Amazon and B&N get heat for selling Project Gutenberg books.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

What is not clear to me is what Amazon is supposed to do about it.

Only accept original material, e.g. Or, at the very least, offer users an option to filter out such self-published titles.

The obvious suggestion would be that Amazon vet self-published uploads, and decline to accept and post stuff like this. I really don't see that happening. Since it's not illegal, what grounds would they have to do so?

What grounds do they need? "We don't like it" is good enough. In the long term it would probably help not to piss off their paying customers.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Amazon do refuse to accept self-published editions of (I think) the top 500 (or it might be 100) classics, so you can't publish yet another edition of "Pride and Prejudice", for example.

Okay. It makes sense, as they can automate that sort of rejection.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Only accept original material, e.g.

This is the tricky part. How do they tell?

The only way I can see to implement it is to have a staff of human beings vetting all self published offerings and rejecting those that don't qualify.

That costs money. Don't hold your breath waiting for Amazon to spend it.

Or, at the very least, offer users an option to filter out such self-published titles.

This might be worthwhile, though I can see Amazon being reluctant to offer it.

What grounds do they need? "We don't like it" is good enough. In the long term it would probably help not to piss off their paying customers.

I'd be reluctant if I were them to play the "We don't like it" card. That opens them to accusations of censorship, and possible lawsuits.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Markup could be independently copyrightable. So that the you could reproduce the text, but not the markup that had been added.

Markup is independently copyrightable.

For instance, I have electronic editions of PG texts from Munseys and Manybooks.

Both start in most cases from Project Gutenberg etexts, and offer conversions to a variety of different electronic formats. In many cases, they are doing things like adding HTML markup with a working table of contents to ebooks that PG only has in plain text format.

The source text is in the public domain. The additions they make are not, and are copyrighted. If I try to take one of their ebooks and offer it unchanged as my own work, I'm in violation of copyright.

There is also the notion of a "compilation copyright" covering the assembly of previously issued information in a compilation that may apply.
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Dennis

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

KK, unless you two have some kind of history with each other I find your response rather offensive, or maybe I should say overly defensive.

as you have a Sony you probably do not go into the Kindle forums often. this individual (as well as a few others) have taken it upon themselves to diss every aspect of the kindle that they can. search on his posts and you will see what I mean. you will also see that I am not the only one performing corrective measures.

my troll patience has worn out

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

This is the tricky part. How do they tell?

They get a listing of titles daily from PG. They cross-check their newly submitted titles against that list (perhaps with soundex to catch some of the deliberately misspelled ones). If a book trips the "like a PG title" flag, a human checks it. "Hm, it's Dracula, doesn't say it's got anything added to it, so it's PD."

By the way, with regard to markup, there is, I believe, an exclusion for those things which are necessary. I could be wrong about this -- it's been a while since I looked -- but just converting something from plain text to HTML would not grant copyright because there are only a limited number of ways to display something as HTML, so there's no creativity or additional content added. If you wanted to put in a reader's guide to Dracula, let's say, there are a nearly infinite number of visibly different ways you could go about it; you're unlikely to do it the same way I would. If you mark it up as HTML, on the other hand, the odds are very good that you and I will come up with something very similar without ever knowing about each other, because it's a simple mechanical process. A paragraph is a paragraph. But again, I could be wrong on this, so don't depend on me!

This has come up several times in companies' attempts at copyrighting databases of publicly available facts. They can't take those facts out of the public domain -- your phone number is 123-4567, and it can't be anything else -- and what they do, anyone else can do. They're still trying, of course, and if we persist in ignoring our responsibilities as citizens, they may in time change that precedent and get away with it, but as of the last time I looked, you couldn't copyright the information in the phone book, nor the concept of having a list of names and phone numbers. You can copyright that exact phone book, but all that someone would need to do would be to shift the listing a bit so the pages aren't photocopies of yours and it's no copy.

Why are we letting this happen? I was in a store the other day looking at birdfeeders, and a company had TM symbols on things like "hanging birdfeeder". Every bloody company that sells a birdfeeder that hangs calls it a hanging birdfeeder, but they're trying to take those words out of the English language so they can use their "trademark" to attack other birdfeeder companies, and win in the courtroom what they can't win in the marketplace. Every company that sells canned fish food sells shrimp pellets; Wardley's is doing the same thing, putting a TM on their shrimp pellets so they can try to force other companies to call theirs something different (causing an expensive re-labeling of containers, etc., not to mention a hell of a lot of confusion among the customers about what to feed their fish). Copyright, patent, and trademark laws are no longer about "promotion of science and the useful arts", nor even about the protection of content creators. They're all about ways for big companies to attack smaller companies, and nobody is saying or doing anything.

The real political divide isn't between liberals and conservatives; it's between people who think "change" is a different set of special interests versus people who think the citizens ought to be considered, too. Should big companies be selling people something they can get for free, or should small companies be selling people something they can get for free? How about NO companies selling people something they can get for free -- citizens matter, not just companies. Citizens matter more than any entity. When did we start calling ourselves "consumers" instead of "citizens", anyway, defining ourselves by what we buy, not what we do?

Amazon could stop people from reselling public domain books with a day's worth of computer code. They won't. Some of those books might sell, which is good for Amazon, and the docile, complacent consumers who know better will say "well, there's no law saying they can't, and we don't have consciences or opinions anymore, we let the law do that for us, so we won't complain, let alone change our consuming habits." In getting away from Mrs. Grundy, we've outsourced our consciences to politicians. There is no negative payoff for a corporation that does anything they can argue in court is legal, because the no-longer-citizens will accept it if it's legal, and even if it isn't, they'll expect someone else to do something about it.

