Quote:
Originally Posted by GlennD
I must admit there's a limit to the due diligence I'm willing to do on these. Certainly if I'm aware of piracy then I'll be careful - two popular authors I can think of who have been affected are Mary Steward and David Eddings. Expecting customers to not only research copyright status but also to be aware of what contracts authors and publishers may have signed is unreasonable, in my opinion. That expectation should be on those who hope to gain from the sales - the book seller, publisher and author.
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This is, of course, the point I'm trying to make. Copyright holders who wish to protect their copyright have to do their due diligence. I'll cut them some slack on the lesser known ebook stores that pretty much allow anyone to upload a book, but I would expect any author to monitor Amazon and Apple. The flip side is that I would expect that Amazon and Apple would put black list certain people who do this once they are made aware of the issue by the copyright holder.
I wouldn't expect the end customer to be responsible for doing this level of due diligence. Like Harry T, I'll check PG to see if the book is there for older works.
But, of course, that begs the question of what harm is done? Obviously, it's a violation of copyright, but I'm not really a rules are rules and must be obeyed sort of guy. I've found that most rules are rules people tend to be a bit selective in the rules they think must be obeyed anyway, so the question goes back to, if it's an orphaned work, when it's difficult to determine the copyright holder, the author has been dead for a while and no one seems to be actively publishing the book, who is harmed? That can be a fairly important legal question.