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Introduction to Michael Hart's blogIntroduction to Michael Hart's blog
http://pglaf.org/~hart/
This blog is intended to change the world.
Better yet, to help YOU change the world!
If you are NOT interested in making the world a better place,
this is NOT the place for you.
Each of the articles here is designed specifically to address
some way of changing the world to make it a better place.
YOU are the designated driver on this trip, these articles an
assortment of maps of how such driving might take place.
The perspective is that of changing the world from the bottom
rather than changing things from the top down.
If I had waited for those at the top to approve of what I was
planning to do, even waited HALF as long as they wanted, then
you would never heard of me or of Project Gutenberg.
In the same breath that the authorities say I should have had
to wait for their approval they also say I did not start soon
enough to get the credit Project Gutenberg and I receive.
Before eBooks became a household word, with more hits than an
advanced search for "bomb" or bombs" the authority figures in
my life made it a point to ignore eBook altogether.
Now they are scrambling to find someone already in their used
Pantheon of acceptable authorities to credit with eBooks.
The only trouble is that no one out there was pushing eBooks,
though there were some trying to pull them into very limited,
very controlled, and VERY expensive distribution, in just the
exact opposite of my own "Unlimited Distribution" methodology
that succeeded where the studied methodologies of the greater
university minds failed.
I had a note saying, "Just Do It!" over my desk long before a
sports shoe company tried it on for size.
A Glossary
"Limited Distribution" Versus "Unlimited Distribution"
"Ye Olde Boye Networke"
"Think Globally, Act Globally, Even From Your Basement"
"Reactionary Politics"
"Eldred Versus Ashcroft" and "Hart Versus Reno"
"Up To Modern Times"
Glossary
"Limited Distribution". . .the ideal of exchange contributing
to the rise and fall of all civilizations in history. Basics
of this philosophy date back to the simple amoeba, "better if
_I_ have it, and YOU do NOT have it." This ideal permeates a
civilization that defines itself through its possessions, and
not through what people actually are. The favorite Star Trek
quotation addresses this very topic in Captain Picard replies
to the zillionaire who, upon finding out there is no money in
the 24th century, asks, "Then what do you invest in?" Picard
answers, "We invest in ourselves."
"Unlimited Distribution". . .the ideal of exchange in which a
product is made available without any artificial limitations,
placed in a manner that makes it available without cost or of
any limitations on how much of it anyone can have. Before an
Internet publication of The Declaration of Independence, back
in 1971, there was only one example of anything persons could
have all they wanted of. . .can you name it?
"The Olde Boye Networke". . .a term used to describe those in
power who manipulate the overall socio-economic-legal systems
to artificially keep themselves in power, aggrandize position
placement to even greater power, and artificially keep others
from improving their own position in the new power structure,
i.e. the new power structure should resemble old ones as much
as possible, and even moreso, in that new rules should now be
created to make the position of those who succeeded under the
olde systeme even more impregnable. In relation to Gutenberg
this would start with the 250 years it took The Stationers to
create a "royal patent" that outlawed The Gutenberg Press and
finally gave them back their monopoly over published words.
"Think Globally, Act Globally"
"Unlimited Distribution" can be used to make the work of just
one single person available to a billion people overnight via
the Internet and related media. In Project Gutenberg's case,
you could spend a week of spare time creating an eBook to put
online at hundreds or thousands of servers overnight. Ideals
of Unlimited Distribution allow just one person to elevate an
entire world of civilizations at one stroke just as Gutenberg
presses allowed someone such as Martin Luther's revolution of
the religious power structure of the Western World. Did your
study of history mention that Martin Luther would most likely
never have been heard of if not for Gutenberg? Why not?
Can One Person Really "Think Globally" and "Act Globally?"
Just as the power structure of the world has been changed for
better or worse by the blogs that brought down Dan Rather, an
example of the most power media personalities of modern ages,
and nearly brought down George Bush, United States President,
the power structure of Western religion was shaken greatly by
The 95 Theses sent by Martin Luther to a few friends and then
sent on by those friends to the rest of the world through the
new medium recently created by Johannes Gutenberg.
