Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
My problem with this is that people assume that since it is on Amazon, it is OK. And that is wrong.
I've been in train stations where they keep repeating that you shouldn't leave your luggage unattended. Project Gutenberg tells people to check if the books are in public domain in their countries. Amazon could place a banner saying that people should check if the books are legit.
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I see it less of "assuming it's ok" and "not knowing how to go about checking it".
PD rules are INCREDIBLY convoluted and rarely make any kind of sense. There's not -- that I know of -- a big list that's easy to check. You have to track down publishing date, author death date, and then start digging through Mickey Mouse exceptions and start doing all kinds of math, and at the end of the day, it's
still a crapshoot.
And that's PD books. I'm also pointing out that you can't tell if the J.K.R. on Amazon that posted Harry Potter books is THE J.K.R. who finally changed her stance on the topic or some pirate playing a prank. I mean, obviously that's a pretty obvious case, but we just had this issue with a cheap copy of "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley that went up on Amazon -- no one was really sure if it was a legit seller, and there wasn't a way to check. And believe me, I tried.
In the piracy debate, there is WAY too much "people are lazy/greedy/stupid" moaning going on, and although I don't think that's what *you* meant, I do want to point out that saying "people won't check" isn't really looking at the big picture:
Which is that when people DO check (as I do), they rarely find a solid open-and-shut answer.
ALSO:
Analogy Police time.
You shouldn't leave your bags unattended because people could steal them or plant bombs in them. In the case of the former, it's pretty easy to tell if that's happened or not (the bag is gone); in the case of the latter, PEOPLE DIE.
PD books?
Are not the same thing.
Yes, I'm a scold, but there are also too many silly analogies being tossed into the piracy debate, and only 0.01% are actually relevant.