Eric Eldred
Encyclopedia
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
advocate and the proprietor of the unincorporated Eldritch Press, a website which republished the works of others which are in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
(that is, no longer subject to copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
). Eldritch Press for some years ran on a Linux server from Eldred's home and is now hosted by Ibiblio
Ibiblio
ibiblio is a "collection of collections," and hosts a diverse range of publicly available information and open source software, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. As an "Internet librarianship," ibiblio is a digital library and archive...
and no longer maintained by him. Its principal feature was experimentation with HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
formats and inclusion of graphics (while maintaining accessibility for blind readers) for online books that earlier had mostly been in ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
format. Since the works and Eldred's derivative works based on them are in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
, anyone can make use of them, host them, and create more works of their own without payment or credit.
In 1998 the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was passed, preventing Eldred's plans to scan and publish works first published in the U.S. after 1922. Therefore he became the lead plaintiff in Eldred v. Ashcroft
Eldred v. Ashcroft
Eldred v. Ashcroft, was a court case in the United States challenging the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act...
, a lawsuit which challenged the constitutionality
United States constitutional law
United States constitutional law is the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution.- Introduction :United States constitutional law defines the scope and application of the terms of the Constitution...
of this act but lost in 2003.
Eric Eldred has been described as a former computer programmer and systems administrator, a Boston writer, and a New Hampshire-based technical analyst. He is an independent scholar and first published online all of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
's works, as well as scanning many works for Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
and others.
He lived in an Internet Bookmobile
Bookmobile
A bookmobile or mobile library is a large vehicle designed for use as a library. It is designed to hold books on shelves so that when the vehicle is parked the books can be accessed by readers. It usually has enough space for people to sit and read books inside. Mobile libraries are often used to...
traveling the U.S. visiting schools and libraries and special events to show readers how to print their own free books. (The Internet Archive Bookmobile can be invited to visit a particular location at http://www.archive.org/texts/bookmobile.php, although Eldred is no longer driving it.)
In 2004, Eldred was denied a permit at Walden Pond
Walden Pond
Walden Pond is a 31-metre-deep lake in Massachusetts . It is in area and around, located in Concord, Massachusetts, in the United States...
State Reservation to print and give away free copies of Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
on the 150th anniversary of its publication. In 2005. Eldred
returned with a permit, secured with the help of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, to print and give away copies of the book, and to demonstrate to readers how to self-publish and regain control of their own culture.
He co-founded Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
and served on its board of directors.
Eldred grew up in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, graduated from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1966 (philosophy, general studies), and then became a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. He was ordered to work for two years as alternative service, at Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital and biomedical research facility in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts...
in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, where he was a respiratory therapist and a chief pulmonary technologist until 1987. After he bought an Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
computer in 1980, he was active in Apple users' groups and went to Harvard Extension School (programming and technical writing, C.A.S. 1991). Then he worked as an engineer at Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer, Inc., founded 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts by William Poduska and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo was one of the first vendors of graphical workstations in the 1980s...
(later Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
), and Cahners Publishing as a technical analyst and computer magazine journalist, then for Wang Government Services as a senior Unix systems administrator, before becoming disabled from repetitive strain injury.
Eldred is divorced, with three (triplet) daughters.
External links
- http://www.eldritchpress.org/
- http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/
- http://www.creativecommons.org/
- http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/07/19/fighting_to_be_free/
- http://www.mass.gov/dem/parks/wldn.htm
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB104276617127133384.html