Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Project Gutenberg is a collaborative project to make texts freely and widely available, to anyone in the world who cares to read them https://www.gutenberg.org/about/. The name comes from Johannes Gutenberg, noted for his invention of the moveable-type printing press, which dramatically reduced the cost of making books and made access to books a lot more feasible for the working class.
Project Gutenberg has a lot of old books because many countries have laws that restrict the free distribution of original work for a period of time after the work is initially published. These are called copyright laws because they govern who has the right to copy a work of art. In the US (and in other places, but I'm most familiar with US law so I'll use it as an example), copyright protections eventually expire and the work enters the public domain, meaning that it no longer has copyright protections i.e. anyone may freely copy the work, including Project Gutenberg. That's why they are able to make so many older books available for download.
EPUB is a file format that makes text files a little bit nicer to read than just plain text, especially if you're using an ereader, so Project Gutenberg will often provide the text in an EPUB format as well as in plain text.