Project Gutenberg blocking software

Post by **MaryAnnSpiegel** » June 9th, 2016, 8:43 pm

Thought I would post about my experience in case others sometimes have difficulty accessing Project Gutenberg and wonder what is going on.

I use a Verizon Jetpak "mifi" portable hotspot for my internet at home. There are times (like right now) when I am connected to the internet, but pages from PG simply will not load. Sometimes I get the home page but can't look at books, more often nothing will load (spinning beach ball until I give up and close the tab).

Turns out that every time I log into the internet with my Jetpak hotspot, I get a new IP address. Well, maybe not every time, but in my 7 years with LV, I've posted from over 1000 different IP addresses. Eighty percent of those IP addresses are tied to Verizon.

PG uses techniques to block sites which it thinks are not human. And more often than not, the IP address generated by my Jetpak hotspot is caught by the PG blocking software and I'm locked out.

I've been in touch with the nice folks at PG. Because I get a different IP address every time I go online, they can't just put me on a white list. I'm left taking my chances, sometimes PG loads, most times it doesn't. The PG blocks expire after a few days, but somehow the JetPak IP addresses are more likely to be blocked than not on any given day.

I am able to load PG from work, and so I've been downloading books at work to my dropbox account. I can then access them from there once I get home. Every now and then at work I get a captcha box to fill in before PG will let me open a page, just to verify that I am not a machine. While it is a disappointment not to be able to access PG from home, I am not disappointed enough to change my internet provider. At least, not yet.

MaryAnn

mahne · Post by **mahne** » June 10th, 2016, 1:39 am

Hi MaryAnn.

using a proxy server could be a solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_list

Cheers
mahne

Carolin · Post by **Carolin** » June 10th, 2016, 4:31 am

i cannot access gutenberg at home because i use a vpn to access the internet. ill post the error i get here, in case others get the same response from pg.

Error 403

Maybe you have just a wrong url. Go to http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ first to see if the error persists.

If you get the error again check that you:

Don't use anonymizers, open proxies, VPNs, or TOR to access Project Gutenberg. This includes the Google proxies that are used by Chrome.
Don't access Project Gutenberg from hosted servers.
Don't use automated software to download lots of books. We have a limit on how fast you can go while using this site. If you surpass this limit you get blocked for 24h.
We have a daily limit on how many books you can download. If you exceeded this limit you get blocked for 24h.
If you use the RSS feed, set your update interval to 24 hours.

If you are sure that none of the above applies to you, and wish us to investigate the problem, we need to know your IP address. Go to this site, don't sign up, just copy the IP address (it looks like: 12.34.56.78 but your numbers will be different) and mail it to us. If that page also shows a proxy address, we need that one too.

afutterer · Post by **afutterer** » August 19th, 2016, 9:37 am

I am having this error right now. This is really bad since I just decided to start trying to BC something. Luckily I was able to get it somewhere else, but still... #frustrating! Is there any easy solution?

YouTube · Post by **Darvinia** » August 19th, 2016, 11:24 am

Anthony, I had the same problem when I started setting up your project. Clicking on the direct link resulted in a never-ending circle. But then I went to their home page, gutenberg.org, searched for poor folk, and it came in! Go figure!

afutterer · Post by **afutterer** » August 19th, 2016, 11:28 am

Yeah. When I search it I get the error 403, when I browse by author or title I can get the link to the book listed, but I get the error 403 when I click it, when I try to load the search books page I get the error 403. Really ridiculous!

Post by **MaryAnnSpiegel** » August 19th, 2016, 11:44 am

Archive has most of the Gutenberg catalog on their site.

The link is here: https://archive.org/details/gutenberg

MaryAnn

afutterer · Post by **afutterer** » August 19th, 2016, 11:47 am

That works Mary. Thanks sooo much for that!

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » August 20th, 2016, 12:37 am

Also, because my ISP sometimes lets me down, I make a point of saving the PG web page of the text locally on my computer (File | Save page as in Firefox), so that I can continue recording even if I cannot get online.

Ruth

Post by **ToddHW** » August 20th, 2016, 3:42 am

RuthieG wrote:Also, because my ISP sometimes lets me down, I make a point of saving the PG web page of the text locally on my computer (File | Save page as in Firefox), so that I can continue recording even if I cannot get online.

Ruth

Oh that is VERY helpful! I have 2" thick doors and solid masonry walls in my old house, and when I close my room door to record (when not home alone) I get almost no wireless signal. I have been just stopping my reading and opening the door to get new text on the screen every now and again for years. (Prior to doing that I used to always print out my sections.) This will be a great help!!

Thanks, Todd

carteki · Post by **carteki** » August 20th, 2016, 4:42 am

Todd,
Chrome will let you print pages as PDFs, else just download cutepdf which will allow you to save files as PDF's (ctrl p and select cutepdf as the printer).
Anon

afutterer · Post by **afutterer** » August 20th, 2016, 8:43 am

You should also be able to get another wifi hub and use it as an extender from the first.