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.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
They get a listing of titles daily from PG.
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That might be a start, but PG is not an authoritative listing of public domain works, and they occasionally get things wrong.
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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"....
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Amazon could stop people from reselling public domain books with a day's worth of computer code. They won't.
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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.