"Reactionary Politics". . .a term used to describe reactions,
usually powerful political responses, to new change. In this
case of Johannes Gutenberg, the Reactionary Politics were the
efforts of The Stationers Company to regain their monopolies,
once those monopolies had been shattered by Gutenberg. These
efforts took place over one and a half centuries, from reigns
of Henry VI and the Restoration through Richard III, and thus
The Crusades, through all six wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth,
his daughter, and James I, of The King James Bible, and, even
on through William and Mary to Anne. If you have studied the
history of the period, you know how much turmoil took place--
this was the era of Robin Hood, the first lawful execution of
lawfully annointed monarchs, The Crusades, The New World, and
a host of other events that really warrant more time in those
damned history books. That The Stationers Company should NOT
have been able to push through their Reactionary Policies for
250 years of such turmoil says more about how bad their ideal
of a publishing monopoly was perceived by the following:
Edward IV 4 Mar 1461 9 Apr 1483
Henry VI - restored 9 Oct 1470 to c. Apr 1471
Edward V 9 Apr 1483 25 Jun 1483
Richard III 26 Jun 1483 22 Aug 1485
Henry VII 22 Aug 1485 21 Apr 1509
Henry VIII 22 Apr 1509 28 Jan 1547
Edward VI 28 Jan 1547 06 Jul 1553
Mary 6 Jul 1553 24 Jul 1554
Philip & Mary 25 Jul 1554 17 Nov 1558
Elizabeth I 17 Nov 1558 24 Mar 1603
James I 24 Mar 1603 27 Mar 1625
Charles I 27 Mar 1625 30 Jan 1649
Commonwealth 30 Jan 1649 29 May 1660
Charles II [30 Jan 1649] 6 Feb 1685
James II 6 Feb 1685 11 Dec 1688
William & Mary 13 Feb 1689 08 Mar 1702
[Mary died 27 Dec 1694]
William III 27 Dec 1694 8 Mar 1702
Anne 8 Mar 1702 1 Aug 1714
The result of all this Reactionary Politicking was eventually
to become the first Copyright Act, "The Statute of Anne," but
there were numerous "Royal Patents" issued earlier that could
just not be enforced, as no one believed The Stationers could
be trusted with such great monopolistic power. . .until Anne,
such a weak monarch that she could be manipulated to censored
oversight of all publishing in Great Britain. The numbers of
books in print there dropped from 6,000 to 600 overnight, and
a new profession of publishing censored materials was created
that later helped "The Pamphleteers" in their quest to create
The United States of America later in that century.
Just a note about how much difference this new law made.
In the first 50 years of The Gutenberg Press, more books were
made than in all the previous history of the entire world and
the total number of titles published by 1500 was ~30,000.
Can you image what it would be like to have the number of the
books you could order drop from 30,000 to 600. . .overnight?
That would mean only 2 books out of 100 would survive!!!
By the way, the United States Supreme Court recently upheld a
new copyright law that will do the same to the public domain.
The History of Reactionary Copyright Law
[See more details in "The Fifth Information Age"]
We have had five "Information Age" technological revolutions,
from The Gutenberg Press to The Age of the Internet, and each
one of these has been stifled by reactionary copyright laws.
Each one of these five technological revolutions could have a
history of changing the face of the history of civilization:
1.
~1450 The Gutenberg Press
2.
~1830 The High Speed Steam Powered Press
3.
~1900 The Electric Printing Press
4.
~1970 The Xerox Machine
5.
~1993 The World Wide Web
but. . .only some of them did.
Why?
The five technological revolutions were each counteracted via
reactionary politics to make them illegal.
1. The Gutenberg Press
The First Examples of Reactionary Politics Copyright.
The roots of our modern copyright law come from The Gutenberg
Press and The Stationers' reactionary political efforts.
Before the advent of The Gutenberg Press around 1450 the book
as we know it barely existed, the same is true for literacy.
The numbers of books, handwritten manuscripts actually, owned
the average people before The Gutenberg Press was zero.
The literacy rate was almost zero, the illiteracy rate ~100%,
most historians were unwilling to actually mention a literacy
rate of 0%, so the records show a literacy rate of 1%.
However, any way you let them eat cake, when you cut the cake
it is obvious that only the richest of the rich, the elitists
of the elite, actually did any significant amount of reading.
The point of bringing this up; is that no one has ever passed
laws the only targeted the behavior of the rich and elite, so
in the times when books and reading were the strict provinces
of the rich and elite, it was totally legal to copy anything,
simply because only the rich and elite could benefit.
However, with the advent of The Gutenberg Press, printing was
elevated to the point where there were 30,000 titles in print
by the end of the 1400's and more books had been printed than
in those 50 years than in thousands of years previously.
Previous to The Gutenberg Press the Stationers Guilds had the
monopoly to publish just about everything, along with scribes
and monks of various religious institutions.
