, the B of "Beatus vir ...", the start of Psalm 1, has the largest of all, a magnificent Jesse Tree. The main initials show religious scenes, either from the life of King David or events from the life of Christ that the Psalms were believed to pre-figure. The smaller initials contain various images, including kings, queens, peasants and bishops. The margins of many pages are heavily decorated with abstract designs that constantly sprout into plant shapes, and contain many small "marginal grotesques" of no obvious religious relevance. The Psalter abounds in images of grotesques and drolleries that today are considered humorous. These images include grotesques with faces on their bottoms, three-headed monsters with hairy noses, a dog in a bishop's costume, an ape doctor giving a false diagnosis to a bear patient, rabbits jousting and riding hounds and a giant skate terrorising a man. *** Are you saying that the information at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To is wrong and that manuscripts created before the establishment of copyright and first published after 1978 do *not* receive copyright protection in the United States? From joshua at hutchinson.net Tue Feb 19 15:57:14 2008 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:57:14 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> I think you can easily make the argument that this old manuscript WAS published, though not mass produced. It was created by someone and sold to someone else (or perhaps created as a work for hire, etc). That rule you refer to is meant to cover things like a manuscript of text unpublished by the author and hidden away in an attic then found years later when his great-granddaughter decided to clean out the old family junk pile. Or maybe a scientist's lab journal that was never meant for public consumption, but after she became famous was published posthumously. IMHO, of course. Josh *** On Feb 19, 2008, steven at desjardins.org wrote: Are you saying that the information at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To is wrong and that manuscripts created before the establishment of copyright and first published after 1978 do *not* receive copyright protection in the United States? From steven at desjardins.org Tue Feb 19 17:53:43 2008 From: steven at desjardins.org (Steven desJardins) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:53:43 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> References: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> Message-ID: <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com> On Feb 19, 2008 6:57 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > I think you can easily make the argument that this old manuscript WAS published, though not mass produced. > > It was created by someone and sold to someone else (or perhaps created as a work for hire, etc). > > That rule you refer to is meant to cover things like a manuscript of text unpublished by the author and hidden away in an attic then found years later when his great-granddaughter decided to clean out the old family junk pile. Or maybe a scientist's lab journal that was never meant for public consumption, but after she became famous was published posthumously. IMHO, of course. That's a reasonable argument, but the dictionaries I consulted agree that to "publish" something is to make it generally available to the public. I would want to see an dictionary or legal citation before being convinced that the sale of a unique, unpublished manuscript can constitute publication. Another reason for the rule, incidentally, would be to encourage the publication of rare manuscripts--if the law didn't allow the museum to obtain a copyright, perhaps they never would have bothered making it available to the public. From hart at pglaf.org Tue Feb 19 21:19:32 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:19:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com> References: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Dictionary definitions are not going to be very helpful here, the creators of legalese have seen to that. However, a manuscript of the Psalms would not count as one of the "unpublished" unless it contained Psalms or translations that had not been previously seen. . . . Again I ask YOU. . .what is in the contents HERE that was NOT published long ago??? Is there any CONTENT of intellectual property that is "new?" If not, then you are just clouding the issue. I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. mh On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Steven desJardins wrote: > On Feb 19, 2008 6:57 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: >> I think you can easily make the argument that this old manuscript WAS published, though not mass produced. >> >> It was created by someone and sold to someone else (or perhaps created as a work for hire, etc). >> >> That rule you refer to is meant to cover things like a manuscript of text unpublished by the author and hidden away in an attic then found years later when his great-granddaughter decided to clean out the old family junk pile. Or maybe a scientist's lab journal that was never meant for public consumption, but after she became famous was published posthumously. IMHO, of course. > > That's a reasonable argument, but the dictionaries I consulted agree > that to "publish" something is to make it generally available to the > public. I would want to see an dictionary or legal citation before > being convinced that the sale of a unique, unpublished manuscript can > constitute publication. > > Another reason for the rule, incidentally, would be to encourage the > publication of rare manuscripts--if the law didn't allow the museum to > obtain a copyright, perhaps they never would have bothered making it > available to the public. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From hart at pglaf.org Tue Feb 19 21:31:22 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:31:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <41fd8970802191530n6ff4f503l82f03ac3d1a123cd@mail.gmail.com> References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> <2510ddab0802191335o143bb52ehe023e80a1d3663b9@mail.gmail.com> <41fd8970802191345h3755e646kee0bcc6dd44575c5@mail.gmail.com> <41fd8970802191530n6ff4f503l82f03ac3d1a123cd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: OK, now we finally have the details we needed before. The artwork could be claimed as copyrightable, depending on the country, which may have been one of the reasons a huge effort was make to keep it in the UK and not let it go to the Americans who owned it from the auction buy. When it gets to this level, one law may be used to trump another, and then another to trump that, etc., until one side either gains a supreme foothold or gives up. In these cases it usually does NOT come down to "common" law as we know it, but some esoteric decisions make by a number of people we rarely hear of. Our own discussion of the laws probably has nothing from the actual perspectives such decisions are drawn on. Otherwise copyright would still be limited, Bush not the President of the U.S., and so many other things. Just because the courts decide it doesn't make it right. We'd like to think so, but we all know it's not true.... I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. On Tue, 19 Feb 2008, Steven desJardins wrote: > On Feb 19, 2008 5:01 PM, Michael Hart wrote: >> >> I don't think you can copyright a reissue of The Psalms, period. >> >> You might be able to copyright the fonts you used. >> >> Perhaps even trademark or copyright the colors of ink chosen. >> >> The real question would depend on this sort of think, but NOT >> on the date it was published. . .since the ORIGINAL date was >> before there was even copyright. >> >> >> Just WHAT is it about THIS Psalter YOU think is copyrightable >> under U.S. law??? > > The artwork. Possibly the text, if it varies significantly from other > version of the Psalms. To quote from Wikipedia: > > *** > > The Macclesfield Psalter is a lavishly illuminated manuscript from the > English region of East Anglia, written in Latin and produced around > 1330. The psalter, or book of Psalms, contains 252 beautifully > illustrated pages and is named after its most recent owner, the Earl > of Macclesfield. > > Having rested unrecognised on the shelves of Shirburn Castle for > several centuries, finally revealed when the library was catalogued > for sale, the Macclesfield Psalter was put up for auction at Sotheby's > in 2004. Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum attempted to > purchase the Psalter, but the initial bid was won by the Getty Museum > of Malibu, California, for ?1.7 million. The Psalter subsequently > became a cause c?l?bre as, under British law, the American museum had > to gain permission to export the Psalter. The Reviewing Committee on > the Export of Works of Art gave the Psalter a starred rating and a > temporary export bar was placed on the Psalter until February 10, > 2005. In response, the Fitzwilliam Museum, with a contribution from > the National Art Collections Fund raised the funds necessary to buy > the Psalter (noted for its gaudy, vivid images and its coarse > Pythonesque humour) in the United Kingdom. The Psalter can now be > viewed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. > > Like other luxury psalters, the Macclesfield Psalter was likely > intended for private reading instead of public use in church. It is > thought to be by the same scribe as two other psalters from the > so-called East Anglian group, the Stowe Breviary and the Douai > Psalter. > > The chief splendour of the Psalter, however, is indisputably the > illumination, which is unusually lavish. There are some full-page > miniatures at the start, and throughout the book each new verse begins > with a small gilded initial against an ornate background of rose and > pink. The initials at the traditional major divisions of the Psalms > take up most of the page, and as is usual, the B of "Beatus vir ...", > the start of Psalm 1, has the largest of all, a magnificent Jesse > Tree. The main initials show religious scenes, either from the life of > King David or events from the life of Christ that the Psalms were > believed to pre-figure. The smaller initials contain various images, > including kings, queens, peasants and bishops. The margins of many > pages are heavily decorated with abstract designs that constantly > sprout into plant shapes, and contain many small "marginal grotesques" > of no obvious religious relevance. > > The Psalter abounds in images of grotesques and drolleries that today > are considered humorous. These images include grotesques with faces on > their bottoms, three-headed monsters with hairy noses, a dog in a > bishop's costume, an ape doctor giving a false diagnosis to a bear > patient, rabbits jousting and riding hounds and a giant skate > terrorising a man. > > *** > > Are you saying that the information at > http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To is wrong and > that manuscripts created before the establishment of copyright and > first published after 1978 do *not* receive copyright protection in > the United States? > From prosfilaes at gmail.com Wed Feb 20 04:16:15 2008 From: prosfilaes at gmail.com (David Starner) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:16:15 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com> References: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d99d1fd0802200416r6d783ec2k6c27f13d29d7b0ed@mail.gmail.com> On Feb 19, 2008 8:53 PM, Steven desJardins wrote: > Another reason for the rule, incidentally, would be to encourage the > publication of rare manuscripts--if the law didn't allow the museum to > obtain a copyright, perhaps they never would have bothered making it > available to the public. But I've never read the rule as doing so. In the US, copyright requires an original creative act and copyright doesn't travel with the manuscript by default, in the US or UK. Thus, any such copyright still resides in the heirs of the original creators. From joshua at hutchinson.net Wed Feb 20 05:16:10 2008 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:16:10 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: <1618329296.813021203513370619.