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Originally Posted by Catlady
So it's apparently OK to change and twist an author's words and meanings but not to steal them outright?
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You can change a public domain text to your hearts content. It doesn't make it your work, which putting your name in it would imply. If someone is making changes and trying to pass it off as the original, that's a problem. But people aren't talking about that, they are talking about texts that are clearly marked as being edited.
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Geez, read between the lines. The zombie books seem to have both the original and zombificationer's names on the book. They don't have only the original author's name.
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But even the zombificationers don't just put their name on it, they put the name their name and the original author's names. The zombificationers have made major changes to the text. I don't know if I would want to read a book that was edited for content, but that is not as major a change as the changes the zombificationers make.
When someone published a condensed version of a text, the condenser's name doesn't go on the cover. I can to on to Amazon and buy a condensed version of Don Quixote that is reduced from 1100+ pages to 300. The cover says "Don Quixote by Cervantes".
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It is entirely different from paper. Most of us don't have personal publishing houses and printing presses and the money to print thousands of copies of "new and improved" classics and distribute them. But I can dig up some PG title and re-edit it to my liking, upload it and link to it, and pollute the Internet with it. And so can anyone else who feels like it. And if the PG headers remain, people will think they're getting a legit version.
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But publishing houses DO publish paper versions that are altered from the original, whether edited for content or to produce a condensed version, it isn't at all uncommon. The shelves of bookstores as as "polluted" as are web pages.
I can go to Project Gutenberg and get the original. If I go to an e-book retailer, people aren't likely to even notice the altered version exists.