When The Gutenberg Press destroyed that monopoly, by enabling
the mass production of books, the Stationers made a political
overture to have The Gutenberg Press outlawed and to return a
total monopoly to them, and to the monks and scribes, who now
would also be using The Gutenberg Press.
The story is long, and full of failures on their part, but an
effort in 1557, "The Statute of Mary," was finally passed but
it gave such overwhelming power to the Stationers Guilds that
it was neither obeyed nor even was an attempt to enforce this
law ever really made because it was so unpopular.
This law, technically a "patent" in those days, gave all such
power of copyright to the Stationers for every word written--
even words written thousands of years earlier.
However, the Stationers Guilds, later the Stationers Company,
did not give up, and after another 150 years of lobbying they
finally found another weak Queen they could manipulate.
Thus, "The Statute of Anne" became law in 1709-1710, the date
is fuzzy because this law, too, was very unpopular, and a few
alterations had to be made before it could be enforced.
The major change was that after a 14 year copyright, owned by
the Stationers, the author could renew the copyright for some
additional 14 year period, but only if the author was alive--
not a given back in those days--and if the book was selling--
otherwise the Stationers couldn't be expected to print it.
The result was that the number of titles in printed in United
Kingdom locations fell from 6,000 to 600 overnight.
Not to mention that some tens of thousands of titles in print
in other countries could not be reprinted.
The overall effect was to shut down all English free presses,
and to enforce a rigid form of censorship, which Queen Anne's
weakness made seem feasible to her.
Having seen the results of The Gutenberg Press in the effects
of the printing of Martin Luther's "95 Theses," and also from
the effect of the printing of the Bible in various languages,
the Roman Catholic Church was also afraid of the free presses
and supported elimination of all but 10 legal presses, all in
London locations.
If you have read anything about London society in those days,
then you understand what it would have been like for those in
other locations to have to travel to London and deal with the
London society to get anything published.
Thus The First Information Age was stifled by copyright law.
The ban on publishing was very successful, and eventually led
to various revolts against it, not the least of which was the
"War of Insurrection" that founded the United States.
2.
The High Speed Steam Powered Press
The Second Example of "Reactionary Politics" and Copyright.
United States Copyright Law dates back to 1790 when there was
a 14 year copyright with a 14 year extension. Thus copyright
expirations on U.S. copyrights had barely started to happen a
period of three decades later in the 1820's.
The result of the promise of a rich American public domain is
obvious. . .the invention of the high speed printing presses,
in particular the patent of a high speed steam press in 1830.
Thus, for those who understood the premises and conclusion of
the advent of U.K. copyright law, the conclusion was obvious:
A new copyright law was passed just one year after the patent
of the high speed steam press to preserve the monopoly of the
"olde boye networke" of publishers. . .even in a country that
was still young enough to have citizens older that it was.
The U.S. Copyright Act of 1831 was specifically designed from
the single point of view to stop the competition of outsiders
using the new high speed steam powered presses.
Thus the era of the new publishing houses powered by the high
speed steam printing press patented in 1830 became perhaps an
example of just how short an Information Age could be made by
the outside influence of "ye olde boyes" political power.
Thus The Second Information Age was stifled by copyright law.
3.
~1900 The Electric Printing Press
There isn't enough time here to go into the entire revolution
created by electricity, so I have written a separate article,
or two, entitled "Electric Park" describing the days when the
advent of electricity and light bulbs was such a grand item a
person or family might take train rides, on an electric train
of course, to an "Electric Park" lit up by thousands of light
bulbs outlining the various structures of the parks.
However, it should be obvious to even the most casual thought
process that electricity would revolutionize printing presses
as much as steam had.
The most visible example was that for millions of people, the
first book they over owned was The Sears Catalog, a free book
delivered right to their door via the combination of three of
the great events of the turn of the century to 1900:
The Transcontinental Railroad System
Rural Federal Delivery [Mail]
The Electric Printing Press
The realization that the combination of these three events in
history, each one a major event, in and of itself, could save
enough time, money and effort when combined synergistally, to
deliver a 768 page lavishly illustrated book, free of charge,
to every one of millions of addresses that should be found by
Sears and Roebuck.
The result, however, was to make everyone AWARE that books in
the new century could be so inexpensive that they could be an
entirely free commodity and that was a threat to ye olde boye
networke of publishers.
The result was that once again their political pressures were
felt in Washington, and the U.S. Copyright Act of 1909 put an
end to The Third Information Age.
