Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I think, Ralph, that Jellby was a little confused by the way that you expressed it, as I was myself. When you said:
you presumably meant "books that have been legally converted into electronic format, by virtue of being in the public domain", or something like that, yes? The "public domain" itself is just a legal concept - a book is in the public domain regardless of whether or not anyone has yet made it available to others.
I understand what you meant, but you just expressed it in a rather confusing way  . |
Some days I'm just incoherent....(And those are the good days!)
What I meant to say was that if you see a e-book text of a work that is now in the public domain, the e-text only exists because somebody went to the effort to convert the text from paper to electronic form. For expired copyright works, that means people like us. We do it not only for ourselves, but for the good of the public. And anybody who feels that a text that has fallen into the public domain needs to be made into an e-book, should convert it. You would be "paying forward" for all those e-texts you have already enjoyed...