Amazon and B&N get heat for selling Project Gutenberg books.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by MV64

I find the best thing to do is tell everyone about public domain. No one should pay for a book older than the 1920s. Most people know this. They can sell Project Gutenberg books if they want (I can't believe I'm siding with BN and Amazon) but the buyers should realize they can get this stuff for free.

It's quite possible they can. But convenience provides value. I'm browsing Amazon on my Kindle. I see a public domain title I've been meaning to read in a Kindle format. I might very well be able to get it free from elsewhere, but may also find it worth a few bucks to just buy it on the spot, download, and start reading.

The value isn't in the source text - it's in my ease of obtaining it.
______
Dennis

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The value isn't in the source text - it's in my ease of obtaining it.
______
Dennis

I entirely agree. For me, if I can get the same book by clicking a button and paying £1, or by spending 10 minutes download it from PG and transferring it to my Kindle via USB, then Amazon will get my £1 every time.

[Kali Yuga]

Amazon has absolutely no reason or obligation not to allow people to distribute PD works via its self-publishing ops. It's perfectly legit and legal.

As to sorting it out, I say let the "crowds" do it. AFAIK, on Amazon different published versions of a PD work get their own sales rankings and reviews. For example, there are multiple PD versions of Plato's Republic. One costs $0 and gets 3 1/2 stars; another is $1.99 and has 4 1/2 stars, and part of this discrepancy is the formatting.

I see absolutely no reason for Amazon to bar all PD works. Limiting it to one PD version not only reduces the customer's options, it also runs a big risk of Amazon playing favorites -- for which I am certain they would get blasted.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

They get a listing of titles daily from PG.

That might be a start, but PG is not an authoritative listing of public domain works, and they occasionally get things wrong.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Why are we letting this happen? I was in a store the other day looking at birdfeeders, and a company had TM symbols on things like "hanging birdfeeder"....

No one is willing to pay the costs of extensive trademark research.

It's also possible they were trademarking the entire name, though that may not have been clear or obvious. I'm fairly confident that if they tried to actually enforce a trademark on "hanging birdfeeder," there is enough prior art to shoot that down.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Copyright, patent, and trademark laws are no longer about "promotion of science and the useful arts", nor even about the protection of content creators. They're all about ways for big companies to attack smaller companies, and nobody is saying or doing anything.

Would you like a handkerchief, so you can wave down the Waahmbulance?

Seriously, copyright does in fact protect the Little Guy and content creators. Anything you put into a fixed form is instantly protected, without the need to fill out paperwork or pay any fees. If you write a screenplay and send it to 10 movie studios, and one of them demonstrably jacks your idea, your screenplay is automatically and instantly protected.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Should big companies be selling people something they can get for free, or should small companies be selling people something they can get for free? How about NO companies selling people something they can get for free...

H'm. Cataloguing the problems with this is going to be fun.

• You'd have to establish some type of international "post-copyright law" that dictates that -- what, exactly? That no one is allowed to seek payment for any PD content or its derivatives?
• What happens if a film maker wants to make a movie based on Paradise Lost, or a theater group wants to do Hamlet? Are they barred from selling tickets? Are they required to do the production for free?
• What about schools? They routinely buy PD content, notably paper books, and many of them cannot afford distributing ebook readers to get that content for free (nor are giving out ebook readers universally welcomed -- even MR posters bitch about it as a "waste of money.") They'd lose access to a plethora of books.
• Absolutely nothing about what Amazon, B&N and others are doing prevents anyone from giving away the content for free. In fact, your beloved Amazon openly tells *ahem* its customers about free PD and promo books.
• Absolutely nothing prevents you from promoting free PD sources.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Amazon could stop people from reselling public domain books with a day's worth of computer code. They won't.

And they shouldn't.

Heck, until a few years ago, free distribution of PD materials wasn't even an option. No ebooks = no free PD books. Not only did the world survive this period of *cough* unchecked commerce, it also did not prevent free PD books from coming into existence and flourishing.

And y'know, some of us actually view this as an acceptable option. I downloaded hundreds of titles from Manybooks, and voluntarily donated to them; I've also occasionally paid for a PD book with better formatting and TOC's. Someone put a little extra work into the PD title, and I'm happy to pay them for their care and efforts.


As to the rest of your screed, I find your prophesies of impending cultural doom to be slightly hysterical -- both in the "over the top" and "amusing" uses of the term. The arts and culture have survived centuries of religious censorship, secular regulation, political manipulations, controls via wealthy patronage, small audiences surrounded by illiterate and uneducated populace, and massive economic, social and political disruptions. All of which, IMO, is a lot worse than people buying books from a company you don't like.

