free to contact them during the next month as I will be hard to get.

??? ***

2. While "the cat in the Cat in the Hat hat" is away, will mice play?

I will be hard to reach for the next month, hobnobbing with my fellow wizards as I tend to do every year at this time. I hope to come back with some major support for PG, as I am aging quickly, and surprised myself quite a bit with our huge rush of production for the past three months. It appears we have posted over 267 new files, with some 216 of them as new editions, all in the past 92 days or so. In fact, the 36 April Etexts, and all the new and revised Shakespeare files were posted in the last two weeks. . .someday I hope we can get that much work done EVERY two weeks!

3. A first glance at the new copyright laws.

I was only a week ago that the new copyright laws were signed, and it is my honor to tell you that our volunteers and supporters have great will power when it comes to a call to arms. The HUGE book production over the past two weeks was actually nearly all posted in just 1 week since this new law took effect. [I had already gone into what I call "vacation mode" after sending out the mid-month Newsletter, and, only 4 or 5 new books had been posted between the Newsletter and the law— when I announce an effort to avenge the passing of the law by posting as many books as possible for the next Newsletter, which would now be set for only one week away, instead of six weeks away.

No way I can say NEARLY enough about our volunteers and directors, as they really and truly CAME THROUGH IN A TIME OF CRISIS to let a world know that we were not going to knuckle under to the pressure!

A tip of the hat to all of them!!

Now, on the legal matters.

At first glance, the major effect on the Public Domain is destruction . . .plain and simple. . .for the next 20 years. . .and more, if they pass another such law, which, I am sure they will try their damnedest to do. . .THERE WILL BE NO MORE PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS IN THE U.S. other than the ones that had already entered the Public Domain on 1/1/1998.

Even if such a law is NOT passed again and again, the Public Domain a person might have gotten used to living in this century will only "be a distant memory before Orwell's Age of 1984" in that a Public Domain that used to include approximately HALF or 50% of all materials of an eternity of publishing up to 100 years ago, should now include nearly 0% of the all the materials that will have been published in history, up to 100 years from now.

Let me put this succinctly:

100 years ago the U.S. Public Domain included about 50% of everything

100 years from now the U.S. Public Domain will include about 0%. .

Here's the simple math:

If copyrighted information doubles every 14 years, and the copyright usually expires in 14 years, then information is flowing into public domain access at the same rate it is flowing into copyright. . .so a quick look tells us that during the time it took to create a world's new supply of information, the old supply of information came out of copyright and into the Public Domain. . . .

100 years ago [and up to 1909] the average copyright lasted about 15 years, with most books having 14 years of copyright monopoly and the copyrights were not renewed, because the books weren't selling after about 5 years, on the average, for the books that were good enough a library would have purchased them. This is still true today. . .you steal or lose a book over 5 years from a library and the odds are it cannot be replaced because it has gone out of print.

Since information was doubling just about every 14 years back then— the result was that half of all information was in the Public Domain . . .which isn't such a terrible way to have it be. . .the powerful, the rich, etc., can still have twice as much as those who mostly use free information.

In my interview last week with the New York Times, the interviewer's suggestion was that we consider current information to be doubling a bit faster. . .every 7 years.

If the average copyright were still just over 14 years today, we see that 75% or 3/4 of all information would still be copyrighted.

The faster information flows through our society, the more is hidden from the Public Domain by copyrights of the same length.

Under the new copyright law, the average copyright will be nearly an entire century in length, with no renewals required, and copyrighted notices are no longer required. . .it will be nearly impossible from the average person's point of view, to tell whether anything is in a copyrighted or public domain status, and, it will take some research to find out. . .this alone is enough to stop most public domain use.

However, even AFTER doing all the copyright research, the struggling "New Age Public Domain Information Providers" will find that none of the materials they research will be in the Public Domain. . .none in the sense that the number will be closer to 0% than to 1%. . .closer by a HUGE margin to 0% than to 1%.

If the New York Times' estimates of 7 years for information doubling may be considered at all correct, then this is what will happen in a United States under the new copyright law, even if we considered 100 percent of current information to the entered into the Public Domain as an incentive to let this law stand:

0 years. . .100% of today's information is in the Public Domain 7 years. . . 50% of today's information is in the Public Domain 14 years. . . 25% of today's information is in the Public Domain 21 years. . . 12.5% of today's information is in the Public Domain 28 years. . . 6.25% of today's information is in the Public Domain 35 years. . . 3.125% of today's information is in the Public Domain 42 years. . . 1.5625% of today's information is in the Public Domain 49 years. . . 0.78125% of today's information is in the Public Domain 56 years. . . 0.390625% of today's information is in the Public Domain 63 years. . . 0.1953125% of today's information is in the Public Domain 70 years. . . 0.09765625% of today's information is in the Public Domain 77 years. . . 0.048828125% of today's information is in the Public Domain 84 years. . . 0.0244140625% of today's information is in the Public Domain 91 years. . . 0.01220703125% of today's information is in the Public Domain 98 years. . . 0.006103515625% of today's information is in the Public Domain

This is literally just one book out of some 10,000 books that will be in the Public Domain after about 95 years of a 95 year copyright even if information does NOT continue to increase faster and faster. . . .

Many people think information is ALREADY doubling faster than 7 years for each doubling, but all that does is make the total reach 0.00001% etc., etc., etc.

And you though Big Brother had a thing for monopolizing information.

This is the beginning of

The Information Wars

Since they can no longer stop us from talking to each other via email or etext or the Web, or FTP, etc., they are passing laws that tell us we cannot include 99.99% of all the information in the world, because it is not all protected by copyright.

One last word about the new copyright law. . . .

I plan to be in court as soon as possible as a test case to defeat it once and for all. . .wish me luck!

4. The 36 PG Etexts for April, 1999.

We have chosen, with great effort and glee, to present what many call the greatest epic of all time as our lead story this month. . .in two separate translations. . .The Odyssey, by Homer.

We are also including more Plato and Socrates, O Henry, H. Rider Haggard, and B. M. Bower, as well as several more G. K Chestertons, Balzacs, Conrads, etc. including some of Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte. We also included a bit more Mary Roberts Rinehart and Jules Verne.

We hope you enjoy reading these as much as we enjoy bringing them to you.

Mon Year Title and Author [filename.ext]####

Correction from last month:

Mar 1999