14 DAY TRIAL // Just in case you didn't know what it is by now, Gutenberg Project is an online library of free books whose copyright has expired in the USA, and the Internet's oldest provider of free electronic books.
Now Wattpad has added a significant part of the Gutenberg Project's catalogue to its mobile phone application and users will be able to download 17,000 books onto their mobile phones. Wattpad is a user-generated content service that mainly makes written material available to mobile phone users who can upload their scribblings that are later made available for reading through a free application for mobile phones.
The application is available for most Java-enabled mobile phones and includes a comprehensive browse-download system. Although the service was supposed to include only user-generated content, you can easily find the complete Harry Potter series and other such books.
According to Wattpad, they will remove any content if and when someone complains, but the point is it is clear that some of the books available are still within copyright. By now making Gutenberg Project available, mobile users will be able to download a large number of books available in various formats for free, books whose copyright has in fact expired in the US.
"The mission of Project Gutenberg is simple: To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." said Michael Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg, when commenting on the Project Gutenberg philosophy. "This mission is, as much as possible, to encourage all those who are interested in making eBooks and helping to give them away." The combination of Wattpad's free service and Project Gutenberg's eBooks makes the largest digitized text library instantly available to the most pervasive consumer electronic device ever.