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> Definition from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ publish v. to make public to at least one other person by any means. I'd say that manuscript qualifies. Josh On Feb 19, 2008, steven at desjardins.org wrote: On Feb 19, 2008 6:57 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > I think you can easily make the argument that this old manuscript WAS published, though not mass produced. > > It was created by someone and sold to someone else (or perhaps created as a work for hire, etc). > > That rule you refer to is meant to cover things like a manuscript of text unpublished by the author and hidden away in an attic then found years later when his great-granddaughter decided to clean out the old family junk pile. Or maybe a scientist's lab journal that was never meant for public consumption, but after she became famous was published posthumously. IMHO, of course. That's a reasonable argument, but the dictionaries I consulted agree that to "publish" something is to make it generally available to the public. I would want to see an dictionary or legal citation before being convinced that the sale of a unique, unpublished manuscript can constitute publication. Another reason for the rule, incidentally, would be to encourage the publication of rare manuscripts--if the law didn't allow the museum to obtain a copyright, perhaps they never would have bothered making it available to the public. From joshua at hutchinson.net Wed Feb 20 05:19:27 2008 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:19:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: <309725415.813121203513567234.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> Actually, Michael, he *did* answer you. He said the illustrations, of which there are many, are unique to this manuscript. If the manuscript is considered "unpublished" then it will get a new copyright. If it is considered published, it does not. Josh On Feb 20, 2008, hart at pglaf.org wrote: Dictionary definitions are not going to be very helpful here, the creators of legalese have seen to that. However, a manuscript of the Psalms would not count as one of the "unpublished" unless it contained Psalms or translations that had not been previously seen. . . . Again I ask YOU. . .what is in the contents HERE that was NOT published long ago??? Is there any CONTENT of intellectual property that is "new?" If not, then you are just clouding the issue. I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. mh From steven at desjardins.org Wed Feb 20 06:43:07 2008 From: steven at desjardins.org (Steven desJardins) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:43:07 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <1618329296.813021203513370619.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> References: <1618329296.813021203513370619.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> Message-ID: <41fd8970802200643s32c0b6bel1d513776012f4e14@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 8:16 AM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > Definition from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ > > publish v. to make public to at least one other person by any means. > > I'd say that manuscript qualifies. The source you cite doesn't support your argument. The first definition of "publish", which you omit entirely, begins "To circulate, distribute, or print information for the public at large" and clarifies that "The meaning of the term publish differs according to the context in which it is used.... In libel law, a defamatory statement can give rise to civil liability if the statement is made public. To be libelous, a statement must appear in print, in a picture, or in a sign. To be considered published, the statement must be received by at least one other person apart from the speaker and the defamed person. In the law of slander, the term publish refers to defamatory statements that are spoken in the presence of at least one other person." So the second definition, which you partially quote, is almost accurate in the context of libel law. The full quote reads, "publish v. to make public to at least one other person by any means. (See: publication) Copyright (c) 1981-2005 by Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T. Hill. All Right reserved." If you find the definition of "publication" given by the Hills, you find "publication n. 1) anything made public by print (as in a newspaper, magazine, pamphlet, letter, telegram, computer modem or program, poster, brochure or pamphlet), orally, or by broadcast (radio, television). 2) placing a legal notice in an approved newspaper of general publication in the county or district in which the law requires such notice to be published. 3) in the law of defamation (libel and slander) publication of an untruth about another only requires giving the information to a single person. Thus one letter can be the basis of a suit for libel, and telling one person is sufficient to show publication of slander. (See: notice, defamation, libel, slander)" So you're applying a technical definition from libel law in the context of copyright. The only definition I found on that site to specifically discusses publication in the context of copyright is from West's Law Dictionary: "In Copyright law, publication is making a book or other written material available to anyone interested by distributing or offering it for sale." The argument that physical ownership of the manuscript doesn't convey ownership of the copyright seems more convincing, although of course that doesn't mean there's no copyright owner, it just means that the owner or owners are much more difficult to identify. I found a statement on the British Library website that "Unpublished manuscripts with an unknown author remain in copyright until the year created + 70 years." That would suggest that the work had passed into the public domain under British law. From steven at desjardins.org Wed Feb 20 07:08:29 2008 From: steven at desjardins.org (Steven desJardins) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:08:29 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> References: <00f301c87246$9642da60$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> <47B9CB97.70301@novomail.net> <000301c872d6$9c5ede90$d51c9bb0$@co.uk> <20080219151417.GA15135@mail.pglaf.org> <41fd8970802190807x23e7d62bk28c9c01e7d8c0972@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <41fd8970802200708i3db58a25n62aa7f08fc35028b@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Steven desJardins wrote: > The FAQ doesn't say what the copyright term for works first published > after December 31, 2002, as this psaltery was, but the U.S. copyright > office circular says "However, all works in this category are > guaranteed at least 25 years of statutory protection. " I think I misinterpreted this--I think the "25 years" refers to the period from January 1, 1978, to December 31, 2002. Works published by December 31, 2002, get an extra 45 years of protection, until 2047, but that doesn't apply to the psalter. Still not sure what this means for ancient manuscripts first published before 2003. From hart at pglaf.org Wed Feb 20 07:34:04 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:34:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <309725415.813121203513567234.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> References: <309725415.813121203513567234.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> Message-ID: On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > Actually, Michael, he *did* answer you. He said the > illustrations, of which there are many, are unique to this > manuscript. If the manuscript is considered "unpublished" then it > will get a new copyright. If it is considered published, it does > not. > > Josh Sorry, the messages crossed in the ether. . . . mh > > On Feb 20, 2008, hart at pglaf.org wrote: > > Dictionary definitions are not going to be very helpful here, > the creators of legalese have seen to that. > > However, a manuscript of the Psalms would not count as one of > the "unpublished" unless it contained Psalms or translations > that had not been previously seen. . . . > > Again I ask YOU. . .what is in the contents HERE that was NOT > published long ago??? > > Is there any CONTENT of intellectual property that is "new?" > > If not, then you are just clouding the issue. > > > > I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. > > IANAL = I am not a lawyer. > > > mh > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From hart at pglaf.org Wed Feb 20 07:36:03 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:36:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <1618329296.813021203513370619.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> References: <1618329296.813021203513370619.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> Message-ID: On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > Definition from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ > > publish v. to make public to at least one other person by any means. I think you will find more than one definition for publish, this one for copyright infringement is the broadest. . . . While just the opposite would be "true" for copyright itself. I am not a lawyer. . .this is NOT a legal opinion or legal advice. IANAL = I am not a lawyer. > > I'd say that manuscript qualifies. > > Josh > > On Feb 19, 2008, steven at desjardins.org wrote: > On Feb 19, 2008 6:57 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: >> I think you can easily make the argument that this old manuscript WAS published, though not mass produced. >> >> It was created by someone and sold to someone else (or perhaps created as a work for hire, etc). >> >> That rule you refer to is meant to cover things like a manuscript of text unpublished by the author and hidden away in an attic then found years later when his great-granddaughter decided to clean out the old family junk pile. Or maybe a scientist's lab journal that was never meant for public consumption, but after she became famous was published posthumously. IMHO, of course. > > That's a reasonable argument, but the dictionaries I consulted agree > that to "publish" something is to make it generally available to the > public. I would want to see an dictionary or legal citation before > being convinced that the sale of a unique, unpublished manuscript can > constitute publication. > > Another reason for the rule, incidentally, would be to encourage the > publication of rare manuscripts--if the law didn't allow the museum to > obtain a copyright, perhaps they never would have bothered making it > available to the public. > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Feb 20 09:25:10 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:25:10 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair Message-ID: steven said: > if the law didn't allow the museum to obtain a copyright, > perhaps they never would have bothered > making it available to the public. gee, let me rephrase that, ok? if _we_ -- as a society -- would not "allow" a museum to exert (false) "ownership" over each thing in its possession, such that they can _extract_a_toll_ from us (i.e., the public) for the next _70_ years (or so) every single time we want to interact in any way with that thing (which just _happens_ to be in the museum's collection), then that museum might not even "bother" with "making it available to the public" (i.e., us). if we don't let them invoice us, they can withhold their content? boy, if _that_ doesn't sound like a ransom demand, i don't know what in the world it might be missing... and if that museum is supported with _public_funds_ -- and i know _none_ which don't use the tax advantages aggressively -- then it's adding insult to injury. and we should punish that. i thought we were paying our museums to be our _stewards_, not our freaking landlords, for crying out loud... ridiculous... yet this is how powerless we've come to feel against the rich. we need to bite the bullet, and _regain_ our cultural heritage by declaring _eminent_domain_ on all _our_ legacy content -- giving its "owners" a fair payoff to retire them to the bahamas -- so we're not subjected to this egregious rent-seeking... -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080220/691ce1bb/attachment.htm From marcello at perathoner.de Wed Feb 20 11:24:13 2008 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:24:13 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <6d99d1fd0802200416r6d783ec2k6c27f13d29d7b0ed@mail.gmail.com> References: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com> <6d99d1fd0802200416r6d783ec2k6c27f13d29d7b0ed@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47BC7E5D.2090805@perathoner.de> David Starner wrote: > But I've never read the rule as doing so. In the US, copyright > requires an original creative act and copyright doesn't travel with > the manuscript by default, in the US or UK. Thus, any such copyright > still resides in the heirs of the original creators. And because the creator is unknown, in the State. But can something that did not exist at the time be inherited? Or did copyright spring into existence at any later moment, and whom did it attach to and for how long? I'd like the Fitzwilliams's lawyer explain this to me. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From hart at pglaf.org Wed Feb 20 13:10:16 2008 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:10:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Bowerbird is probably more correct than even he might imagine. If you kept up with the cases setting the legal precedents, it might have amazed you just how much what the "Museum Curators" associations said were their just rights in withholding terms, what they could withhold, simply because NO museum could show, even once a year, everything they "owned." The pursuit of logic went so far as to say that even with some very simplistic black and white pieces that could be recreated without even the need for photography should be copyrighted in their names and for the rest of history, simply because owning the pieces also meant owning the right to copy, even if pieces were thousands of years old and had been owned by innumerables before them, who each had the same rights. Given the unbelievable conservatism of the courts, surprise!!! The courts decided against the Museum Curators and you can now download all the great paintings, drawings, etc, and make your own home library of them. If anyone is interested, we'd LOVE to do this on Gutenberg!!! Thanks!!! Michael On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > steven said: >> if the law didn't allow the museum to obtain a copyright, >> perhaps they never would have bothered >> making it available to the public. > > gee, let me rephrase that, ok? > > if _we_ -- as a society -- would not "allow" a museum to > exert (false) "ownership" over each thing in its possession, > such that they can _extract_a_toll_ from us (i.e., the public) > for the next _70_ years (or so) every single time we want to > interact in any way with that thing (which just _happens_ to > be in the museum's collection), then that museum might not > even "bother" with "making it available to the public" (i.e., us). > > if we don't let them invoice us, they can withhold their content? > > boy, if _that_ doesn't sound like a ransom demand, i don't know > what in the world it might be missing... > > and if that museum is supported with _public_funds_ -- and i > know _none_ which don't use the tax advantages aggressively > -- then it's adding insult to injury. and we should punish that. > > i thought we were paying our museums to be our _stewards_, > not our freaking landlords, for crying out loud... ridiculous... > yet this is how powerless we've come to feel against the rich. > > we need to bite the bullet, and _regain_ our cultural heritage > by declaring _eminent_domain_ on all _our_ legacy content -- > giving its "owners" a fair payoff to retire them to the bahamas > -- so we're not subjected to this egregious rent-seeking... > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. > > (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ > 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) > From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Wed Feb 20 13:34:26 2008 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:34:26 -0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: <6d99d1fd0802200416r6d783ec2k6c27f13d29d7b0ed@mail.gmail.com> References: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com> <6d99d1fd0802200416r6d783ec2k6c27f13d29d7b0ed@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000801c87408$5ed33700$1c79a500$@co.uk> -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of David Starner Sent: 20 February 2008 12:16 To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > But I've never read the rule as doing so. In the US, copyright > requires an original creative act and copyright doesn't travel with > the manuscript by default, in the US or UK. Thus, any such copyright > still resides in the heirs of the original creators. Ah! but the psalter was produced by Monks, so they had no children or even property, so no heirs, at least not they would admit to :-) Dave F From piggy at netronome.com Thu Feb 21 07:51:23 2008 From: piggy at netronome.com (La Monte H.P. Yarroll) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:51:23 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair In-Reply-To: References: <2510ddab0802151335o7c4879b9h130f9c4b8c825db1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47BD9DFB.4050308@netronome.com> Wish granted. This is the first page of Nibelungenliet, Handschrift C, published around 1240. I've already got a clearance for the whole book, but it's in a very large metaphorical stack of projects. I also didn't want to dilute the very small pool of people at PGDP willing to work on Middle High German texts. There's a professor somewhere in Germany who prepared a detailed electronic manuscript of this exact copy. I've been meaning to solicit him to contribute his material as a starting point for this edition. This is a case where I think there is substantial value in a line-by-line edition. There are several editions of this work already widely available with the verses formatted in a more modern style. Michael Hart wrote: > I would like even just one page from ANY pre-Gutenberg book[s], > or just one page from ANY Gutenberg book[s]. . . . > > > Michael > > > On Fri, 15 Feb 2008, Brent Gueth wrote: > > >> A gutenberg bible would be nice. >> >> On Feb 15, 2008 4:24 PM, wrote: >> >>> i'll be going to the california international antiquarian book fair >>> this weekend, so let me know if you want me to buy you anything. :+) >>> >>> -bowerbird >>> >>> >>> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 001r.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 84518 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080221/d8334ac3/attachment-0001.jpg From nwolcott2ster at gmail.com Thu Feb 21 08:51:17 2008 From: nwolcott2ster at gmail.com (Norm Wolcott) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:51:17 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair References: <1913024193.267081203465434613.JavaMail.mail@webmail02> <41fd8970802191753x16b30534h70963259879e42ec@mail.gmail.com><6d99d1fd0802200416r6d783ec2k6c27f13d29d7b0ed@mail.gmail.com> <000801c87408$5ed33700$1c79a500$@co.uk> Message-ID: <00cd01c874aa$31fbb160$660fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> I don't know if this is relevant to the discussion, but the Smithsonian policy, as far as I can determine, (and I don't think they advertise it) is to let people copy or photograph their books in general collections or make xeroxes, but i it comes to artistic works lilke old plant illustrations etc, they will usually require you to pay to have them scan it for you and then get you to sign a license limiting its further use etc. They do put lo res pictures up on their web sites, and presumably don't care what happens to them. Looks like their real control is the licensing penalties, not any sort of "copyrigiht". nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Fawthrop" To: "'Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion'" Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:34 PM Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > > > -----Original Message----- > From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org > [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of David Starner > Sent: 20 February 2008 12:16 > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] california international antiquarian book fair > > > But I've never read the rule as doing so. In the US, copyright > > requires an original creative act and copyright doesn't travel with > > the manuscript by default, in the US or UK. Thus, any such copyright > > still resides in the heirs of the original creators. > > Ah! but the psalter was produced by Monks, so they had no children > or even property, so no heirs, at least not they would admit to :-) > > Dave F > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Feb 21 16:01:42 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:01:42 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] does the name "jill sobule" ring a bell? Message-ID: ok, so maybe you're not impressed when a band like "radiohead" decides to strike out on their own, because they've already got huge name recognition. but how about "jill sobule"? do you know that name? jill has released 6 albums, with 4 recording companies. but i'd guess that most of you have never heard of her... still, she decided to ask her fans to fund her next record. she says she needs $75,000. she'll take as little as 10 bucks, which gets you a download of the c.d. when it's finished. she'll also take bigger chunks. $5000 gets a house-concert. ("i'd go for this if i were you.") or, for twice that, you can actually _sing_ on the c.d. zowie... amazingly, she's already got contributions of $50,000, which means she's 2/3 of the way there. go jill! > http://jillsnextrecord.com/ > http://www.jillsobule.com/ -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080221/3581a56e/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Sun Feb 24 16:17:02 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:17:02 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] a very brief but important note on pagenumbering one more time Message-ID: people are getting confused again over at distributed proofreaders: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=428548#428548 please don't continue to botch this. it makes you guys look bad... please get my latest message (and my earlier ones too) in front of the people who are making the latest attempts at progress on this. and there's _absolutely_zero_need_ for the download/rename/upload nonsense. first of all, with a bare minimum of instruction and attention, content-providers can be able to (and should) name the files correctly. (i will also furnish a tool that helps people in this regard, if it's desired.) and even for files obtained from other sources which are named badly, the renaming can (and thus _should_) be done right on the d.p. server. (again, i will be happy to furnish perl code that helps accomplish this.) but, really, when you're scanning a book, it's _very_ easy to get it right. set up your scanning program to name the files consecutively, and then set the default filename at "f001" for the forward matter (charting out the pages so they will be named/numbered correctly as you scan each one), and then reset it again at "p001" when you begin the body of the book (or whatever pagenumber the first page of the book is, if it's not page 1). skip any unnumbered pages until you're done with the numbered ones, then go back and scan them, naming each one appropriately as you do. to repeat, i have off-line tools that handle these renaming tasks fluidly. they're cross-platform, and feature a full-blown g.u.i. that shows scans so a person can verify that the names that are being applied are correct. there are no projects that would be "too difficult" for these tools to work. and i am willing to share these tools, making them