The History of Publishing by Michael S. Hart Inventor of Electronic Books Founder of Project Gutenberg Publishing as we know it began with Johannes Gutenberg some 555 years ago with the invention of the moveable type printing press. The Gutenberg Press, as it was called, changed our history as much as any event since the fundamental inventions of language and writing along with fire, the lever, the wheel, agriculture and weaponry. TIME magazine and a host of others selected Johannes Gutenberg as The Man of the Millennium, due to the effects of his invention, which were great, indeed, in many ways beyond the world of publishing. In many ways Gutenberg was responsible for: Interchangeable Parts Mass Production Industrial Metalurgy Compound Leverage The Renaissance The Scientific Revolution The Industrial Revolution and today I hope that his namesake, Project Gutenberg, should be equally, if possible, responsible for similar gains in the Third Millennium. Censorship, the Other Side of the Coin of the Realm of Publishing Since the very dawn of publishing, one of the most obvious reactions from the power elite has been to stop people from publishing. Tearing up printing presses, along with legal censorship, has existed all throughout the history of publishing, and it continues in the headlines I see today in the form of publishers such as Google and Yahoo kowtowing to China's tradition of censorship of news and politics, just so they can do do business in the largest national market in the world. "Situational Ethics" is the newly coined term for such ancient behavior. Starting with The Catholic Church, arguably the most powerful world force in Gutenberg's world, the publications and censorships of religious views have played a major part in the history of publishing. Martin Luther, who protested against the misuse of this power, creating a "Protestant Revolution" as a result, might well never have been heard of, had it not been for The Gutenberg Press, as it was his friends who took a copy of his "95 Theses" to the local "Kinko's du Jour" and made copies to be sent to people in other countries. Otherwise it is relatively certain the copies Luther had written himself would have made little difference. While The Catholic Church didn't know how to deal with Martin Luther in a right here and now immediate sense, they did start committees to look for ways to deal with this new phenomenon, and started the foundation of what we call censorship today. These traditions continue today via a number of institutions. At the end the last season of South Park, The Catholic League seems to have censored the rebroadcast of the season finale, "Bloody Mary," which lampooned much of The Catholic Church's iconography, and perhaps kept it from appearing, ever again, even in the DVD collections. This is particularly notable since South Park belongs to Viacom, a larger media corporation than nearly any other in the world. So, just in recent months, we have seen how media giants are still victim to political and religious censorship pressures, even in the cases of the corporations we rely on for our news and information. As you extend your point of view beyond these last few month, the horizons broaden. [I should add here that behind closed doors most American journalists and media personalities will freely admit that there is a much larger percent of stories that are never covered due to these pressures than anyone will ever likely realize. Some estimates from these indicate that a one story in three being "pulled" for these reasons is the best estimate.] This practice officially began, and ended, with the famous or infamous: "Indices librorum prohibitorum" = "Index of Prohibited Books" = "Index" and "Indices expurgatorii" = "Instructions for Purging" Hence creating the term "Unexpurgated" In addition, the practice of the rulers was to have translations of books rewritten in a light more favorable to the rulers and with literacy rates so low in their own languages, added to an even lower literacy rate for a foreign language, it was easy to pull the wool over the sheep's eyes. A quick look at the censorship of Vergil's "De Inventoribus Rerum" shows, among other things, that censorship was rampant after The Gutenberg Press to an unprecedented degree: Vergil's "De Inventoribus Rerum" Prohibited Index 1565 Prohibited Index 1627 Prohibited Index 1711 Expurgated Editions Rome 1585 Lyon 1586 Florence 1587 Index Expurgatorius Brisighella 1607 Sandoval 1619 Sotomayor 1640 Expurgated Copies Augsburg Edition 1575 (Basel, Guarinus) Freiburg Edition 1553/55 (Basel, Isingrin/Parcus) Tubingen Edition 1597 (Lyon, Gryphius) [See dbs.hab.de/Polydorusvergilius/ portal-texte/text_06_e.htm] Scratching the Surface of the History of Censorship Obviously this was not the first example of The Catholic Church involving itself with censorship, the goes back to the very founding the The Church via "The Council of Nicea" in 325, when the books of Arius and