[ricdiogo]

Originally Posted by ahi

Isn't he implicitly doing just that by not attributing his books to Project Gutenberg, wherefrom most he probably sourced? Not that PG's terms governing use of the PG name and trademark permits him to do so...

Ahi, I'm not sure of which HarryT's ebooks you are talking about.

However Project Gutenberg allows everyone to change the actual text from it’s ebooks.

But _for legal reasons_ we actually prefer that people simply do not say that the final etext comes from PG when they change it. (Eg.: do not use phrasings such as “Source: Project Gutenberg”).

If one wants to identify the source as being PG, please make it clear that the text has been changed, improved, corrected etc etc _by yourself_. (Eg.: Source file found at www.gutenbeg.org that we’ve changed, improved and corrected ourselves).

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would like nothing more than to give my corrected texts back to PG. Unfortunately, they have ignored every e-mail I've sent them offering to do so.

Sorry to hear that. I’m not sure if by “ignored” you mean “never answered” or “not accepted”.

If PG’s people haven’t answered you, please try to sent those emails to someone else at PG. If they have not accepted your offering maybe that’s because PG tends not to accept people “offering” to do something. The standard answer is “You are welcome to do that. Call me when you’ve done it.”

In either case, I strongly invite you to post your concerns at our gutvol-d discussion list. Individual volunteers may have a partial perspective of PG. Maybe if you discuss it with everyone in public it’d be more efficient.

PG will certainly accept your final files as long as you send the corrected version in accordance to PG’s formatting conventions (by simply replacing the corrected words) and be kind enough to also update all the files that have been produced from the original TXT (HTML, Unicode versions, etc).

It is true that our errata team is working very slowly.

Maybe if you directly send your files to the posting team? That's what I personally do.

Please ask for suggestions and guidance from other volunteers at gutvol-d. We need those changes and we certainly need you!

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I'm afraid that PG has become a bureaucratic machine. I've given up hope for adding anything more, as the last addition took nearly two years to make it through their maze.
Harry, have you tried to communicate with PG Australia? I've found them to be much more easy to deal with. Whether or not they'll allow duplicate titles with PG USA I don't know, but it might be worth checking...

Ralph, it’s certainly not usual at PG that posting the final file someone has sent in can take two years. Usually it takes two days to a week.

Did you produce the text file yourself or did you send the scan sets to Distributed Proofreaders?

About PG Australia (and PG Canada by the way), please get in touch with them on how to send in your files. It’d be just wonderful if we could raise the number of ebooks they provide!!

Now back to the topic:

I’m personally fine with someone selling the ebooks I’ve produced for PG (even on paper). Those ebooks don’t belong to me. They belong to mankind and everyone can do whatever they want with them.

When I decide to produce an ebook all I can think off is: this author will be available online; everyone can read it for free; small publishers can even use the work I’ve done to sell them and make a profit with that.

I don’t think it’s immoral that publishers can make a profit with a book I’ve simply transcribed.

I admit that sometimes I laugh at big publishers when I see them selling books I’ve produced for PG. “Little greedy people”, I think to myself.

_BUT_ I know that I’m helping small publishers from poor regions of the world that’d never publish _that_ book if there wasn’t me. I’m glad that people from those regions may have access to that peace of culture, even if they have to pay for it, even if it's on paper, and until they have an Internet access for getting them for free.

There’s more world beyond the USA, Europe and Amazon you know?

The same applies to torrents.