The CD and DVD Project

Project Gutenberg periodically generates CD and DVD image files (ISO files) containing books from the collection. When downloaded, they can be used to make a CD or DVD using a CD or DVD writer. Note that you will need a dual layer burner in order to burn our dual layer DVD. If you'd rather not burn a physical disc, the ISO files can also be mounted on most systems. Here are instructions for mounting our latest DVD under Linux, though these instructions should work for any of our ISOs.

Please copy and give away these CDs and DVDs! Keep one for yourself, and give one to a friend … or a library … or a school.

These CD and DVD compilations are copyrighted and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 license. Individual files should be consulted for individual licenses, including the Project Gutenberg Trademark License ("small print"). Verbatim copies of the Project Gutenberg 'Best Of' CD may be sold provided that 20% of the gross proceeds are donated to Project Gutenberg, however, none of the DVDs may be sold, as they contain some material which is copyrighted.

These CD and DVD images (and the CDs and DVDs they can be used to create) should run on all computer systems. Many files on the DVDs are compressed using Zip; most modern computers (and many older ones as well) have an unzip program built-in, or you can find a free unzip program on the Internet for your computer.

What the Discs Contain

The August 2003 CD contains 600 of our best Ebooks.
The December 2003 DVD contains 9400 of our first 10,000 books.
The July 2006 DVD contains over 17,000 books from our first 19,000 titles.
The March 2007 Science Fiction Bookshelf CD contains most of our science fiction titles.
The April 2010 (Dual Layer) DVD contains 29,500+ books.

All of the books found on the 2003 CD can also be found on all of the DVDs and most of the files on the December 2003 DVD can be found on the July 2006 DVD. Likewise, most of the books on the July 2006 DVD can also be found on the April 2010 DVD. There are very few images on the discs, and no audio books.

If these compilations are not to your liking, you can create your own CD or DVD image containing only the books you want.

What the Discs do not Contain

For the most part, the original copyright on the materials distributed by Project Gutenberg has expired. This means that most of the books on the discs are at least 80+ years old, and you will almost certainly not find information about computers, video games, or other topics that you may be studying in school (unless perhaps you are an English major studying at a liberal arts college). The materials on a Project Gutenberg disc will not substitute for the textbooks that you are required to purchase. (Even if you are an English major, your professor will likely assign a particular edition of the books you will read.) There is no information on Microsoft Windows, Linux, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, or Sega DreamCast. You will not find any information on defeating copy protection or how you can obtain "warez." If you are looking for any of these things, please do not download or request copies of the Project Gutenberg discs. It would be a waste of our limited time and money.

How to download

The CD and DVD images are distributed as ISO files. One ISO file contains all of the data for one disc, so they tend to be large. these images may take some time when downloading via a modem or other slow connection. At 56K, the zipped versions of the CD ISOs could take up to 24 hours to download, and each single layer DVD will require about 11 days, with the dual layer DVD requiring about twice that. The time will of course be a fraction of that when downloading over a high-speed connection.

Downloading Via BitTorrent

BitTorrent is our recommended way to download the images. Not only does it tend to be quite fast, but it also insures that you receive an error-free copy of the files.

In order to download via BitTorrent, you will need a BitTorrent Client. You can download the official BitTorrent client from http://www.bittorrent.com, or you can use one of the many other clients available on the internet. See here for a list and comparison of various BitTorrent clients. See here for more information about BitTorrent in general.

Once you have BitTorrent installed, you only need the torrent file for the image you wish to download. You can Usually obtain these torrent files from The Project Gutenberg BitTorrent Tracker.

You can also get the torrent files from the below links:

Or, if your client supports magnet links, you might try the following:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:SMVFOYIXEKAC7DGLK3T4JFKA5S3EOOZR&dn=pg2003-08.zip&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fsnowy.arsc.alaska.edu%3A6969%2Fannounce — The August 2003 CD
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:KR6A7743VOOKQWZOZQMPS5DORPFKPIZW&dn=pgdvd072006.iso&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fsnowy.arsc.alaska.edu%3A6969%2Fannounce — The July 2006 DVD
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:PCHVSDZIU6M4YEAJVG3YBNSJ7VXQULUR&dn=PGSFCD-032007.zip&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fsnowy.arsc.alaska.edu%3A6969%2Fannounce — The March 2007 Science Fiction Bookshelf CD
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:DKNULNDJWCFN4M7DIM7QK7XH4YYMJF5E&dn=pgdvd042010.iso&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fsnowy.arsc.alaska.edu%3A6969%2Fannounce — The April 2010 (Dual Layer) DVD

Downloading Via Edonkey/Emule

If you have a program which uses the Edonkey Protocol, you might try the following links:

for the July 2006 DVD, ed2k://|file|pgdvd072006.iso|4626251776|F149537F97E9B2FF57A28712FA70CC6A|h=MAIUF5WXX3C5ZZ7C2SDKCNSGITLSODX2|/
for the December 2003 DVD, ed2k://|file|The.Project.Gutenberg.DVD.December.2003.Edition.pgdvd.iso|4139646976|02CEB6E1E07A0CDC98757134B0678B14|/
For the December 2003 CD, ed2k://|file|The.Project.Gutenberg.CD.August.2003.Edition.-.PG2003-08.zip|387828452|0485242D72E3B440D7D9FD61F0ED44DD|/
for the March 2007 Science Fiction Bookshelf CD, ed2k://|file|PGSFCD-032007.zip|154915573|E5EE354281E500B29BC29B61BDBBC26E|h=3P7ANYCATOMLK4IQTOONBKLOSLP7WDXR|/

If the above ed2k links are not clickable from your browser, you may need to copy and paste them into your edonkey aware application.