others are listed as having been ordered to be delivered up and burned on penalty of death, and this was followed by orders of various popes, and ecumenicals, for even more books to be burned. In 405 Pope Innocent started a list that became known as "The Roman Index of Forbidden Works" labeled "Decretum Gelasianum." However it was not until 1515 that Pope Leo X issued the Papal Bull named "Inter Sollicitudines," which became: "The first papal censorial decrees given for the entire Church which was universally accepted. All writings without exception were subjected to censorship." To bring this story full circle, we should note that in 1520 a Pope Leo X Bull entitled "Exsurge Domine," forbade the writings of Martin Luther and included not only everything he had ever written, but future works at the time yet unwritten. This is the foundation of various laws prohibiting "prior restraint." It should be noted that The Vatican Libraries contain many of these in an exclusively secret collection. Even as late as those who used The Gutenberg Press, people were burned at the stake for publishing prohibited books. This takes us up to the Inquisition which you are probably familiar with, and we should concentrate here on The History of Publishing rather than a History of Censorship. Suffice it to say that the history of censorship, book burnings, even the burnings of those who preserved such books, even, as in Gutenberg's time, the burning of the authors and publishers, is big beyond comparison when compared to the history of publishing since we saw the advent of The Gutenberg Press. Censorship. . .or. . .Copyright One of the best ways to censor anything without being too obvious is that practice we know today as "copyright." Copyright law was started by yet another large media corporation, perhaps the largest of Johannes Gutenberg's time. . .The Stationers Company. The Stationers Company and the various Stationers Guilds were examples of multinational corporate structures a millennium before the multinationals of today even invented the term "multinational corporation." The Stationers and scribes had a virtual monopoly on the written word the likes of which has never been known, and they had it for virtually all of written history. . .if you wanted something written down, you had to hire one of them. . .unless you were one of the 1% elite who knew how to write something yourself, and were willing to spend the time and effort. One of the most important effects of The Gutenberg Press was that persons outside the power elite finally learned how to read and write; something, I should add, that did not sit well in the stomachs of those who would be more comfortable being the only source of information. This was the way it was, not just in The Catholic Church, but in walks of life for everyone. . .when something was written down and intended for an audience of the masses, the audiences gathered in a central location, and someone read the words to them. The Catholic Mass wasn't so different an event than a mass meeting in the town square to have the proclamations of the ruler read aloud to the people, sometimes with great fanfare, but the opposite was sometimes also true, where the agents of the ruler would put up posters in the middle of the night, and everyone would awaken to rules that had literally. . .been changed overnight. Copyright. . .Laws That Change Overnight When The Stationers Company finally succeeded in have their new copyright law passed after 260 years of dismal failures with Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and all the monarchs of the period from 1449 to 1709, they manage to take the total number of books legally published in the United Kingdom from an estimated 6,000 down to an estimated 600. 9 out of 10 titles simply vanished from the bookshops overnight in a raid on publishing the likes of which had never been seen before. All of the book burners in history had never removed as many books! In the 1900's copyrights laws again changed overnight, three times! Each time the world we live in lost one million such public domain books that could now be placed on the Internet free of charge. The average copyright went from ~30 years in 1909 to ~95 years in 1998-- 89 years in which copyright was extended 65 years leaving only a quarter of that century's output untouched by the new copyright regimes. Only a book published after 1922 can be surely in the U.S. public domain. Other countries have also extended their copyrights, sometimes in ye old way as did The Stationers Guild, books available in the bookshop one day were made illegal the next day, right now in modern times. For a more detailed look at "The Five Information Ages" or the copyright laws that were created to stifle them, please see the separate essay. http://pglaf.org/~hart/ For now, let us just say that there have been five inventions that would have brought information to the masses in unprecedented ways: The Gutenberg Press