However, this Third Information Age lasted much longer than a
very short Second Information Age, and even today YOU can see
the results in bookstores and libraries, where there are even
today copies of the large numbers of inexpensive books from a
century ago, but you will notice if you look very far that it
pretty much stops after 1909.
Thus The Third Information Age was stifled by copyright law.
4.
~1970 The Xerox Machine
Some of you might remember the earliest photocopiers, and the
horrible copies they made, not to mention how bad copies of a
copy were in those days.
Today the people at Kinko's and other locations will properly
tell you that they can now often make a better copy from copy
sheets than from the originals. . .that is how good photocopy
technology has become over the years.
And as soon as the photocopies started to become any good the
networks of ye olde boye publishers once again started in for
the lobbying campaign to do the same thing they had done from
the day of The Gutenberg Press, the steam press, and electric
press. . .make a new law the prohibited using this technology
on materials that would otherwise have been legal to copy.
The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 not only extended copyright on
materials that were due to expire, but it also removed a need
to renew copyrights, thus making the original copyrights into
a permanent copyright needing no renewal for longer than what
the average human lifetime in the U.S. was at the time.
Before 1976 90% of copyrights had never been renewed, because
it wasn't worth to mail in the nominal fee.
The overall effect of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act was to kill
off the public domain, not just make copyrights last a longer
period of time if and when they were profitable.
This philosophy is known as "A Dog in the Manger," reflecting
on the sometimes true event on farms, of dogs, who didn't eat
the hay in the manger for the farm animals, nevertheless will
sometimes have a tendency to be proprietary about the mangers
and viciously keep the farm animals away from their food even
though it is not food fit for a dog.
In this case, the 90% of the books that would have been found
in the public domain and not for sale by the publishers of an
original edition could no longer be published by anyone else.
Here was a case in which billion dollar publishing industrial
giants were claiming it was an undue pressure upon them to do
something as simple as mailing in a few dollars for renewals,
and the overall effect was to stop anything from entering the
public domain ever again, except for a few years between some
various copyright acts that took too long to enact.
The overall effect is that no one would ever again be able to
look forward to republishing anything they read in their life
if they lived the average lifespan.
With a copyright of 75 years, only the eldest of readers will
ever live long enough to legally republish what they read for
their grade school book reports as public domain materials.
The continuity of past to present to future was lost to those
of us who are private individuals and reserved for those with
a more corporate approach.
Thus The Fourth Information Age was stifled by copyright law.
5.
~1993 The World Wide Web
[More details on these five in "The Fifth Information Age"]
I won't go into detail about the beginning of the Web as most
of you probably have plenty of first hand experience about it
and have even heard of some of the various efforts by ye olde
boye networkes to harness it to their own purposes and remove
many of the goods and services now placed there for free.
However, I must mention, at least in passing, that the "Sonny
Bono" or "Mickey Mouse" Copyright of 1998 was specifically to
stop The Fifth Information Age.
I should probably also add that the U.S. Supreme Court Case:
"Eldred versus Ashcroft"
was originally written up as
"Hart versus Reno"
but the case was prepared so poorly in spite of my objections
that after five months of spending HUGE amounts of my time on
preparing briefs, not one word of which made it to the final,
I fired the lawyers with extreme prejudice.
I won't go into the details unless someone wants to try again
with a sincere plan to actually win the case.
In some ways I feel that the loss of this case, 7-2, was what
might be described as the worst thing to happen in copyright,
since the very first copyright law.
The result was that one million books are not going to be the
province of Project Gutenberg or any other public domain site
on the Internet originating in the United States or any other
of the countries that have extended copyright by 20 years.
*
"Planned Obsolescence"
Most people think of Planned Obsolescence" as making products
in a manner so they wear out fast than they should, they will
not usually think of computer age items in such a manner.
Toasters made before WWII still work great, new ones die off.
Nylon made in the early days was nearly impossible to wear in
any significant manner, or even cut with scissors, backpacks,
windbreakers, ropes, etc., were basically permanent. And the
early nylon stockings lasted for months, not weeks.
When the phone companies owned the telephones, they made them
so they were basically permanent, look at the difference now.
Even the pots and pans I grew up with were solid enough to be
handed down from generation to generation.
Today's buildings are not even designed to last from marriage
past the golden anniversary.
I am sure you have your own examples to add to the list, I do
collect such examples, so please let me know.
Meanwhile, back at the Information Age, people think that the
computers, etc., are immune from Planned Obsolescence. . .HA!
