#Founder of Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library on the Internet
Project Gutenberg, set up by Michael Hart in 1971 when he was a student at the
University of Illinois (USA), was the Internet's first information provider.
From the beginning, its mission has been to put at everybody's disposal, free,
as many books as possible whose copyright has expired. It is now the biggest
digital library on the Web in terms of the number of books (3,700 e-texts in
July 2001) that have been patiently digitized in text format by 600 volunteers
from all over the world. Some old documents are typed line by line, mainly
because the originals are unclear, but most works are scanned using OCR (optical
character recognition) software. Then they are read and corrected twice,
sometimes by two different people. At first they were just books in English, but
now ones in other languages are being digitized.
*Interview of August 23, 1998
= How do you see the relationship between the print media and the Internet?
We consider e-text to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other
than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly
compete once people each find their own comfortable way to e-texts, especially
in schools.
= How did using the Internet change your professional life?
My career couldn't have happened without the Internet, and neither could Project
Gutenberg have happened. I presume you know that Project Gutenberg was the first
information provider on the Net.
= What are your new projects?
My own personal goal is to put 10,000 Etexts on the Net, and if I can get some
major support, I would like to expand that to 1,000,000 and to also expand our
potential audience for the average Etext from 1.x% of the world population to
over 10%, thus changing our goal from giving away 1,000,000,000,000 Etexts to
1,000 time as many, a trillion and a quadrillion in US terminology.
*Interview of July 23, 1999
= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
The kind of copyright debate going on is totally impractical. It is run by and
for the "Landed Gentry of the Information Age." Information Age? For whom? No
one has said more against copyright extensions that I have, but Hollywood and
the big publishers have seen to it that our Congress won't even mention it in
public.
= What are exactly these copyright extensions?
Nothing will expire for another 20 years. We used to have to wait 75 years. Now
it is 95 years. And it was 28 years (+ a possible 28 year extension, only on
request before that) and 14 years (+ a possible 14 year extension before that).
So, as you can see, this is a serious degrading of the public domain, as a
matter of continuing policy.
= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?
We will eventually have a really good Babelfish (AltaVista's translation
software). I am publishing in one new language per month right now, and will
continue as long as possible.
= What is your best experience with the Internet?
The notes I get that tell me people appreciate that I have spent my life putting
books, etc., on the Internet. Some are quite touching, and can make my whole
day.
= And your worst experience?
Getting called on the Chancellor's carpet because Oxford University call him and
really shook him up... but I had a team of 6 lawyers, half from the University
of Illinois, who backed me up, so we made Oxford back down. You might say that
was a good memory, but I hate that kind of politicking... the Chancellor was Tom
Cruise's uncle, so that was fun.