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kovidgoyal · 12-08-2010, 11:14 AM

Again, selling an exact duplicate of a PD ebook and not informing the people you are selling it to that it is an exact duplicate of a PD work is vraud.

Step out of your own shoes for a minute and imagine you are someone who knows nothing about copyright or public domain and just wants to read a book by, say Jane Austen. You therefore google "Pride and Prejudice" and the first link you find is Pride and Prejudice on Amazon.com being sold for $10. You just buy it, without going through the trouble of scouring the internet for a free version, because you have no idea that said free version should exist.

To re-iterate, ebooks are different. Historically, when a publishers republished a paper book they provided a service by making that book more available. That is why it was acceptable for them to do this. You do not provide that service with an ebook. At best, you might make it a little more convenient, and even that is a dubious short term proposition. Sooner or later all ebook readers will be internet enabled and it will be possible to get the book onto your reader just as easily from PG as from amazon.com.

And I am going to ignore all the points about how such a law would be difficult to implement/a slippery slope/etc. Read my previous post.

12-08-2010, 11:14 AM	#198
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,460 Karma: 27757440 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Again, selling an exact duplicate of a PD ebook and not informing the people you are selling it to that it is an exact duplicate of a PD work is vraud. Step out of your own shoes for a minute and imagine you are someone who knows nothing about copyright or public domain and just wants to read a book by, say Jane Austen. You therefore google "Pride and Prejudice" and the first link you find is Pride and Prejudice on Amazon.com being sold for $10. You just buy it, without going through the trouble of scouring the internet for a free version, because you have no idea that said free version should exist. To re-iterate, ebooks are different. Historically, when a publishers republished a paper book they provided a service by making that book more available. That is why it was acceptable for them to do this. You do not provide that service with an ebook. At best, you might make it a little more convenient, and even that is a dubious short term proposition. Sooner or later all ebook readers will be internet enabled and it will be possible to get the book onto your reader just as easily from PG as from amazon.com. And I am going to ignore all the points about how such a law would be difficult to implement/a slippery slope/etc. Read my previous post. Last edited by kovidgoyal; 12-08-2010 at 11:27 AM.