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

[abookreader]

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

First of all - something is not a ripoff when it is legally obtained.

Second, whether or not something has a value to me as a buyer is up to me to decide. Maybe I just want all my books in my Amazon archives and I'm willing to spend 99 cents for that convenience.

I don't need somebody else to "protect me" from being ripped off there. I can decide for myself. And if I do purchase a Kindle book that once I look at it I decide isn't what I wanted, then I have 7 day period to ask for my money back.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by mikeayers

Does anyone know if you buy a PD book from amazon, does it end up in your archive? So you can delete from your Kindle but the keep a copy for you? If they do that, I can see that as a value add.

Yes, it does end up in the archive. I've got some that I got for free, and they're currently listed in the archive on my Kindle.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by abookreader

First of all - something is not a ripoff when it is legally obtained.

Very good. Call it a verbatim copy, if you will.

I don't need somebody else to "protect me" from being ripped off there.

Yeah, well some people do. Laws aren't exclusively made for people like you.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Yes and no. If the buyer thinks he's spending money on something that really has no value at all, that's fraudulent. If he spends more than twice the actual value there are civil remedies in some jurisdictions, including mine.

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

You are confusing "price" and "value". For me personally, it would be worth paying a few pounds to be able to download a nicely formatted Mobi version of a book directly from Amazon, even if that book contained exactly the same text as could be obtained at no cost from PG. The convenience of the direct download adds value. Value can be measured in more than simple monetary terms.

[Doug Huffman]

Originally Posted by HarryT

[ ... ]Value can be measured in more than simple monetary terms.

Yes, but not commeasurably and we are trying to communicate here about commerce.

[HarryT]

I'm afraid I don't understand you, Doug. Not commeasurably with what?

[John F]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Nothing. Nor is any of the content of the book subject to copyright.

"Payment" is completely separate from "copyright," and public domain books aren't required to be free.

So if there was no DRM on the book (that you brought), you could distribute it with no consequences? I guess that surprises me a little, the producer of the book added some value (table of contents, maybe some special formatting, ...), seems as though it may be copyrightable?

I wasn't implying anything by payment, I was trying to use "brought" to identify the particular ebook you were talking about.

Thanks.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by John F

So if there was no DRM on the book (that you brought), you could distribute it with no consequences? I guess that surprises me a little, the producer of the book added some value (table of contents, maybe some special formatting, ...), seems as though it may be copyrightable?

Markup could be independently copyrightable. So that the you could reproduce the text, but not the markup that had been added.

[HarryT]

In many countries (all of the EU, for example) there is the concept of "typographical copyright", under which the specific layout of a work gets a one-time, non-renewable, copyright terms of 25 years from its date of publication. The text of such a book could be copied, if it were in the public domain, but you couldn't distribute a verbatim copy of the book.

[FatDog]

How many of you guys pay a cable company or Dish/Direct for television programming? But most of you can put up an antenna and get at least your local TV stations for free.

(Type your address into www.antennaweb.org to see a list)

Amazon is like the cable/sat companies. They package and DELIVER content created by other people in a easy-to-use package.

Want to know something? Amazon shows different prices for the same item to different people based on if you have an account or not. When you try to find a specific item - the one from the vendor you see is NOT the lowest price.

Example: I was looking for some nighttime allergy pills and Amazon showed me a 3-box pack for $22. I then started searching on Amazon starting with Tylenol and getting more specific to "nighttime" and "allergy" and found a different merchant selling the same thing for $18. But I had to come at Amazon with vague searches to narrow down to what I want.

What was going on? The merchant selling the item for $22 was probably offering Amazon $0.50 for the link and the merchant with the lower price offered something less.

Nothing illegal or wrong, just the business model.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Yes and no. If the buyer thinks he's spending money on something that really has no value at all, that's fraudulent.

How odd. I would think it had more to do with claims made by the seller than with a buyer's imagination, but I stopped expecting laws to be rational a long time ago.

[Wetdogeared]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Does anyone recall Borders doing the same thing?

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

so did you wake up one day and decide; "I hate all things Amazon and Kindle and I am going to troll the MR forums for fun."?

seriously. get a life and a different agenda

KK, unless you two have some kind of history with each other I find your response rather offensive, or maybe I should say overly defensive.

[DMcCunney]

What is not clear to me is what Amazon is supposed to do about it.

As pointed out in other responses, text in the public domain has no ownership, and anyone can get it and do whatever they like with it, including trying to sell it.

The compliant is that people are repacking and selling public domain content through Amazon, but simply reformatting the PG text for the Kindle. (And might not even be doing that, as PG now offers automatically generated Mobi editions for many of their offerings.)

This is perfectly legal, too. Since they are adding no value, you may think it's smarmy and unethical to charge for it, but it's not against the law.

The texts in question are being uploaded to Amazon by third parties using the facilities Amazon provides for self-publishing. The is no requirement that what you package and sell that way be your own work. Self-publishing simply means doing it yourself, and makes no assumption about what you are publishing.

What should Amazon do in such a case?

If someone self-publishes someone else's work that is covered by copyrights, it's a clear copyright violation, and the rights holder can request that Amazon take it down, and file suit for copyright violation against the offender.

That's not the case here.

The obvious suggestion would be that Amazon vet self-published uploads, and decline to accept and post stuff like this. I really don't see that happening. Since it's not illegal, what grounds would they have to do so?
______
Dennis

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by abookreader

First of all - something is not a ripoff when it is legally obtained.

"Ripoff" is not a legal term and has no relation to laws. In fact, it usually refers to something that is legal.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The obvious suggestion would be that Amazon vet self-published uploads, and decline to accept and post stuff like this. I really don't see that happening. Since it's not illegal, what grounds would they have to do so?
______
Dennis

Amazon do refuse to accept self-published editions of (I think) the top 500 (or it might be 100) classics, so you can't publish yet another edition of "Pride and Prejudice", for example.