available at no cost... i can also program online versions, if that's required. again, please get this right. thank you. -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080224/bc1d356e/attachment.html From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 25 10:47:36 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:47:36 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] a very brief but important note on pagenumbering one more time Message-ID: a short follow-up on this, because i forgot that i have also written a tool that does this file renaming _automatically_. set the scene: once you've done o.c.r. on a scan-set, you have a set of text-files that matches the set of image-files. in each text-file, assuming you set everything up correctly, the page-number sits there, recognized like all of the text. (since the files run in a sequence, the process can be made robust against an occasional misrecognized page-number, and it can also be adept at detecting unnumbered inserts.) so it's trivially simple to have the program rename the text-file and its companion image-file so they have the correct names... thank you. for my next magic trick... -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080225/8ada4ae2/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 25 12:51:13 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:51:13 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] finally, a test of "the simplest thing that might possibly work" Message-ID: the distributed proofreaders volunteer who calls himself "piggy" is now doing a test of the general idea that i've been advocating they should use all along -- sending pages repeatedly to the p1 proofers until they make no more changes, at which time you can consider the pages to be _done_, thank you very much... the book he's using is "planet strappers", a 150-page 400k science-fiction book. so let's take a look at this thing, shall we? the first thing to note is this book was subjected to o.c.r. that was done incorrectly. the em-dashes were recorded as en-dashes, causing unnecessary correction work. therefore, to show respect for the proofers, this o.c.r. should have been re-done... the good news, though, is that the scans are well-made, straight and nicely cropped. (which, in a way, makes it all the more regrettable about the glitch on em-dashes...) this book has already gone through the normal 3 rounds of d.p. proofing, meaning we have a good "criterion text" against which to check the "roundless" performance. based on these three rounds of proofing, we can say some things about the book. first of all, between 2/3 and 3/4 of the lines were _perfectly_correct_ to begin with. (please note that i am speaking of _entire_lines_, not just the individual _words_...) this is consistent with the excellent quality of the scans, which i mentioned above... fully 3/4 and perhaps 4/5 of the lines could be auto-corrected by a clean-up tool so that they would be perfectly correct. (those em-dashes might be auto-fixable, but i've decided it is a waste of my time to fix the stupid mistakes of other people.) given the type of clean-up routines that are easily written even at the present time, and incorporated into a clever tool, the vast majority of the remaining incorrect lines could be corrected in a matter of one hour or less, for this 400k book of 150 pages. this one hour of "pre-preparation" would be an extremely wise investment of time... after it, 95/100 of the lines would be correct, probably 99/100, or even 999/1000. only _then_ should this text be subjected to a word-by-word proofing by humans... a level of 999/1000 would mean that there were 8 errors in this book of 150 pages, which takes us well past my personal standard of 1-error-every-10-pages, which is the rate where we can ask the general public to do "continuous proofreading"... so i don't even think we would need to have humans do a word-by-word proofing. let the people who will _read_ this book _for_content_ be "the final proofing line", since, honestly, those are the people who are able to do that job the best anyway... but if we _do_ ask people to do a word-by-word proofing, it should only be _after_ we've cleaned the text as well as we can anyway, so they can move it to _perfection_. it's silly to ask 'em to manually find and correct errors that we can do "automatically". and it's downright _insulting_ to ask volunteers to find and correct errors that we've _introduced_ with our sloppy handling, like the em-dashes that are discussed above. *** now let's take a look at the correction data... the o.c.r. on this project was fairly accurate... in the first round of proofing, approximately 70% of the lines were _unchanged_... (although it's somewhat hard to calculate this, that's roughly 6000 of 8800 lines.) this doesn't mean that they were _correct_, but odds are that most of them were... i say that because, during the second round of proofing, 94% remained unchanged. (roughly 8300 of 8800 lines were unchanged, so roughly 500 lines were changed.) further, during the third round of proofing, 96.6% of the lines were left untouched... (that is, roughly 300 lines were changed.) if we assume the 30%-of-total lines changed in the first round were fixed correctly, and likewise the 6%-of-total lines changed in the second round were appropriate, and the 3.4%-of-total lines changed in the third round were also proper corrections, and we assume that the text is now completely correct, then the first round caught 75% of the initial errors, and the second round caught 65% of the remaining errors, and the third round caught everything else. of course, they probably didn't, which only goes to show that even _3_ rounds of proofing cannot be considered "enough", not if your goal is to catch _all_ errors, because some pages inevitably need more -- which, of course, is the logic that has compelled a "roundless" system all along... indeed, if we figure that each round caught 3/4 of the errors, then -- since round 3 caught 300 errors -- we'd have to assume that there are 100 errors still remaining. my guess is the truth falls somewhere in-between those two extremes (0 and 100), but probably very much closer to the "no errors" side than to the "100 errors" side, because these proofers seemed to have given this text a very thorough proofing, based on the evidence that they uncovered quite a few errors in the original book. indeed, i'm rather surprised that the third round of proofing caught so many errors. or perhaps it's more accurate to say i'm surprised the second round _left_ so many. what might be at work here is the difference in orientation between the second and third proofing rounds. the second-rounders know there are people following 'em, whereas the third-rounders have the mindset that they are "the last line of defense". indeed, one big "comfort" of the second-round is that you don't have this "pressure", and i think that's why many people prefer to proof in p2 than in p3. i do believe that you don't _need_ this "final round" pressure to catch all of the o.c.r. errors, however. i think if you go through enough rounds with a "find all the errors that you can find" mentality, you eventually _will_ find all of them. so i think it's better _not_ to put this "last line" pressure on people. but, as always, i don't make the workflow over at d.p. at any rate, this test will tell us if repeated rounds of p1 eventually catch all errors. *** but first, let me repeat my opening point, so it sinks in. with an aggressive clean-up, done _before_ the proofing rounds, most of the errors can be found and fixed _first_, so that when the text _does_ go in front of proofers, they move that text to _perfection_, and do it in one round or two, maybe three, with later rounds used to _verify_ changes made (and thus only on pages _with_ changes). and -- of course -- this is exactly what i've been telling the d.p. people all along... -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080225/5d361ad7/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Feb 25 14:21:04 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:21:04 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] finally, a test of "the simplest thing that might possibly work" Message-ID: ok, i did more work on "planet strappers" today -- the message i sent earlier was researched and written this weekend -- and now things become a _lot_ more clear. to refresh, this was looking at the book as it went through the "regular" 3 rounds. i standardized the ellipses between round 2 and round 3, which were creating a ton of meaningless differences. i also standardized the silliness that d.p. does "clothing" em-dashes at the end of a line, and rejoining end-line-hyphenates... it's "reassuring" to know that human proofers can fiddle through these obstacles, but it's stupid to have people waste time and energy on tasks the machine can do. anyway, having standardized away the silliness, now we're down to the real meat. the 300 differences we had in round 3 before have now shrunk down to _32_... i analyzed each of them -- appended -- sorting them into categories i explain... what i found was _10_ differences where an o.c.r. error was missed by p2 people; most of those involved punctuation, and 4 were in the back-of-the-book ads... this accords better with my observation that the proofers did a great job here, as demonstrated by the fact they caught many errors in the original paper-book. and the radically lower number of errors indicates that the books is much closer to perfection than the earlier vastly-inflated number would've led us to expect... i didn't standardize the p1 and p2 files, so i don't know if p2 was even required. again, i've decided not to waste my time correcting other people's stupidities... this makes me even more confident this book could have been adequately fixed -- in its entirety -- in pre-processing, before it was even _sent_ to any proofers... after a good pre-processing, p1 proofers would've certified most pages as ok, and the few pages with corrections could have been verified in a second round, and this book would have been finished to perfection, or something close to it. this kind of book -- clean scans, with good o.c.r. results -- is a prime example of how a roundless system saves tons of energy compared to a fixed system... (i;m not saying this book is _representative_, but instead that it is the kind of book that will benefit _most_ from a roundless system. as such, it is _not_ a "representative" example. the majority of books probably won't benefit _quite_ as much as this one would have; a scan-set and o.c.r. this clean is a bit atypical.) meanwhile, the book has now finished its _second_trip_ through p1 proofers, so i can now start examining the first set of data in _the_actual_experiment_... i probably won't be able to get to that until tomorrow, but i'm looking forward! -bowerbird ==================================================== i found 32 meaningful differences between the p2 output and the p3 output... ==================================================== 10 honest-to-goodness proofing errors (4 of them in the back-of-the-book ads)... -- 2) Be cavalier. Hell, I'd croak before I'd mess this up... I" 3) Be cavalier. Hell, I'd croak before I'd mess this up...!" 2) face of the Moon, with an expression in which rapture-and 3) face of the Moon, with an expression in which rapture and 2) Nelsen?" he sneered. "However, perhaps Dutch was crude! 3) Nelsen?" he sneered. "However, perhaps Dutch was crude. 2) slender bones, aside. They crept into the flat, horizontal, spaces 3) slender bones, aside. They crept into the flat, horizontal spaces 2) "Not 'for'," Nelsen chuckled. "We might say 'with'". 3) "Not 'for'," Nelsen chuckled. "We might say 'with'." 2) "Dear Frank: The rumor has come "that you are going 3) "Dear Frank: The rumor has come that you are going 2) Hunt. Collins. BattLe of strange cultl for control of the world. (G654) 3) Hunt Collins. BattLe of strange cults for control of the world. (G654) x) (note that there is still an error in this line...) 2) Paul Anderson. Earth had no room for them--their only escape was the 3) Poul Anderson. Earth had no room for them--their only escape was the 2) from now. (G534) 3) from now. (G554) 2) E. Everett Evant. In his brain was the power to rule the world and the 3) E. Everett Evans. In his brain was the power to rule the world and the ====================================================== 6 typographic errors in the p-book which were not caught by p2, but were by p3... 