I really dislike how copyright is only now expiring for books in the 20s, but I'm still very glad for Gutenberg and this site.
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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But a copyright of only 4 years is pretty good!
lol you got me
Books a powerful weapon.
I recently had to visit a site where you can download historical books as a PDF because the book I wanted is world wide forbidden of a reprint and a original (if you can find one) costs 300€ above where only the sky is the limit.
Bit late, but I'm curious which book you're talking about, if you don't mind.
Mein Kampf
This book is far more easily available than you might think. I don't know of a single jurisdiction (including Germany) where it's outlawed. Reprints and both commented and uncommented versions are readily available in many languages. This was the case even before the copyright had expired.
Once you get over the (nonexisting) thrill of having something forbidden and the novelty of reading a book written by one of the worst human beings in history, you'll quickly discover that it's meandering, confused, extremely poorly written and simply boring. Even most Nazis back then didn't actually read it.
If you want a more illuminating insight into the minds of the Nazi leadership, Goebbels' diaries are a much better read. These are far more coherent, better edited and generally easier to get into. Keep in mind however that Goebbels intended these to be published, so read them with a critical eye. Just like Mein Kampf, Goebbels' diaries are not illegal, but there are fewer complete translations available, if you don't speak German.
In case someone affiliated with the project is around, saw this feature request from last year to integrate Standard Ebooks as an additional source to Myne, an Android app to download and read Project Gutenberg ebooks on the device, but the dev failed to find a way to programatically get the books and closed the ticket, and i too failed to find an API or something similar when i checked. Is there such a thing? In theory you could do it with web scraping, but that's a tool of last resort in my opinion, and it's far better to have an API or a similar feature.