Downloading Via Jigdo

The December 2003 DVD is available via Jigdo. For more information about Jigdo, visit http://atterer.net/jigdo/

Use a command such as:

jigdo http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/jigdo/10802.jigdo

Note that the CD and July 2006 DVD are not currently available via Jigdo.

Downloading Via FTP

To select an FTP mirror near you, please visit one of the following links:

For the July 2006 DVD, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19159
For the December 2003 DVD, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10802
For the August 2003 CD, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11220

Alternatively, you can go directly to the CD or DVD directories on the main Ibiblio FTP server, but you will probably receive a faster download rate by choosing a mirror near you.

For the July 2006 DVD, [1]
For the December 2003 DVD, [2]
For the August 2003 CD, [3].

One of the official mirrors has all of the images for direct FTP or HTTP download. Visit ftp://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/mirrors/gutenberg-iso or http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/mirrors/gutenberg-iso.

Please note that we have received numerous reports of the images not arriving intact when downloading via FTP, especially from those using DSL or cable connections. Therefore, in order to insure an error-free download, we strongly recommend you use one of the other methods, such as bittorrent, whenever possible.

The August 2003 DVD and the July 2006 DVD can also be found on most of our FTP sites as a multi-part RAR file. Programs for extracting RAR files can be found at RAR Labs.

Downloading Via HTTP

Due to the size of the files, this method is strongly discouraged and is not supported. If you attempt to download via HTTP, it is probable that your download will be truncated by the server because it is too large.

Verifying Your Download

If you downloaded via BitTorrent or Edonkey, you can be quite certain that your download was error free. However, if you used one of the other methods, you may wish to use one of the following checksums to confirm that your copy of the file is an exact copy.

April 2010 DVD .ISO MD5 sum: B1EA6C8C15BB2EE84126227017F56310
July 2006 DVD .ISO MD5 sum: 62de77c257dbe0e571f33cd957b79114
December 2003 DVD .iso MD5 sum: 59d8a193874349181122ff52e2e3e114
Aug 2003 CD .ISO MD5 sum: e448aaec6010fa03373d0f74dde5f36e size 711589888 bytes
Aug 2003 CD .ZIP MD5 sum: 2bf96ee51d593169ee5b08202b41179d size 387828452 bytes
March 2007 Science Fiction Bookshelf CD .ISO MD5 sum: BBA22759BAF63DCA58D439DBDE985F20
March 2007 Science Fiction Bookshelf CD .ZIP MD5 sum: AE0D518FCB2835A83DC04594670A6750

If you encounter Problems

If you are still unable to download successfully, please don't hesitate to Email us at cd2010_AT_pglaf.org with a description of the problem. (Replace the _at_ with the @ (at sign) in our email address.) We will do our best to help.

Disc Labels

We currently only offer a label for the DVD.

We offer both a high resolution PNG and an original .PSD file.

If you've created any labels for our discs you'd like to share, please let us know.

If You Cannot Download

We would prefer you download the CD or DVD images, as described above. But if you are unable and would like a copy in the mail, Project Gutenberg volunteers will send you a copy free of charge. (You are invited to make a donation to offset our costs.)

To request a free CD and/or DVD, please use either our United States or International request form. Due to the high volume of requests, we are no longer able to accept requests via email, unless the form doesn't work for you. If you must make an e-mail request:

send your name, postal address, and country (we will not use it for any other purpose)
specify whether you want a CD or DVD
please also tell us why you were unable to use the form, including a copy of any error message you might have received
send to: cd2010_AT_pglaf.org (replace the _AT_ with the @ sign)

After you submit the form or send your email, we'll respond to let you know we got your request, and will send a CD or DVD as soon as we can. Since the CDs and DVDs are produced by volunteers (using their home computers), we cannot guarantee fast delivery. Discs are sent via USPS or other inexpensive method. Generally, the discs are hand-labeled and will arrive in a simple wrapper. We do not have a program in place to send discs to other people on your behalf.

Note that we are only mailing copies of the April 2010 DVD and the August 2003 CD. The other images are only available for download.

Creating a Custom CD or DVD

Not Currently Available: One of our volunteers has created a web service which will allow you to create a custom CD or DVD with as much or as little of our content as you like. You can specify which authors, titles, languages, ETC. you would like included. Complete documentation is available in the FAQ at the site. Please note that we are unable to mail you a copy of any custom CDs or DVDs you create.

How You can Help

If you are interested in volunteering to help us distribute discs, please see our DVD Project Volunteering page.

International Copyright

PGLAF is committed to complying with copyright laws. PGLAF has not verified that all the eBook files on these discs meet the copyright laws in countries outside of the United States. PGLAF recommends that you verify this before using these files and requests that you advise us of any problems (see the Contact Information page).

The CD and DVD Project

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