2) to re-leatch their collars. But with a cold fury that had 3) to re-latch their collars. But with a cold fury that had 2) thundrous. She came out again and sang Fire Streak in a 3) thunderous. She came out again and sang Fire Streak in a 2) enough to stear clear of Ceres, the largest Asteroid, which 3) enough to steer clear of Ceres, the largest Asteroid, which 2) "Honest, Greenie, your a pal. All that nice stuff. Thanks a 3) "Honest, Greenie, you're a pal. All that nice stuff. Thanks a 2) Thanks again. You and your buddie are not having so bad 3) Thanks again. You and your buddy are not having so bad 2) analysis. They exhude an acid, to dissolve a little of the metal. 3) analysis. They exude an acid, to dissolve a little of the metal. ====================================================== 4 spacing mistakes -- should be caught and handled automatically... -- 2) the elegant U. S. Space Force boys--hence the fantastic drop 3) the elegant U.S. Space Force boys--hence the fantastic drop 2) worthy old U.S.S.F.! We're on our own--to Serenitatis Base 3) worthy old U. S. S. F.! We're on our own--to Serenitatis Base 2) quietly, so as not to awaken Nance. "Hey, Mitch... ! 3) quietly, so as not to awaken Nance. "Hey, Mitch...! 2) "...Frank, Gimp, Two-and-Two, Paul, Mr. Reynolds, 3) "... Frank, Gimp, Two-and-Two, Paul, Mr. Reynolds, ====================================================== 2 end-line-hyphenation glitches -- shouldn't be messed with in the first place... -- 2) of their own. They smiled at pin-up pictures, read microfilmed 3) of their own. They smiled at pin-up pictures, read micro-filmed 2) tube from the air-restorers--it was a by-product of the photosynthetic 3) tube from the air-restorers--it was a by-product of the photo-synthetic ====================================================== 10 em-dash errors -- should have been prevented from occurring at the outset... -- 2) "All right-thanks. Thank you, sir..." 3) "All right--thanks. Thank you, sir..." 2) void of spherical sky-stars in all directions except where 3) void of spherical sky--stars in all directions except where 2) "Sure--we'll keep him good and dopy with a tranquilizer..." 3) "Sure--we'll keep him good and dopey with a tranquilizer..." 2) "Knew--for a while-past tense," Tiflin chuckled wickedly. 3) "Knew--for a while--past tense," Tiflin chuckled wickedly. 2) he laughed. "So I'll make it a grand-build up my ego... 3) he laughed. "So I'll make it a grand--build up my ego... 2) at least twice. Once, with a long-range homing bullet-weapons 3) at least twice. Once, with a long-range homing bullet--weapons 2) special silicone oil accomplished the all--important disinfection 3) special silicone oil accomplished the all-important disinfection 2) The face of the detached sucker was also shown-a honeycomb 3) The face of the detached sucker was also shown--a honeycomb 2) modern conveniences-in the middle of the forbidden wilds of 3) modern conveniences--in the middle of the forbidden wilds of 2) was doing twice a week-to communicate more often would 3) was doing twice a week--to communicate more often would ====================================================== ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080225/809a5a91/attachment-0001.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Feb 26 13:26:48 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:26:48 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] planet strappers -- the unvarnished truth about distributed proofreaders Message-ID: that "test" of the "roundless" system over at distributed proofreaders is illuminating not just because it shows the superiority of "roundless", but also because it demonstrates the hot glaring inefficiencies of d.p. to refresh your memory, some people at d.p. are running an experiment -- using a science-fiction book titled "planet strappers", by ray gallun -- where they will continue sending the text back through p1 repeatedly -- the internal codename for their experiment is "perpetual p1" -- to determine whether it marches to perfection, or stalls in imperfection because p1 proofers just don't have the chops to do the job perfectly... *** let's start at the last part first. the test clearly shows "roundless" works; that is, the text is being improved each time it is sent through p1 again. and indeed, the march to perfection is happening rather rapidly. good. *** but what we also see is that this text was very good right out of o.c.r. the new data indicates that 90% of the lines were perfect to begin with. yes sir, of the 8880 lines in this book, 8000 were recognized correctly. at least 8000. maybe closer to 8800, meaning 88 lines were incorrect, for an accuracy rate of 99%. pretty darn good performance for o.c.r. that's an estimate -- it's difficult to say exactly, because of the glitches that i'll discuss below -- but it looks more and more solid all the time. but that accuracy figure isn't surprising. i'm seeing it a lot these days, even in (reputedly poor-quality) books from the big scanning projects. *** so, what happened with that excellent o.c.r. output? well, funny you should ask, because the first thing that happened was that some human accidentally turned the em-dashes into en-dashes. oops... an innocent mistake, probably, and we all make mistakes all the time. but nonetheless, a mistake that clearly should have been _corrected_, and corrected _before_ this text was sent out to volunteers to proof... to put it in perspective, there are about 1,133 em-dashes in the book. even if the accuracy-rate of the o.c.r. was "just" 90%, that would mean 888 lines with errors. so this simple little em-dash glitch _introduced_ more errors into this text than there were in the o.c.r. to _begin_ with! think about that. a mistake made early in the workflow caused people laboring further down the line to work _twice_as_much_ as was needed! and that's assuming there were 888 lines with errors. if there were only 88 lines with errors in the original o.c.r., then the em-dash glitch caused the proofers to work _10_times_more_ than necessary! that's remarkable! and i wish i could say that this is an isolated case. but it's not. i don't think i've ever seen this particular em-dash glitch over at d.p., no, but i have seen _plenty_ of cases where bad actions early in the workflow imposed huge costly obligations on people working later in the process... it's vitally important in a distributed workflow to make sure that travesties like that don't happen. you have to be on-guard against them all the time. (in a non-distributed environment, natural checks will offset the problem. if you had made this glitch, you would correct, not say "oh well" and let it impose its cost. if you have to clean up the mess, you will not make one.) unfortunately, the organizers at d.p. are asleep at the switch on all of this. bad things like this get passed down the line all the time. _all_the_time_. this is one of those "hot glaring inefficiencies" that i mentioned at the top. it's sad -- it is _really_ sad -- and i can't think of any "nice" way to put it... even worse, it gets worse. we're just at the start of the sad and ugly stuff. the next think we need to talk about is end-of-line-hyphenates... as you know, i have long argued that d.p. -- and even p.g. proper -- should _retain_ the linebreaks, as they stand, in the original p-book, including end-line-hyphenates. d.p. at least keeps the line-breaks while it's working on the book -- because it makes it much easier -- but the exception is for end-line-hyphenates, which are rejoined... so... let's pretend that it's a good idea to rejoin end-line-hyphenates. (it's not. but let's pretend that it is.) even so, it's supremely _stupid_ -- and that's a kind interpretation -- to have humans do the rejoining. human changes are error-prone, and do not leave us a good record that can be examined and verified to ensure no mistakes were made. no, you should program routines to have a machine do the rejoining. and the routines should incorporate knowledge of _the_whole_text_ -- because hyphenation elsewhere in the book is a crucial variable -- which human proofers doing one-page-at-a-time simply don't have. further, rejoining should happen at the _end_ of the proofing process, not before it or in the middle of it, so proofers have the big benefit of seeing text with linebreaks that match the image they're using to proof. plus, quite honestly and frankly, making proofers do the rejoining is simply a waste of their time and energy. the machine can do it faster. and finally, once we stop pretending rejoining is a good idea (it's not) we can truly absorb the _supreme_stupidity_ of having proofers do it. i won't even talk about the silliness of "marking" end-line-hyphenates which -- for one reason or another -- a proofer cannot rejoin, since -- against the supreme stupidity -- that silliness is a minor irritation... by my rough count, there were 789 end-line-hyphenates in this text. that's 789 places where a proofer had to take an unnecessary action. 789 unnecessary "diffs" were created that could have been ignored... it's a good thing nobody knows how much time and energy is being _wasted_ over at distributed proofreaders, or there would be a riot... as if that wasn't bad enough... yeah, sorry folks, but there's more. and if i don't catalog it, who will? i mentioned earlier that i had "standardized" the ellipses in this text. ellipses are one of those topics that has been discussed ad infinitum over at d.p., with a series of different policies enacted over the years, not to mention all the exceptions mandated by the project managers. right now, as best as i understand it, the official policy is to use 3 dots for a "regular" ellipse, and 4 dots for an ellipse that "ends a sentence". this is the worst possible "policy" for a digitization project to embrace, because it doesn't just put into place a _difference_ (3 dots versus 4), but it also installs _a_judgment_call_ on top of it. yes, believe it or not, it is not unknown for there to be discussions over at d.p. about whether a particular ellipse on some page of some book ends a sentence or not. meanwhile, _nobody_ has _ever_ been able to explain to me precisely how or why 3 dots or 4 dots could be important for a reader to know. what difference does it make? who cares if the sentence is over or not? so one of the things that i do to every text i touch is a global operation that changes 4 dots to 3 dots. (i also close up the dots if they're spaced, because spaced dots just invite problems whenever you rewrap the text.) let's step back for a minute, ok, and remind ourselves that google is now scanning more books, ever single day, day in and day out, _before_lunch_, than d.p. digitized over the entire course of the year in 2007. i repeat: google scans more books _before_lunch_ than d.p. digitizes in a year... (if you want the numbers, google scans about 30,000 volumes a week. distributed proofreaders, in 2007, digitized 2,345 books. figure it out.) taking all that into account, do we _want_ proofers to _spend_time_ deciding whether a particular ellipse will get 3 dots or 4? i think not. oh, one more thing about ellipses. as many of you undoubtedly know, the typography of old books often "floats" punctuation, like the ellipse. that is, there is a space between the word preceding it and the ellipse, meaning it appears something like this ... which looks funny to us now, so most digitizers -- including d.p. -- typically close up that spacing... now, given this rule, i would think that -- in the course of preparing text for proofers -- you'd just do a global change to accomplish that. that is, you globally change " ..." to "...". basically, it's truly that simple; it'd only take a person about 10 seconds to do it in a word-processor. but i'd just program it into a clean-up tool, to be done automatically... you can tell what's coming now, though, can't you? unfortunately, the person who prepared this text for the proofers -- you know, that same person who created the em-dash errors -- failed to do this simple global change to close up floating ellipses. so proofers had to close up each and every one of the 505 ellipses in this text, creating 505 unnecessary "diffs". (dedicated proofers look at their "diffs", to determine how they can improve their work; needless to say, when they have to paw through meaningless diffs like this, it weakens their desire to examine any diffs and improve.) *** so, if we consider the 1,133 errors introduced via the em-dash glitch, add the 789 end-line-hyphenates that had to be needlessly rejoined, and then add the 505 ellipses that required correction from a human, we've got some 2,427 locations in this book where a volunteer had to go and do work that was unnecessary (or could have been automated). 