We don't create our world anymore. At most, we pick which of someone else's worlds we want to live in -- we pick one set of special interests or another and call it ours. It's more comfortable that way. It's easier. It's stable. It's such a brave new world. But is that what we want? If we don't, we can't let someone else do something about it. We have to be star throwers*. We have to stand up and say we care about more than what's legal or illegal, we care about what's right and wrong. And, yes, that can include telling Amazon that we, as readers, don't agree that they should help those people who buy "Make A Million Bucks Selling Public Domain Books" (yes, there are books like that, lots of them) fleece the unsuspecting. And, of course, we have to not be the unsuspecting. Because if we don't, there won't be any choices left for us.


*the essay is by Loren Eiseley; read it.

[TadW]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

as you have a Sony you probably do not go into the Kindle forums often. this individual (as well as a few others) have taken it upon themselves to diss every aspect of the kindle that they can. search on his posts and you will see what I mean. you will also see that I am not the only one performing corrective measures.

my troll patience has worn out

I am interested in hearing all sides of a story. If you are not, I suggest:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/pro...?do=ignorelist

or

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ign...?do=ignorelist

[kindlekitten]

if you are interested, then look at his threads, don't play a stupid little game like posting the ignore tool

[queentess]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Yes and no. If the buyer thinks he's spending money on something that really has no value at all, that's fraudulent. If he spends more than twice the actual value there are civil remedies in some jurisdictions, including mine.

Value is completely different from price. Sure, I can get PD books for free, but that doesn't mean they have no value. How is paying $0.99 for an ebook of Pride and Prejudice fraudulent? I'd argue the value is actually much more than paid.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Only accept original material, e.g. Or, at the very least, offer users an option to filter out such self-published titles.

What grounds do they need? "We don't like it" is good enough. In the long term it would probably help not to piss off their paying customers.

You can filter out these materials. Just type "-domain" in your search box.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

if you are interested, then look at his threads, don't play a stupid little game like posting the ignore tool

Please stop insulting other members. The only forums I've ever seen you on you're insulting other members because they don't agree with your views of the Kindle or your morals. If you don't like what they say and can't control yourself enough not to insult or clutter forums, then use the ignore tool offered to you.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by queentess

Please stop insulting other members. The only forums I've ever seen you on you're insulting other members because they don't agree with your views of the Kindle or your morals. If you don't like what they say and can't control yourself enough not to insult or clutter forums, then use the ignore tool offered to you.

then you don't read many forums. in most forums I am very helpful, welcoming and friendly. I don't go through life with blinders on. by your words you are causing as much harm if not more than you have claimed I have. I've already had 3 people PM that have taken the challenge and looked at the posts that this person has made. they have discovered that I am indeed correct.

let's put things into perspective here. the only things I have called people on are; a) continuing to claim that the "1984" kindle issue is a real threat to kindles and going to keep happening. b) a person that has gone into numerous threads all over this forum and dissed the kindle, provided misinformation and generally been a troublemaker, and c) stated flat out that people who only provide links in threads without any background information, position, thought or whatever are wasting time. so if you believe that this makes me a negative and hostile person, then follow your own advice and put me on ignore if it bothers you that much. I'm not negative, I jump in when rumours are out of control and prefer the truth over misdirection. if you can't handle the truth, ignore me

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

They get a listing of titles daily from PG. They cross-check their newly submitted titles against that list (perhaps with soundex to catch some of the deliberately misspelled ones). If a book trips the "like a PG title" flag, a human checks it. "Hm, it's Dracula, doesn't say it's got anything added to it, so it's PD."

Yes, Amazon could do this. It would require effort and cost money, for something that gave them no discernible return. I would not hold my breath waiting for them to do it.

They are a Fortune 500 company. They have good revenues and profits, a good P/E ratio, and a high stock price. They will spend money on things they think will aid that. They will be reluctant to spend money on anything they don't see as having a direct benefit. If you could find someone there to talk to about it, the response would probably be a variant of "We trust our customers to know what they are doing, and do not see it as our job to protect them", which can be translated as "We aren't going to spend money on things that won't make us money."

By the way, with regard to markup, there is, I believe, an exclusion for those things which are necessary. I could be wrong about this -- it's been a while since I looked -- but just converting something from plain text to HTML would not grant copyright because there are only a limited number of ways to display something as HTML, so there's no creativity or additional content added. If you wanted to put in a reader's guide to Dracula, let's say, there are a nearly infinite number of visibly different ways you could go about it; you're unlikely to do it the same way I would. If you mark it up as HTML, on the other hand, the odds are very good that you and I will come up with something very similar without ever knowing about each other, because it's a simple mechanical process. A paragraph is a paragraph. But again, I could be wrong on this, so don't depend on me!

The usual tool for plain text to HTML markup is GutenMark, an open source, cross-platform markup tool. It's at least a starting point for places like Munseys and ManyBooks.

And you and I likely will come up with something very similar in HTML. But it's still a modification to the original. I don't know the details on exactly what constitutes variation that can be copyrighted. But it's quite possible legally to take a public domain source text and put it into a particular form that can be copyrighted. Texts from Project Gutenberg are in that category. The source text itself is in the public domain. The boilerplate and the like that PG adds is not. So if you want to re-use a PG text, you must either obey their restrictions on how in may be re-used, or remove the material they added.
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Dennis

[MV64]

I find the best thing to do is tell everyone about public domain. No one should pay for a book older than the 1920s. Most people know this. They can sell Project Gutenberg books if they want (I can't believe I'm siding with BN and Amazon) but the buyers should realize they can get this stuff for free.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MV64

I find the best thing to do is tell everyone about public domain. No one should pay for a book older than the 1920s.

There are many books dating from before the 1920s which are still protected by copyright in most countries of the world. A combination of publishing books in your youth, living to a ripe old age, and a "life + 70" copyright law, ensures that.