[The most minimized estimates of the length of the period approximate about 400 years from the latest possible date of the fall of the Roman Empire sometime in the 400's AD, to Charlemagne in the 800's. Of course, most believe the fall of the Roman Empire was much earlier, as the empire, such as it was, was "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire" for a long time before 400 AD and things tended to return to the way they had been before Charlemagne after he died with estimates of the end of Dark Ages ranging as late as the Renaissance in the 1400's. Thus the longest estimate would be no more than 1500 years from the birth of Caesar until the Renaissance was truly underway, with a shortest possible estimate being somewhat under 500 years. Thus a medium estimate of 1000 years would be sure to antagonize both end of the spectrum, and is therefore certainly more accurate than either.] It would appear that the effort to reproduce books with a perfection that refuses the corrections of errors because of a misplaced loyalty to previous editions, looms again, this time over the electronic libraries of the future, in that a significant number of Etext creators are insisting on continuing the practices, policies and precepts of the Dark Ages in that they insist on the following: 1. Copies must be exact, no corrections can be made. 2. Any differences between copies must be decided in an ethic that honors the oldest over the newest. 3. The authoritative copies must be held in sacred trust in the sepulchres of the oldest institutions, and not let out into the hands of the public. Of course, these are totally belied by the facts: 1. Digitial ASCII reproductions ARE exact by nature, and thus no errors can creep in. 2. Any differences that DO creep in can be found in just a single second with programs such as comp, diff, cf, and the like. Even a change as unnoticeable as blank space added to the end of a sentence or file is found and precisely located without effort. 3. Holding books in sacred trust in this manner does not allow them to do their work. A book that is not read is a book that is dead. Books are written for people to read, to hear, to see performed on stage, not so a sort of intellectual GESTAPO/GEheimnis STadt POlizei/ Home State Police could come to power by holding book power in secret. *** On March 8, 1995, Project Gutenberg completed its 250th offering to the Internet Public Library, as many have come to call it. A great number of changes have come to the Internet since we got the Complete Works of Shakespeare out as out 100th publication-- some of them extraordinarily good, some of the of more moderated goodness, and some on the other end of the spectrum