2,427 places where human energy was wasted. just in this one book. it's amazing. truly amazing. so let's put it in perspective now, ok? how many _genuine_ o.c.r. errors were there in this book, you know, errors that _needed_ correcting, not like the unneeded ones above? and further, how many of these were caught by the p1 proofers, and then how many more by the p2 proofers, and the p3 proofers? and -- because that's the purpose of this experiment -- how many errors would _remain_ if we kept sending the text back through p1? well, i'm glad you asked, because i've got some data to answer you... in the "regular" 3-round process of d.p., which this text underwent, the p2 proofers found _??_ errors which p1 proofers had "missed". (i hope you'll forgive me for putting "missed" in quotemarks there, because the _explicit_directions_ given to the p1 proofers are to "make the page better". it is _not_ to "make the page _perfect_", because they are told that other proofers will follow to do _that_, their instruction is simply to "improve the page from what it was". because of this, the fact that they "missed" some errors is not fatal, and it's unfair to the p1 proofers if we would construe it that way.) anyway, to repeat, p2 proofers made _??_ genuine corrections. after them, p3 proofers made some 10-32 genuine corrections. (an annotated list of those was appended to my last message.) compare this small number of _??_ _genuine_ corrections with the 2,427 _unnecessary_ ones (most of which were fixed by p1 proofers) and the bigger number is _quite_striking_, yes? that is why i describe the d.p. workflow as flawed and inefficient. *** speaking of the p1 proofers, how is the "perpetual p1" test going? well, it's still in-progress, but i can give you a solid report regardless. the p1 proofers are doing _very_well_ in these subsequent p1 rounds, just like they did very well the first time they got a crack at this book... the second time p1 saw pages, 54 more genuine errors were found. (a complete listing of these corrections is appended to this message.) it's now undergoing a third pass through p1. only 48 pages in, but just _one_ additional genuine error has been found thus far. there are diffs on more pages than not, but _meaningless_ ones, involving ellipses or em-dashes or end-line-hyphenate rejoining. the only _real_ error was involving a space that had gone missing: > yuh,"Storey said. *** in conclusion, a close examination of the digitization of this book supports what i've been saying all along about the d.p. workflow... in a nutshell, d.p. doesn't seem to respect its volunteers much, as evidenced by the fact that it _wastes_ their time and energy. good solid pre-processing would spare the proofers much work. instead, errors are often _introduced_ -- by outright mistakes and badly misguided policies -- which the proofers must then correct. any objective appraisal of that phenomenon must condemn it fully. i sincerely wish there was a nicer way to say it, but i can't think of it. if anyone has any suggestions in that regard, please share. thanks. -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080226/5713f28a/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Feb 27 11:00:21 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:00:21 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] on answering the "confidence in page" question Message-ID: here's another post on the philosophy of a "roundless" proofing system. the-powers-that-be on distributed proofreaders, in the form of juliet, have said that in order to install such a system, they need to be able to compute a "confidence in page" measure. (i disagree, but juliet said it.) so some d.p. volunteers have set out to create such a measure. great... > on that c.i.p. -- "confidence in page" -- d.p. wiki-page, piggy says: > The fundamental goal of the CiP Algorithm is to answer the question, > "What are the odds that there is an error remaining on this page?". ok, i can buy that as the question. i think it's important to note the probabilistic nature of this formulation, and to remind ourselves that reality is actually _discrete_ in this matter... that is, any page either _does_ or _does_not_ have a remaining error. there's no "probability" at work here, no "odds". it does or it doesn't... still, a probabilistic perspective reflects our _uncertainty_ in knowing. plus it also lets us project the number of errors on a book-wide basis. for instance, if we say that there is a 50% chance of an error on a page, we're saying that we expect there to be 1 error on every 2 such pages. putting the proposition in that manner leads us to another question, a question that i feel will be very productive for us to answer, namely: what are we gonna do with the answer to our probabilistic question? that is, what kind of answer are we seeking? what's a "good" answer? based on the answers that we might find, what actions will we take? our basic action will be to (1) call a page "done" or (2) proof it again. for instance, a 90% chance of an error means 9 errors on 10 pages. that's unacceptably high, of course, so if we got that as our answer, we would route such a page back to the proofers for another look... even a 50% chance -- 1 error every 2 pages -- means "do it again". as i say here regularly, my standard is 1-error-every-10-pages... that's a minimum -- i prefer twice that good -- but i will accept it. i've also seen this rate quoted as being "acceptable" over at d.p., but can't remember the exact circumstances where it was applied. (maybe as the standard required to be approved for p3 proofing?) now, to get the accuracy up to a rate of 1-error-every-10-pages, we'd have to do another proof on any page with a probability>.1. using this cut-off makes it _much_ easier to answer our question. for instance, if we can assess the probability as between .4 and .7, we don't need to pin it down any further. both cases get re-done. even the difference between .2 and .3 would be immaterial to us... all we need to know is whether the probability is greater than .1. if it is, then we're gonna send back the page for another proofing. *** this brings up an interesting sidebar... given the high quality of the o.c.r. today under good circumstances, a percentage of pages are _completely_perfect_ straight out of o.c.r. (i'm one of those people who think there are degrees of perfection.) so, if our assessment takes a page straight from o.c.r. and computes the probability that it contains an error at less than .1, do we proof it? food for thought... (as you might have guessed, i'd maintain that we should not proof it. i would suggest that we proof a certain sample of such pages, just to test our computation and make sure we didn't allow too many errors, but as long as the sampling continued to show an _actual_error_rate_ less than 1-error-every-10-pages, then i would continue to trust it.) but i suspect that d.p. people will think they _always_ need 1 round... *** observers agree that individual proofers vary greatly in their accuracy. some proofers are excellent, catching 90% (or more!) of all the errors. others are horrible, and miss as many errors (50%) as they catch (50%). in general, though, we can estimate the average proofer catches 75%. that will be 3 out of 4 errors. you could say 2/3 of you want (66.7%), or 4/5 (80%), 6/10 (60%), 7/10 (70%), or whatever, it doesn't matter, because none of those rates will yield you <.1 after a single proofing, unless you were very close to that rate even _before_ the one proofing. remember, errors come in discrete numbers, not in "probabilities"... any specific page either has 1 error on it (or more), or 0 errors on it. those are the only two choices, when we're talking about _one_page_. if a page has a dozen errors on it, then it might take us 2-3 rounds to catch all of them, and be confident that we've caught all of them... but once a page is down to 1 error, it should take 1 round to fix it. and we should be fairly confident after that round that we are done... unfortunately, unless that page was done by one of the best proofers -- the 90%+ proofers -- our confidence won't attain our <.1 criterion. the only way to get things down to that level is to have at least 1 round where there are _no_ errors found. bingo. yes, we're back where i started from. imagine that. so let me share with you the answer that i wrote off the top of my head when i first encountered piggy's opening question: > The fundamental goal of the CiP Algorithm is to answer the question, > "What are the odds that there is an error remaining on this page?". if the last person who examined the page found an error on it, then there is a non-trivial chance there is an error remaining... if the last person who looked at the page did not find an error, the odds that there is an error remaining are reduced by half... the odds that you will find a better metric than this are 47-to-1. to beat them, you'd have to do a significant amount of research, and hire expensive, real statisticians to analyze the data for you. *** i suggest you go with the easy answer instead. if a page had a change made to it, it needs to be proofed again. simple. sweet. and best of all, it works, and works well. thank you. -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080227/0ded3768/attachment-0001.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Feb 28 02:21:01 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:21:01 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] some great data from the "perpetual p1" project Message-ID: that data i promised to append to my message (on tuesday)? i forgot... i also forgot to fill in a number -- the number of fixes by p2 proofers -- using double-question-marks (my code for "check it"). sorry about that. the reason i needed to check that number was because it was the exact number of fixes -- 55 -- as were made in iteration#2 by the "perpetual" proofers. so i figured i'd used the wrong file, maybe using the same file twice instead of using both of the files. (crap can happen when you have dozens of files laying around...) nope. it was the right file. in a coincidence that seems unlikely to me, both the p1 proofers (in their second pass) and the p2 proofers made exactly the same number of corrections -- 55 -- throughout the book. cue the spooky music... of course, that would occur if they made exactly the same corrections. except (increase spooky volume) that's _not_ what happened... oh, yeah, sure, many of the corrections they made were the same. that is to be expected, since they both started with the same text, meaning the _errors_ were exactly the same (i.e., the ones after p1), so it's obvious that their _corrections_ are gonna be the same too... but only 40 of the corrections they made were fixing the same errors. we've got two groups to talk about here, so let's review the terminology. this book -- "planet strappers", by ray gallun -- went through 3 rounds of proofing, which is the designed workflow of distributed proofreaders. (following proofing are 2 rounds of formatting, after which the book is post-processed, as a whole, as a package of files for project gutenberg. but in this discussion, we're concentrating on the 3 proofing rounds. and most specifically for right now, we're focused on the p2 results...) so this book had been through the 3 regular proofing rounds at d.p., the assumption being the text is now as free as possible of o.c.r. errors. for the _roundless_experiment_, the p1 text (the starting point for p2) was adopted as starting-point for re-submission to p1 for another run. (we'll call these "iterations" -- for clarity -- so this will be iteration#2.) i assume they want to learn how many rounds it takes to get all clean... i'll use "p2" to indicate the p2 proofers who handled this book originally, and i'll use "i2" to indicate iteration#2 by the p1 proofers in our test here. we'll compare the regular p2 output against the i2 roundless experiment. now, the "p2" are proofers who've been _tested_ and _certified_ by d.p.; because of this, we can expect better performance from them than i2... the "i2" people were proofers working in p1, maybe not certified at all. (they _might_ be approved to do p2 or p3, as high-rated proofers do often "slum" in lower rounds, but p1 also includes the _rank_newbies_. so we don't necessarily expect great performance by 'em, which is the point of restricting them to p1 in the first place, to "minimize damage". the idea is that the more-expert proofers follow the less-expert ones, and can "clean up" any inadvertent problems created by the newbies.) to repeat, _40_ of the corrections made by these two different groups -- p2 and i2 -- were "in-common" corrections, fixing the same errors. that means _15_ errors fixed by p2 were _not_ found or fixed by i2. similarly, _15_ errors that were fixed by i2 were _not_ found by p2... each group found a number of errors which the other group missed. 