A recent story in the European press has revealed that some of the oldest works in the human quiver of knowledge will be added to the e-shelf. Italy’s national library has slated up to one million titles for the scanner box, many of them the original works of philosophy and science pioneers.
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Standard copyright law in North America is 50 years after the publication of a work and/or the death of the author (this is why classic novels are a lot cheaper in the bookstore than new releases), but in Europe copyright lasts even longer. Publishing similar classical works en masse has gotten Google in trouble before, but this time they appear to be in the clear. Provided some Internet mole doesn’t invade the web and library servers, nearly all of the wisdom and knowledge of antiquity will be backed up by the Internet. This will hopefully protect for space-earthlings of the future, the body of human knowledge which was nearly all destroyed in the disastrous fire in Alexandria 2000 years ago.
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