Here is a SF public domain book called Space Prison and it's by Tom Godwin. The original title was The Survivors, which suits the story better.

Basically the evil Gerns wreak havoc on everyone and cast away a small colony of humans on a very inhospitable planet to fend for themselves. The quest for revenge helps the humans make the most of their situation.

One of the earlier e-books that I read on the Sony Reader. It's really a great, fun read. I went old-school with the cover painting--bow and arrow, rocket ship and mean beasts. What's not to love about this book?

Also, I think it's my best book cover painting so far. The watercolor original is now framed and hanging up on my office wall. Enjoy!


Edit by HarryT: 17th Apr 07

Sorry - I've temporarily removed the attached book until we resolve its copyright status. We'll put it back again if it proves to be OK. Apologies for the inconvenience.


Edit by HarryT: 18th Apr 07

Sounds like the book's OK, so I've put it back!

And you have the indents going!

I love your artwork. It's such a pleasure to look at your work. I'm in awe by your vision and talent. Thank you.


don

Thanks Don. I fixed the indents on the Frankenstein file just now as well. Sorry for the delay, but it took me forever to get it right. Actually, the painting of the covers sometimes goes faster than formatting the text to display correctly!!

I got it all figured out now. I think. :)

tsgreer,
I believe that Space Prison (Published in 1960, The Survivors in 1958) may still be in copyright. I know it was on Gutenburg Project for a while but has apparently been removed. BTW it is one of my favorites.

I have sent a message to Greg Weeks. He definitely knows all about the copyright status of that book.

Best contact him directly if the books are not available from Project Gutenberg.
Even better only use PG books and get all other free books to PG first. Greg handles the copyright clearance process so you do not steal his time.

I've temporarily removed the book attachment until we get this resolved. We'll put it back if it proves to be OK. Apologies to tsgreer and everyone else for the inconvenience.

Robert - could you let either myself or Alex know if you hear anything, please, and we'll either put the book back, or delete this thread, as appropriate.

Thanks!

tsgreer,
I believe that Space Prison (Published in 1960, The Survivors in 1958) may still be in copyright. I know it was on Gutenburg Project for a while but has apparently been removed. BTW it is one of my favorites.

This hasn't ever been on Project Gutenberg. Some of the other book sites have picked it up from DP, but it hasn't finished at DP yet. Baen has the complete text available on their site if you just want to read it.

Greg Weeks

So the book itself is copyright cleared (or Greg would not have touched it on DP).
So only the question remains if the source of the posted text was copyrighted.

The best solution would be to wait for the book to be posted to PG and then redo it from the HTML. Alternatively pick up the unfinished text from DP.

If tsgreer can let me know if he got it from DP (where presumably it will have been copyright cleared), I'll put the attachment back. Sorry to act "pre-emptively" on this, but we need to be careful about these things!

Hi all, actually I got it from manybooks.net and I thought mentioned something about their research showing that the copyright had not been renewed. Should we always wait for PG? I've noticed that they don't have everything that is copyright-free simply because there is such a vast amount.

I pretty much go back and forth between PG and Manybooks. Sorry for the confusion!! I was just sooo excited when I saw Space Prison was available (or so I thought).

Well darn, that would be TWO copyright mistakes I have made! Grrrr... Sorry. I promise no more issues...:(

Not to worry Travis. There is a learning curve for all of us here, and it has been very educational for me to see the discussion unfold. We do want to get it right, and it's good for Harry to take action, but I think this sort of thing is going to be fairly common for us, just as these are probably very common discussions at PG. Par for the course, so to speak. It's not the first, nor will it be the last, and I know we all appreciate both those who are formatting books for us, and those who are helping us understand how to figure out the copyright issues.

Harry -- As long as Travis doesn't mind, maybe it's a good idea to keep this thread in place however it turns out because it's a good reference point, and provides some nice history on the issue for those who discover it later.

Don't sweat it too much, Travis, this copyright stuff can be a reall Gordian Knot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_knot) sometimes -- besides, you can only make errors if you're actually doing something, so all this really does is indicate that you're not just sitting on your duff. :wink:

If it's on "manybooks", Travis, that's good enough for me! I've left the attachment at work, but either I can put it back tomorrow morning, or you can re-upload it yourself, whichever you prefer. Apologies again for the hassle - we all have to be cautious about these things until we figure out what's allowable and what's not. I'm not picking on you, honest :grin:.

Hey Harry, no worries, thanks for staying on top of it. Yeah, I got it from Manybooks and they seem to be really good about their research. I'm not familiar with "DP," can you clarify for me? I know PG is Project Gutenberg, but I can't figure out the DP.

Hopefully we get to put it back up because it really is a great book. Thanks for everyone paying such close attention! :)

DP=Distributed Proofreaders (http://www.pgdp.net/)

Thanks for the heads up igorsk. Thanks!

Didn't mean to stir things up. Just wanted to do right. However I'm sure that it was PG where I did download it. It is a book that I would definitely recommend. :uhoh2:

EDIT: Apologies - On further checking, it was "ManyBooks.net". Sorry for the misinformation. :huh:

Hi all, actually I got it from manybooks.net and I thought mentioned something about their research showing that the copyright had not been renewed. Should we always wait for PG? I've noticed that they don't have everything that is copyright-free simply because there is such a vast amount.


Manybooks grabbed their copy from DP fairly early in the proofing process. They won't update until it posts to PG. They don't always grab their early copies from DP. They will usually answer questions promptly if you ask them.

Greg Weeks

Based on the supplied information, it sounds as though the book is fine, so I've put it back again for downloading. Thanks to everyone who helped out with this, and apologies to Travis for my erring on the side of caution.

thanks for putting it back, let's all give harry an extra doughnut today, its monday

Whew! I'm glad everything worked out ok and it's available again. It really is a great read. Thanks to everyone for staying on top of things.

Erring on the side of caution is always the way to go, that's what makes our forum so great--we all care about what's going on. :)