GM fellow Arweaver!
Books hold vast amounts of wisdom, and thanks to the Project Gutenberg Archive, there’s a treasure trove of literary classics stored permanently on Arweave.
Keep reading to learn more about these timeless works.
A library for books that can’t be burned or banned 📚
On July 4, 1971, Michael S. Hart sent a digitized copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence to other users on a University of Illinois computer network. More digitized texts would later be added and distributed, thus creating one of the most ambitious literary achievements of all time: Project Gutenberg.
Named after Johannes Gutenberg's 15th-century printing press, Project Gutenberg has grown to a digital library of over 75,000 ebooks, mostly focusing on older works in the public domain, for which the U.S. copyright has expired. Thanks to the work of hundreds of volunteers, stories from more than 20,000 authors are free to read online.
Hart passed away in 2011, but his legacy carries on in Project Gutenberg’s simple, yet elegant mission statement: To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.
Storing ebooks on Arweave
Last October, during Banned Books Week, Arweave Architect Phil Mataras took it upon himself to upload the entire Gutenberg catalog to the permaweb. Now the library of 75,000 classics is preserved permanently in dozens of locations across the globe.
Phil’s Project Gutenberg Archive offers visitors a streamlined way to search and download ebooks in text format, or read them directly on the site with customizable font sizes. Each ebook’s entry also links to Viewblock so you can view the specific asset’s Arweave transaction.
The Project Gutenberg Archive offers a centralized repository of humanity’s most important literature, with the robustness and trust minimization of a decentralized network. It’s the best of both worlds, and exactly the kind of use case that makes Arweave such important infrastructure.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Perhaps an interesting anecdote to note is the absence of George Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel that is near and dear to many Arweavers, with references to the story scattered throughout the permaweb.
Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published in 1949, while Orwell died the year after. According to regional copyright laws, Nineteen Eighty-Four recently entered the public domain in several jurisdictions, such as the UK, the EU, and Canada. You can access the book on the Canadian Gutenberg site, for example.
The U.S., however, grants books with a longer copyright duration, where a properly renewed copyright lasts for 95 years from the date of the first publication. As the original Project Gutenberg is based on U.S. copyright law, Orwell’s novel will only become free to distribute in the U.S. on January 1, 2045.
For deeper insights into Nineteen Eighty-Four’s copyright status, check out this interesting article: Is 1984 in the Public Domain?
What to read onchain
In last week’s issue, we shared links and clues to four unsolved Arweave puzzles, worth 1,900 $AR and 1 $ETH in total. To further help you with your onchain sleuthing, we thought we’d offer some inspiration from the world’s most prolific detective.
Below you’ll find the entire canon of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes literature, consisting of four novels and 56 short stories. All permanently secured and free to read on Arweave!
Novels:
Short story collections:
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
- The Return of Sherlock Holmes
- His Last Bow
- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
Have fun reading.
ICYMI 👀
Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s been unfolding across Arweave and AO.
- Arweave launched decentralized from day one
- Pangea uses Arweave for tamper-proof audits
- StreamVault adds PWA app and offline mode
This week's community feature 📝
Over the past few weeks, El Tío has been hacking away at StreamVault, a cross-chain music platform that anchors Audius tracks to permanent storage on Arweave. Learn all about the platform, what it does, and how it works, in his recent article: Why Your Masters Deserve Better Than “The Cloud”
Thanks for reading!
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The Longview Team
This is not investment advice. No profit guarantees. If in the U.S., ensure compliance with U.S. laws and seek professional advice.