70 total errors were fixed. but each group found only 55, missing 15. there's a statistic -- probably derived from signal detection theory -- that can use this pattern of data to predict the number of errors that _both_ groups missed, and thus which would still remain in the text... i seem to remember that stat being written up a forum over at d.p., so if anyone can dig it out, it might be useful or interesting to people, especially since we could do an immediate test of the quality of its resultant prediction, just by comparing it to the p3 actual findings. at any rate, i've uploaded the data to a couple of web-pages for you: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/strappers-p1v2p2v2.html > http://z-m-l.com/misc/strappers-p1i1p1i2.html the top u.r.l. shows the corrections made by the p2 group. the bottom one shows the fixes applied by the i2 people... if you open these pages in side-by-side windows, you'll see that i've arranged them so they "overlay" each other, so you can clearly view which of the corrections were in-common and which were unique... *** so even though this experiment was done with "roundless" in mind, the results give us an interesting look at the "parallel" methodology, another workflow for proofing that has two separate groups attack the same page independently of each other, then does a comparison of their output from the standpoint of resolving their discrepancies... i prefer roundless myself, because i just can't see asking proofers to find-and-fix the same errors other proofers are finding-and-fixing. practically speaking, it's a duplication of effort. but if the "parallel" method can produce a worthwhile side-benefit -- such as, for instance, the use of the statistic cited above to make accurate predictions of the presence of errors remaining in a text -- that might offset the cost of having proofers doing redundant work. *** next, it is interesting that the tested-and-certified p2 group found no more errors than did the i2 group (which could include newbies). remember, we had expected the p2 group to do better than i2... i'm not saying that this means the i2 proofers are "just as good as" the p2 proofers, because the p2 group could have been catching errors that are more _subtle_. we will be able to test that when we compare the iteration#3 results with the p3 proofing output. contrariwise, if the errors that i2 uniquely caught were "unsubtle", then we are legitimately entitled to ask why p2 had missed them... still... based solely on the number of errors found -- and missed -- it's hard to ignore the fact that the p2 and i2 rates were _identical_. so, on the face of it, one can not make a case for p2 "superiority", in spite of the fact they have been tested and certified for quality. i believe the "powers" over at d.p. are underestimating the p1 folk. (and the flak p1 proofers are taking -- supposedly because their huge output is causing "backlogs" in the system -- is _ludicrous_! listen up: your system is clogged because your workflow is wack... stop blaming good-faith hard-working volunteers for your mess.) *** speaking of i3, i make the curious note that it seems to have stalled; tuesday it had 48 pages, and at 3 on wednesday, it's only up to 56... as i reported tuesday, most of the changes that're being made in i3 are meaningless ones -- adding a dot to an ellipse or closing it up, correcting one of the needlessly-introduced em-dash mistakes, or fiddling with the end-line-hyphenates. this kind of piddling work has to be extremely boring and frustrating for any volunteer to do, and i can't blame anyone for opting out of such an unsatisfying job, _especially_ if they understand those changes could be made on a book-wide basis with one quick global change in a word-processor. to ask people to do such an unfulfilling task is patently disrespectful. i think most people will agree that proofing will never be _exciting_, but it certainly shouldn't be a _brain-deadening_ experience either. heck, a good percentage of the errors caught by _all_ these proofers could've been found with any decent post-o.c.r. clean-up program... i eliminated some of these, just so they wouldn't clog up the analysis, but if i would have deleted _all_ the ones that could've been located by an aggressive tool, we'd have been down to 25-35 errors, not 70. again, why would you ask human volunteer proofers to find-and-fix errors which can be located _much_ more efficiently by the computer? it shows a profound lack of respect for the value of their contribution. not only that, but it breeds _inefficiency_ as well, because an error that could have been located _automatically_ will distract proofers who must find it manually, so they're less likely to find other errors (i.e., more difficult errors, which _can't_ be detected automatically.) *** a quick cautionary note... as indicated by the fact that i deleted some auto-detectable errors, i have engaged in a large number of slight reworkings of the files, which means that inevitably i will have introduced errors of my own. thus, my results should not be interpreted as being "the final word". i have tremendous confidence that, on the whole, it's quite accurate, and my conclusions are solid. but bits and pieces might be flawed... (e.g, the "line missing here" line might be one i deleted, and so on.) however, please do draw my attention to any errors i've made here. i _do_ wanna hear about 'em, so i _can_ make a solid end-product. *** so let's see, what else? oh, because it was such a pain in the ass to fix, when you rejoin an end-line-hyphenate and lose a line in the process (because the part that you rejoined was the only thing on the lower line), you _really_ screw up the sync on a line-based analysis. please, stop doing it... stop rejoining those hyphenates by hand; it's a total waste of time. *** i didn't actually verify the corrections by a check against the scan. so it is important to keep in mind that i have considered here that any change made is a _correction_ that _should_ have been made. there are cases where this might not be the case. the obvious one is where the "correction" introduces a _new_ error. but another is where an _error_ in the _original_ p-book was fixed by a proofer. there were many instances of this -- some of these proofers were quite sharp! -- but we don't really want to penalize a proofer who "failed" to catch them, yet _did_ verify the o.c.r. matched the scan. i mean, ideally, it's a good thing if we find and fix "content" errors, but that's not the _real_objective_ of our o.c.r. correction proofing. (and, in fact, once you adopt the mindset of checking the "content", you'll start missing the scannos, so that's not even recommended.) so matching the page is "acceptable", even if the page was wrong. so before you castigate _either_ group -- p2 or i2 -- for "missing" a correction the other group "found", you should check the image, to make sure that they really did _miss_ an actual o.c.r. _error_... *** finally, at some point -- as we get down to the last few errors -- things get all kind of squirrely and tenuous and ambiguous, so it gets hard sometimes to know how to portion out responsibility. which means that can be the most fun stuff of all to view closely! so let's do it! ok? :+) we'll get a little bit ahead of ourselves, as iteration#3 -- i3 -- is still "in-progress". but the p3 proofers already finished their crack, so let's look at how they did, ok? you'll remember that there were 15 errors which i2 caught and p2 missed. so... how did p3 fare? did they catch those errors? or did they miss 'em? big drum-roll... well, gee... they missed 6 of the 15. hmm. kinda _disappointing_, since p3 is "the final line of defense", and "the best d.p. proofers", thoroughly and exhaustively tested and credentialed for the honor. and they missed 6 out of the 15 errors which i2 found? on this clear and crucial test, their hit-rate was just 60%? that's disappointing, with a capital d, that's what that is... well, first, let's be realistic for a second. 6 errors in 150 pages? that averages to 1-error-every-25-pages. that's a _great_ rate. so even if they only scored 60% on this test, they still did good. an accuracy-level of 1-error-every-25-pages is _darn_good_. first, it's far better than my minimum 1-error-every-10-pages. second, it's not an excessive burden of errors to lay on a reader. of course we want a _perfect_ text, but errors that far apart are nothing to be ashamed of; our end-users got a _quality_ book... and third, we _will_ reduce those errors as people report them; we'll have that number down to zero errors before you know it. so a total number of errors in a book of _6_ isn't that bad at all. plus, our ability to improve the text gets even clearly when we observe and realize that fully _half_ of the 6 errors p3 missed were ones that could (and should) have been auto-detected by any decent post-o.c.r. clean-up tool, and thus should've been _fixed_before_they_even_were_presented_to_p1_proofers... yes folks, 3 of the 6 errors which survived close scrutiny via the full-on 3 rounds of proofing by dedicated d.p. proofers would be _flagged_ in big bright colors by my proofing tools. what does that tell us about the fullness of human proofing? and even more relevant, what does it say about the policies? in my workflow, those errors would be stomped _before_p1_. this error would be auto-detected by a punctuation-check: > Jig Hollins grumbled on a Sunday. afternoon at the shop. (specifically, the one looking for period-space-lowercase runs.) this full paragraph would be flagged as unbalanced quotes: > 'Sure -- we see -- thanks. Yes -- the Moon." and this glitch would be auto-detected by the spellcheck: > ects which I'm working on. I remember mentioning that it (the "ects" there was the end-page-hyphenation of "pro-jects".) if d.p. had a good workflow, these errors wouldn't have existed. so the failure of 3 rounds of proofing to find 'em did no damage. it's not _encouraging_ that these errors were not found, but still, even at this late date, finding and fixing 'em is an easy thing to do. moreover, since the _other_ half of the 6 errors p3 "missed" were ambiguous or understandable or had extenuating circumstances, there's little reason for us to be unhappy over the p3 performance. so i would pat the p3 proofers on the back and say "job well done". um... uh... but... well... gee... i'm really sorry to be so picky, but... despite back-pat, i'm telling the truth when i say i expected better. these are reputedly the _most_accurate_ 100 proofers in all of d.p. they're like the _marines_, these p3 proofers, they take _pride_ in it. yet they missed 6 out of the 15 errors i had expected them to find? puny p1 proofers -- iteration#2 -- _outperformed_ the p3 marines. it wasn't a "competition", of course... heck, neither side even knew they were gonna be compared here... but still... p3 got _served_... d.p. has a _huge_ backlog so the p3 "creme de la creme" proofers can do their magic on pages, so _any_ "defeat" makes p3 look bad. and when that "defeat" is dealt by p1, well... it adds insult to injury. especially since this isn't the _first_ time p1 has proven it can do as well as p3. (p1-p1-p2 experiments have produced clean text.) indeed, based on these results, the recommendation would be to dismantle the hierarchy of proofers altogether -- especially since that credentialing uses up lots of resources -- and keep sending pages back through p1 until they come clean. bye-bye backlog... of course, that's what _i_ have been suggesting all along... imagine that. -bowerbird p.s. will d.p. ignore this data, like they've been ignoring me? ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080228/eb0c000b/attachment-0001.htm From ajhaines at shaw.ca Thu Feb 28 10:29:14 2008 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:29:14 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Help finding publish date for a book Message-ID: <000301c87a37$d1dfe380$6801a8c0@ahainesp2400> I have a book titled "An Arrow in a Sunbeam and Other Tales", published in Britain by William Nicholson and Sons. It's anonymous and undated, but judging by its general look and feel, it's from around 1880-1890. The book: - is not listed in the British Library integrated catalog. - is not in Internet Archives. - is not in Abebooks. - Googling "arrow in a sunbeam" (including the quote marks) produces no hits. According to the publisher's catalog in the back of the book, it's part of the publisher's "Victoria Series", some authored by "Emily Jane Moore", but most with no author. A check of the British Library catalog for "moore emily jane" yields eight matches, all from about 1890-1895, but none of those books are in the above "Victoria Series". Anyone got any ideas for finding/verifying the publish date of this book? Al From steven at desjardins.org Thu Feb 28 10:44:23 2008 From: steven at desjardins.org (Steven desJardins) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:44:23 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Help finding publish date for a book In-Reply-To: <000301c87a37$d1dfe380$6801a8c0@ahainesp2400> References: <000301c87a37$d1dfe380$6801a8c0@ahainesp2400> Message-ID: <41fd8970802281044nd1e7d16kb839613ec4e42846@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Al Haines (shaw) wrote: > I have a book titled "An Arrow in a Sunbeam and Other Tales", published in Britain by William > Nicholson and Sons. > > It's anonymous and undated, but judging by its general look and feel, it's from around 1880-1890. > > The book: > > - is not listed in the British Library integrated catalog. > - is not in Internet Archives. > - is not in Abebooks. > - Googling "arrow in a sunbeam" (including the quote marks) produces no hits. > > According to the publisher's catalog in the back of the book, it's part of the publisher's "Victoria > Series", some authored by "Emily Jane Moore", but most with no author. > > A check of the British Library catalog for "moore emily jane" yields eight matches, all from about > 1890-1895, but none of those books are in the above "Victoria Series". > > Anyone got any ideas for finding/verifying the publish date of this book? Google Books gives Sarah Orne Jewett as the author, but has no preview available. Perhaps searching on Jewett, or on some of the stories besides "An Arrow in a Sunbeam", might yield results. Try distinctive phrases from the title story to see if it was published under a different title; it's possible the stories are already in Project Gutenberg. From grythumn at gmail.com Thu Feb 28 11:15:17 2008 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:15:17 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Help finding publish date for a book In-Reply-To: <000301c87a37$d1dfe380$6801a8c0@ahainesp2400> References: <000301c87a37$d1dfe380$6801a8c0@ahainesp2400> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50802281115q600546feia04b674406372c72@mail.gmail.com> Worldcat only lists one library with a record for it: University of South Mississippi Jewett, Sarah Orne,; 1849-1909. London : William Nicholson and Sons, 1880s 142 p. : ill. ; 18 cm. Victoria series; Arrow in a sunbeam -- Miss Sydney's flowers / [S.O. Jewett] -- Brave boy -- Lady Ferry / [S.O. Jewett] -- Bit of shore life / [S.O. Jewett] -- How Lily got the cat. R C On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Al Haines (shaw) wrote: > I have a book titled "An Arrow in a Sunbeam and Other Tales", published in > Britain by William > Nicholson and Sons. > > It's anonymous and undated, but judging by its general look and feel, it's > from around 1880-1890. > > The book: > > - is not listed in the British Library integrated catalog. > - is not in Internet Archives. > - is not in Abebooks. > - Googling "arrow in a sunbeam" (including the quote marks) produces no > hits. > > According to the publisher's catalog in the back of the book, it's part of > the publisher's "Victoria > Series", some authored by "Emily Jane Moore", but most with no author. > > A check of the British Library catalog for "moore emily jane" yields eight > matches, all from about > 1890-1895, but none of those books are in the above "Victoria Series". > > Anyone got any ideas for finding/verifying the publish date of this book? > > Al > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080228/cdb02a8a/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Feb 28 13:42:55 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:42:55 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] an update on the progress of iteration#3 in the "perpetual p1" experiment Message-ID: well... iteration#3 of the "perpetual p1" experiment has experienced a few bursts of activity in the last 24 hours, and is now at page 75, almost halfway through the book. so let's take a measure of their progress... you might remember that i was _disappointed_ with the performance shown by the p3 proofers -- the "marines". they missed 6 of the 15 errors which iteration#2 found... our expectation was that i3 would _not_ do as well as p3 -- after all, it's being done by uncertified p1 proofers -- but the poor showing by p3 left a chance for i3 surprise... alas... so far, i3 was exposed to 7 errors, and missed _5_. oops. i guess once you get down to the last few errors in a book, it's just difficult to catch 'em, whether beginner or expert... however, there is a "however"... the "however" is that this i3 round _has_ already caught _2_new_errors_. one of 'em wasn't an error in the o.c.r., it was a "semantic" error present in the original book... and the other one was a hyphen which -- although it _is_ in the p-book -- was largely obscured by a splotch, which is probably why no previous proofers spotted it... but they're both errors, so we're glad they're both fixed. for the record, here are the errors, with their corrections: > where there rocket ship must have stood--a glassy, spot where > where their rocket ship must have stood--a glassy, spot where ... > stretches, but most of the well selected route was smooth. Half > stretches, but most of the well-selected route was smooth. Half (and, um, if you're thinking that that comma after "glassy" looks like an error too, you're thinking what i'm thinking. it _is_ in the p-book, in case you're wondering, but unless "glassy" is some slang the author is using, i would say that that comma should be informed to pack its bags and leave. but hey, i'm just doing the analysis here, not the proofing.) now, the fact the proofers are catching _semantic_ errors indicates to me that they are actually _reading_ this text, and not _proofing_ it. that'd be understandable, because this is a science-fiction book, so it might be fun to read... that might also help explain why o.c.r. errors were missed. o.c.r. errors become "invisible" when you read for content, since your mind subconsciously "routes around damage", silently correcting glitches so you can _get_the_meaning_. *** as i've been saying, these proofers have caught a lot of the "semantic mistakes" in the original p-book. yet despite the _4_proofings_ (p1, p2, p3, and i2) the pages have received, _no_one_ had caught either of the 2 errors that i3 located. it was only on the _5th_pass_ that these errors were found. let's also predict that -- in the second half of this book -- the i3 proofers find 2 _more_ errors, for a grand total of 4. to my mind, from the viewpoint based on a cost-benefit analysis, this question arises: was it really _worth_it_ to do a 5th pass, when that pass tracked down 4 new errors? i mean, sure i'm glad to have found them, because i want the text to be _perfect_. but realistically, we had to have 150+ pages proofed word-by-word by human volunteers to catch the 4 additional errors. that's a lot of resources... now of course, when we don't even know if we'll catch any errors, or whether we'll catch 4 dozen, then the question whether to do a 5th pass is difficult enough to answer... but let's say we can confidently predict we'll catch 4 errors; is it _worth_ proofing 150+ pages to find and fix those 4? -bowerbird ************** Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080228/f42c3aec/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Feb 29 11:56:14 2008 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:56:14 EST Subject: [gutvol-d] once every 28 years Message-ID: welcome to friday, february 29th, a day/date which occurs -- on average -- only once every 28 years... if it's your birthday today, let me wish you a happy one... over the course of 28 years, of course, things can change. heck, over the course of a dozen years, things can change. and when those years are _internet_years_ -- which are akin to 1=7 dog-years -- those changes can be remarkable indeed. that's what i thought when i read this post in a d.p. forum today: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=430803#430803 juliet said: > Very originally, before I arrived at the site, > proofers dowloaded a tool to their computers that > then worked with the site to provide the proofing interface. > They quickly learned that trying to make the tool work > (and then keeping it current) on all different operating systems > and computers was a nightmare and abandoned that approach. sometimes things that you "quickly learned" a long time ago are no longer applicable today. this is one of those things... desktop apps of the type juliet describes are common today. basically, to do the proofing job, the tool would download (1) the page-scan, and (2) the text. on the flipside, the tool needs to be able to upload (3) the corrected text. that's all... none of these 3 things is difficult. indeed, they are all trivial. they are done in r.s.s. readers, blogging software, and so on. this means the "lesson" d.p. "learned" about the "nightmare" of this approach isn't applicable now. it's totally out-of-date. it's simple -- even for an ordinary programmer like myself -- to create such a program. it would be cross-plat, and work, dependably, and it would not be difficult at all to maintain... the web is no longer in a state of flux. it has become stable. (and, truth be told, it was probably also possible to do this even way back, if the d.p. programmers had had the chops; but without having more details, i cannot say that for sure.) so, does that mean that d.p. should now use this approach? not necessarily. what they have seems to work well enough. at least for them. i wouldn't be happy with it (because the desktop approach has benefits), but if they are, that's fine... still, it's just silly -- and wrong -- to say that you _couldn't_ do it the other way, that it's a "nightmare" you'd "abandon"... -bowerbird p.s. thanks for all the black history books done this month... ************** It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20080229/ac0947c0/attachment.htm