Countered by The Statute of Anne, in 1709 The Steam Powered Press Countered by The US Copyright Act of 1831 The Electric Powered Press Countered by The US Copyright Act of 1909 The Xerox Machine Countered by The US Copyright Act of 1976 The Internet/World Wide Web Countered by The US Copyright Act of 1998 Five Information Ages that might have been much more. How These Copyright Extensions Affect Us Personally When I was in grade school we studied slavery, believe it or not, and my school was required to see "Gone With The Wind" and "Song Of The South." Under the copyright laws in place at the time, the longest copyright was allowed to be nearly 57 years. Gone With The Wind was made in 1939, and Song Of The South was made in 1946, so under the copyright law they were made according to, and all contracts and payments made according to, the copyright should have expired by now, and I should be able to send you a copy of both of these movies so you could see what I was REQUIRED to see when I was growing up. HOWEVER, the current copyright situation is such that, if you take a kid to see a new movie today, or buy them a book, or expose them to any of a host of copyrighted works, that kid, even if only 5 years old today will not have a life expectancy long enough to expect to see the copyright on those works expire. This is intended to cause a "disconnect" between the past and present to keep the people in the present from knowing too much about the past. If you really think this is a result of the profit motive, just look the incomes of these movies up, then tell me that you think another 20 years of re-release of these movies is going to add more than 1-2 percent from what they have already made. You have to understand that all these copyright extended works were sold in contracts based on 56 year copyrights, and that when Ted Turner could buy Gone With The Wind for a Song Of The South, this was based on a fact that everyone expected the copyrights to expire shortly thereafter. Only they didn't! 56 years after 1939 was 1995, but Gone With The Wind never expired. 56 years after 1954 was 2000, but Song Of The South never expired. The truth is that if copyright extensions keep on, as both U.S. Congress and Supreme Court have asserted they can, then Ted Turner's profits on a purchase of thousands of movies will never cease. . .ever. Now perhaps you can understand that billion dollars Mr. Turner gave as a gift to the United Nations, under whose umbrella operates: The World Intellectual Property Organization or WIPO, who writes up an awfully lot of the copyright laws we live under. As "Deep Throat" told Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the movie ads for "All The President's Men". . . "Follow The Money" The Current Chapter In The History Of Publishing More books were published in the first 50 years of "The Gutenberg Press" than in all previous history. . .millions upon millions. . .in a frenzy, a frenzy that was literally impossible before Gutenberg's invention. Of course, the purists and elitists denied that these were "books" in an obviously traditional sense, but the public ate them up and the literacy rates doubled and redoubled and doubled again. The same is currently happening with eBooks. More eBooks will be created in the first 50 years of a Project Gutenberg public history than were printed in all previous history. It is well within the realms of possibility that Project Gutenberg could give away a Quadrillion eBooks before 2010 much less in 50th anniversary celebrations from July 4 through August 4, 2021. Can We Give Away One Quadrillion eBooks Before 2010 ??? We Are Now Trying To Reach 15% of the World's Population If we can manage to give the average eBook to 15% of the world population, not unthinkable, that would be a grand total of 1 quadrillion eBooks given away. 15% of the world population = ~1 billion people 1 million books to 1 billion people = 1 quadrillion books For those who hate it when I use large numbers, it still can't be helped when the possibilities are this great. I simply refuse NOT to mention that we could give out an order of a quadrillion eBooks in the next three years if it is actually staring us in the face. The current schedule of The World eBook Fair cosponsored by Project Gutenberg and The World eBook Library is: 2006 1/3 Million eBooks 2007 1/2 Million eBooks 2008 3/4 Million eBooks 2009 One Million eBooks Give those one million eBooks to just 15% of the world: ONE QUADRILLION eBOOKS GIVEN AWAY!!! And that is not even counting Google, Yahoo, The Library of Congress eBook projects, etc., AND, not even counting the last 12 years to make 50 years of eBook history. There are already one billion people using the Internet, and by then it could easily be two billion, and billions more by 2021. The possibilities for eBooks today are as staggering for the modern minds as the possibilities of Gutenberg books were for the medieval minds of Johannes Gutenberg's day!