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I do agree that it is exploitative to sell unmodified, easily available PD e-books for some non-trivial cost.
But I'm not really sure that the issue is about disclosing the PD price, and I don't really think that *raud is the best way to think about this.
If Target sells a bookcase for $100 and Walmart sells the *exact same bookcase* for $80, I don't think it is in any way morally dubious for Target not to tell potential customers that they can get the exact same bookcase down the street for $20 cheaper.
Similarly, if Borders is selling a book for $19, they have no moral obligation to tell a customer that they can buy the exact same book for $12 at Amazon.
It's commonly accepted in the western world that prices vary, and only a very tiny group of individuals, if that, would believe that a retailer is obligated to disclose that a competitor is offering lower prices.
I think that the real reason that selling unmodified PD books for a non-trivial price seems morally wrong is because charging for a freely available book seems like some form of (moral, at least) misappropriation. In the case of PG, PG and its volunteers make a lot of PD books available because they wanted a lot of PD books to be freely available. The point of their work was to make these books freely available. By taking the books that should be freely available and charging for them, you are, basically, taking the "profit" (i.e. the availability of free PD books) away from PG. I think that's the real reason that this is wrong. It's kind of like going to a soup kitchen set up for the needy when you are not needy: as the purpose of the kitchen is to help the needy, you are interfering with this purpose if you take the free soup while not being needy. (Even if there is soup left over).
Of course (returning to e-books), if you told people that the book PD you were selling could be had for free, this might get rid of the moral issue with selling the book - but probably only because no one would buy the book. However, pointing out that the book is available for free would also serve PG's goal of making PD books freely available.
To summarize: IMO charging a non-trivial price for PD books that are available elsewhere is wrong not because you aren't telling the purchasers that the book isn't free, but because you are interfering with the intent of the people who edited the free PD book that PD books be free.
Not speaking for Harry, but I suspect that if you sold a copy of his edited version of "Small House at Allington" (the one in which the woman are not howling on the lawn) for $2, the real victim would be Harry, who did the work so as to offer the book for free, and not the ignorant customer who bought the book for $2 without knowing it was available for free. In fact, the ignorant customer could be quite happy with the purchase since he or she might have never found his or her way to MR in the first place.
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