Plus, "a rising tide lifts all boats," and greater interest in ebooks will inevitably mean more interest in free PD books. And as the example of Amazon itself shows, in today's world a company can go from pre-eminent and dominant one day, to a backbencher the next.

I really do not see much cause for concern here.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

As to sorting it out, I say let the "crowds" do it. AFAIK, on Amazon different published versions of a PD work get their own sales rankings and reviews. For example, there are multiple PD versions of Plato's Republic. One costs $0 and gets 3 1/2 stars; another is $1.99 and has 4 1/2 stars, and part of this discrepancy is the formatting.

This would work if Amazon didn't merge reviews from several different editions of a work.

Sometimes this is what you want — if it's a review of the contents. But when it's a review of the formatting it's very bad.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

This would work if Amazon didn't merge reviews from several different editions of a work....

That used to be the case, but I believe they've fixed that recently.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

It's quite possible they can. But convenience provides value. I'm browsing Amazon on my Kindle. I see a public domain title I've been meaning to read in a Kindle format. I might very well be able to get it free from elsewhere, but may also find it worth a few bucks to just buy it on the spot, download, and start reading.

The value isn't in the source text - it's in my ease of obtaining it.
______
Dennis

I agree. Furthermore, remember that not all Kindle owners lurk on these boards. I can just see having the discussion with my Father-in-law. "All you need to do is do a google on Project Gutenberg, download the correct version to your computer, hook up USB and copy it over." Or tell him to find it on the Mobilread forums. Its not that its that tough, its that the learning curve will look to high for him. The only solution that would work would be if I agree to load books up for him, and for my mom, and my sister, and ...

Anyway, for many non-technical users, one-click purchasing convenience on Amazon definitely has a value.

[greencat]

Some people will want to search the net to find the free version and download/convert/re-format as necessary. Others just want the convenience of clicking once on a button on Amazon. Depending on my mood I'll switch between either of those.

Once upon a time the only people who could make money out of public domain books were traditional paper publishers. And for most people (at least in the UK) your only choice was either paying a premium for penguin type classic editions or getting lucky in charity shops. Then around the early 90s a publisher started putting out ultra-cheap versions for £1 a time. They were a massive success and really showed there was a still a large audience for classics providing the price was right. One lass I know had an entire bookcase of them.

Now anyone can take a PD book and try to turn a profit from it through adding value via formatting or new material. For me that's a good thing - providing the free version is still available.

[Maggie Leung]

Agreed on the value of convenience. I've bought PD classics from Amazon, knowing that I could access them for free. At other times, I've loaded 'em up for free. Just depends on my mood and whether I wanna spend the time. I like having both choices.

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker
How about NO companies selling people something they can get for free...

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Fair enough, but we're talking about straight PG ripoffs with no added value whatsoever.

But there's always a little added value, if only saving a bit of time, as a number of people have observed.

Y'know, if I were running PG, I'd look into the possibility of uploading all the PG books to all the major bookstores. I'd see if I could work out a "donate" button on the bookstores, & the bookstore could take a cut of the donations for admin costs.

[Logseman]

What about Mobileread loading its own archive? The PD works here are VASTLY superior to what PG offers.

[Dulin's Books]

HERE HERE!!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Logseman

What about Mobileread loading its own archive? The PD works here are VASTLY superior to what PG offers.

To Amazon? I don't see that happening. The MR archives are a major reason for people to visit MR, and MR wants people to visit.

But yes, they are superior.

In some cases, they are from places other than PG, and are works that are not yet in PG's collection. In other cases, they are from PG, but painstakingly proofread and formatted for optimal display on the readers they are created for.

PG is now producing titles in ePub, Mobipocket, and other electronic formats, but those are scripted conversions, generated automatically from PG source texts in plain text of HTML format. The conversions are at the mercy of the source text, and in some cases, like texts created in the early days of PG before Distributed Proofreaders became the main feed, the source texts are in a shockingly poor state.

When a work exists in MR's library for whatever platform the user has, it's what I point people at as the likely best version available.
______
Dennis

[Freeshadow]

right you are Dennis

at this point an applause again for people willing to corr-read the stuff they have done the gazillionth time (like e.g. HarryT)

[ManosHandsOfFate]

If more people knew about the Magic Catalog of Project Gutenberg E-Books they might not find these PG rips on B&N and Amazon so convenient.