rights, and the evolution of eBooks. The narrative chronicles the inception of Project Gutenberg, starting with Hart's groundbreaking digitization of "The United States Declaration of Independence." It illustrates the project's evolution over nearly four decades, detailing milestones such as the transition from ASCII text to a more comprehensive array of digital formats, the rapid growth of available titles, and the decentralized collaboration of volunteers for proofreading and digitalization. The book also addresses challenges, such as copyright issues affecting public domain works, and highlights the project's vision to make literature accessible to everyone, thereby democratizing knowledge and fostering a culture of free information sharing. (This is an automatically generated summary.)