Just try to run your Windows programs from the old first half
of Windows history on versions of Windows from the last half!
Or think of videos you bought. How many times?
U-Matic [Early adopters only here, YOU probably don't count]
Betamax [Intentionally wiped out by the big cartels/zaibatsu]
LaserDisc [The first optical disks, a foot in diameter]
VideoDisc [Remember, the ones with an actual NEEDLE]
VHS [Lasted longer than all the rest put together]
DIVX [One of the biggest marketing failures of all time]
VHS-C [Another example where YOU probably don't count]
DAT [Digital Audio Tape, started the legal copying war]
8mm [Even smaller than DAT]
CD-Video [Again, YOU probably never got involved, copyable]
DVD [Announced as copy proof, 15 year old took a week]
HDTV [Come Valentine's Day 2007, better watch out!!!]
The end result is that while you can still play music records
from a century ago [I still have a wind up "Victrola], it was
legally impossible to copy from any one of those media above,
even just to preserve a copy of what you bought when you were
not able to buy or fix the old machines. I have not included
all the various types, don't forget "mini-disks," etc.
The point is that someone who lived through the entire ranges
of the video revolution could have easily bought, literally a
whole dozen copies of the same movie! I think I have example
modules from every one of the above list and even more that I
haven't included on the list.
I also haven't mentioned that they can make your credit cards
expire before their expiration date, just so you advertise an
entirely new company name on your Visa card.
All sorts of things are intentionally created to stop working
or to not work other than in specific instances.
Sometimes this comes back to byte people in the gluteus max.
A famous example is used by the people who hate computers but
are ignorant of the fact that it wasn't the computer at fault
but that the actual design of the computer included many such
"proprietary features" that no other computer could read data
stored in their "proprietary formats."
The naysayers like to brag that billions of dollars were lost
because computers can't read the old data, but the truth will
be obvious when you realize that the data was MEANT to be for
that computer ONLY, and those who BOUGHT the computers BOUGHT
them for the purpose of SECURITY.
Well, duh! Too much security means that no one can come help
you read your data when your computer breaks down now for the
very last time and THEY DIDN'T MAKE BACKUPS!!!
WHO'S FAULT IS THAT!!!
It's not the fault of the computer.
It's the fault of the ideal of keeping data private.
Up To Modern Times
But. . .there are some new kinds of "Planned Obsolescence" in
the Information Age. . .some legislated, some quite clearly a
violation of legislation.
February 17, 2007, a date that will live in infamy, we should
see hundreds of millions of televisions lining the sidewalks,
all over the country, except perhaps a few will be preserved,
along the borders where they can still pick up signals from a
few stations in Canada or Mexico, and a few saved in museums.
Right now most of the new-fangled televisions sell for a huge
fortune compared to their olde thyme counterparts, hardly any
of the people I know are looking at ones much under $2,000.
But for the sake of making an argument no one could challenge
on the face of it, let's suppose the average new TV might get
only $500 in total, counting tax and installation.
There are 250 million televisions in the United States with a
strong likelihood each of them would be replaced: do NOT let
THEM fool you with estimates of how many will be replaced for
such and so periods, we all know they will all eventually get
a replacement, even, or especially, the ones in kids' rooms.
Some will tell you that not all of the televisions receive an
analog signal, some already get digital, but the truth is the
vast majority, well over 200 million, only get analog and the
new broadcast signals won't work with them.
www.cbronline.com/companyprofile
*
250 million new TVs at $500 each is $100 billion.
That's as much as it costs us to make war for an entire year,
but we will be spending it on "Planned Obsolescence."
Don't believe there are over 200 million TVS in America?
250 million in 2006
www.projectorcentral.com/video_signals.htm
www.stockandroll.com/ITV.htm
235 million in 1998 from the 2000 US Census
US Bureau of the Census, 2000, p. 567
[98 million households, at 2.4 TVs per home]
59 million in 1970
42 million in 1958 [different times of year]
35 million in 1958 [Why? Fess Parker on Disney]
17 million in 1952
8 million by 1950
5 thousand in 1945
For you cable guys, here are their numbers:
67 million in 1998
4.5 million in 1970
93% of Americans watched over 50 hours of television per week
in 1998 according to the Nielson ratings.
Newspapers continue their decline
55.9 million in 1998
62.1 million in 1970
45% of Americans got on the Internet per month in 1998
45% of Americans got their news from television in 1998
11% of Americans got their news from radio in 1998
US Census Bureau, 2000
57% if American college graduates get news from the radio
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