Tuesday 8 March 2005

Have a little Hart...

I read about some guy trashing Mr. Hart from Project Gutenberg for saying that PG has given away one trillion ebooks. He was saying that it was misleading and that such "nonsense" is bad for PG's reputation. Ok, so it's a little misleading but not literally so. Although one trillion ebooks have not been used or downloaded or read from PG, since PG has made so many ebooks available to so many people (which adds up to one trillion) it is effectively true that they have "given them away". For example: if you went around and put a dollar on one hundred people's doorsteps, you have given away one hundred dollars, regardless of the fact that those people may not have picked them up, taken them, or even known about it at the time. They are still given away even if they are not received or accepted. Or maybe not. Comments?

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