Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
For a member of the public, how did you get your own personal free copy of a PD book before e-books? You still had to pay the printer/publisher. There may have been several choices instead of only one, but you could not get a free copy and would still have been at the mercy of the market.
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The Public Domain has
nothing to do with getting free books.
The concept of the Public Domain existed LONG before people even imagined e-readers. Free books are simply a fortunate by-product of the computer. The computer allowed people to "print" their own copy.
The public domain is our culture. It is what we all can freely make use of without requiring anyone's permission. Disney mined the public domain heavily for their movies. The public benefited by when they watched these works based on public domain sources. Disney owns their version of Snow White and Cinderella, but the original public domain sources are available for anyone to use and adapt however they see fit.
People have been using and adapting Aesop's Fables for over 2,000 years. That's one way the public has benefited from the public domain. The public benefits every time they pick up a work which builds on the public domain.