Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg in 1971, and the inventor of ebooks (electronic books), has dedicated his whole life to put as many literary works online for free for everyone, for them to be disseminated worldwide. He wrote in August 1998: "We consider etext to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to etexts, especially in schools." (NEF Interview) September 1998 > A quote by John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of the Online Books Page John Mark Ockerbloom created the Online Books Page in 1993, as a catalog of ebooks available for free on the web. He wrote in 1998: "I've gotten very interested in the great potential the net has for making literature available to a wide audience. (...) I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a mass communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer." (NEF Interview) September 1998 > A quote by Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries in 1995, wrote in September 1998: "The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and institutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind." (NEF Interview) In January 2000, Robert Beard co- founded yourDictionary, a major portal for dictionaries and other tools in all languages. October 1998 > A new amendment to the U.S. copyright law Each copyright legislation has been more restrictive than the previous one. A major blow for digital libraries was the amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act signed on October 27, 1998. As explained in July 1999 by Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg: "Nothing will expire for another 20 years. We used to have to wait 75 years. Now it is 95 years. And it was 28 years (+ a possible 28-year extension, only on request) before that, and 14 years (+ a possible 14-year extension) before that. So, as you can see, this is a serious degrading of the public domain, as a matter of continuing policy." The copyright went from an average of 30 years in 1909 to an average of 95 years in 1998, with an extension of 65 years. Only a book published before 1923 can now be considered for sure as belonging to the public domain. 1999 > The Rocket eBook was the first ebook reader