Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
It is more than despicable, it is illegal since the books in question were more than just TXT files. They had the copyrighted work of the person who uploaded them -- the unique, handcrafted CSS design and HTML tagging which gave it its look, as well as possibly images which may have been derived from the public domain, but may have been created by the uploader.
Merely using those books as a source for the text is not a problem, but that would have little point, since you can already get them from so many places.
To clarify: the thief in question pirated uploaders' hard work. Formatting is legally copyrightable. (I believe the books in question were doubleshuffle's in case he remembers where the original thread was. I don't.)
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You seem to have missed the point. If it was uploaded as public domain it does not have copyright on it and you therefore cannot impose down stream restrictions. Now if someone uploaded it and claimed public domain while it was someone elses work it's no different than if they do it to a modern commercial book. Once you release your own work as public domain you have given up the copyright.
Greg