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Old 09-02-2007, 08:07 PM   #51
DMcCunney
New York Editor
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
So if I take the books I've downloaded via PG and clean them up and remove all the PG notices, I can then sell them say as MobiPocket, HTML, RTF, BBeB, etc without any legal hassles at all?
Yes. There are people who do exactly that.

The original text PG works from is in the public domain. It is not owned by anyone, and anyone may take it and do as they please with it. I know a chap in California who takes PG etexts, typesets them, adds covers, produces them through print-on-demand, and sells the actual paper books. He's making a very good living doing it. It's perfectly legal. Like I said, the original text is public domain.

Project Gutenberg requires you to remove their boilerplate and notes, because you don't have the rights to the material they added. Beyond that, they don't care. Their mission is to preserve literature that would otherwise disappear, by getting it into electronic format where it may be archived and converted. If you put it in a different format and offer it, fine by them. You are helping keep the texts alive.

What you are talking about is exactly what Munseys and Manybooks.net do, though they don't charge for the works they make available.
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