[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Requiem

Just a point I want to make here, a large amount of PD books are translations of even older texts. (Think Beowulf) The translator gets his copyright on the work he did, when theoretically he didn't change a single word. (emphasis on theoretically) Is that not copyrighting of work done on a title without adding any new material?

From the perspective of copyright law, translation is a subset of the rights inherent in copyright ownership. Therefore, it would seem to me that the translator does not have a copyright if the original material is itself still within copyright. In fact, unauthorized translation would seem to me to be infringement.

But if the original material is out of copyright, then I would think that the translator does indeed have a copyright in the translation. In a sense, the entire translated work is new material. Translation is a much more complicated and difficult subject than most people realize. All you have to do to appreciate that is try out two different translations of, say, Don Quixote or War & Peace. In fact, when I'm dealing with high literature of that kind, I tend to read two translations at the same time, because it's kind of neat to see the different ways the same thing is translated.

I am really indifferent to most of this, 99 cents for a well formatted book is more than reasonable to me.

Totally agree.

What I would really like to see is a more buffett style reader experience where I pay X amount of dollars a month for unlimited books and as long as I keep paying that X amount I will keep the ability to read those same books.

That would be an interesting business model. And it could be set up as a legitimate leasing situation, unlike the present business models of Amazon & Sony/Borders, which seem to claim lease but actually more resemble sales, from a legal perspective.

One other thing I have noticed are that people that scream about DRM are the ones that enable the bootlegging of whatever it is the DRM is protecting. (I didn't say perpetuate, I said enable)

I don't see any basis for making such a claim. Bootleggers defeat DRM easily. Those of us who see how DRM is being used to defeat the legitimate rights of users are not enabling pirates.

NO ONE has the right to take and freely distribute a copyrighted item, NO ONE. Which includes B&N's version of the PD files, Those specific copies contain newly copyrighted material and those copies ARE protected therefore the file is protected. I have never heard of 10 pages being DRM'ed while the rest is left without. I am not even sure if they have that ability. There are copies of PD that are NOT copyrighted and those are free to distribute. This is not a complicated issue in the context of the article.

B&N has no legal right to claim copyright that covers public domain material, merely because they package legitimately copyrighted material along with the public domain material. What they have is a practical right created by the DMCA ban on DRM removal tools. If B&N can't figure out how to segregate the two in one file, it would be easy enough to simply create two files, one with the copyright material, and one without, and sell the two together.

Hey guess what? That's the artists RIGHT to do what he pleases with his/her work.

Hey, guess what? There is no such right, except to the extent created by the copyright statute, which in point of fact and law limits the artist's right. That is what "fair use" is all about. And the problem with DRM is that it eliminates fair use.