If instead of "pirates" those who rescued older books were called "Robin Hoods", would it make a difference?
The Robin Hoods gather, scan, fix up, convert -- to rtf or epub or whatever -- books that are old and forgotten but not out of copyright. I've scanned and fixed up some old books I recall liking a great deal back in the 1980s. I couldn't find them (can't imagine having tossed them after pdfing them -- poorly -- but I guess I did... ) and had to re-buy them (Abe Books) so I could rescan and turn them into epubs. I'm probably the only one in the history of the rest of the world who will do that for these poor forgotten SciFi/Space Opera books by Ian Wallace... but I'd be called a pirate if i shared them on the net. I'd rather be thought of as a Robin Hood [or Maid Marion if she was the brains behind the outfit
].
Maybe there should be a classification for those of us who'd like to make sure some books, books maybe too silly for Project Gutenberg, are never forgotten.
Just a thought
