Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
On the other hand, while I was wrong and you were right, I'm not sure this has much to do with the point I was making. PG only dealt with out-of-copyright books and we were sharing whatever books we were reading at the time. When the Palm came along and first started popularizing ebooks that wasn't about what PG was doing. It was about sharing currently popular books and to a large extent that's what ebooks are still about. So while Michael Hart probably did invent ebooks the ebook world today still probably grew out of the work of the pirates. That still makes the publishers seem just a little bit like claim jumpers. 
Barry |
Fair is fair -- "the pirates" absolutely can come to court and sue publishers for infringing
upon the invention of the ebook.
With the understanding that they wlll in turn be sued for infringing upon the IP involved in the average book, which is itself a copyrighted work that is in no way related, tied to, or dependent on the distribution medium.
Personally, I suspect the publishers will win their case, and the pirates will lose theirs. You cannot copyright the idea of digitally storing texts.
If I have misunderstood where you are coming from, then I am afraid you are even more wrong than I thought, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt.