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Originally Posted by sircastor
By stripping the DRM, you're violating the DMCA (Section 1201 deals with the circumvention of copyright protection schemes)
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But DRM on a public domain work is NOT a copyright protection scheme. I don't think the DMCA would apply.
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but the method of assembly of the book, the file type, structure, format, etc, are not necessarily in the public domain.
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The method of assembly, file type, structure, format, etc, are not copyrightable. A company doesn't necessarily have to give away public domain books for free if it doesn't want to, but they don't own any rights protection on them either. If someone wants to buy the public domain eBook and then redistribute it, there's nothing to stop them.
Usually the way around this is that the publisher selling a public domain work will also include new material in their version of the book. Either a forward or some type of review/analysis that constitutes new original content. That part of the book would then be copyrighted, even though the rest of the content is public domain.
However, if they're just selling the public domain content "as is", then they can't stop any redistribution.