Copyfraud - public domain's fate?

[Ankh]

This conversation took a strange turn.

Kovid, if you wanted to hear agreement that it is essentially wrong to format-shift a text available at PG and put it for sale at the average book price, you have it from me.

What I fail to understand is why you are insisting on finishing the conversation right there, with that simple agreement. Don't you want to do something about it?
I am sorry if my tendency to immediately look for solution has offended you in any way.

[charonme]

That's a nice example, but it still doesn't establish or even hint why that would be immoral. Even if the other seller would re-sell the same food he got for free. Even if you found an example that would induce a negative emotional reaction in me. Morality and ethics is not about emotions. Maybe you disapprove, but that doesn't necessarily imply it's immoral.

I completely agree with Kali Yuga's post #208

Ankh, it's not about "agreeing" or "disagreeing", nor it is about emotions.

[kovidgoyal]

@Ankh: Glad to hear it. I just want this to proceed in steps. Lets first all agree that it is wrong. Once we do that, we can move on to discussing what/if anything should be done about it.

The reason I do this is that the two issues are separate and if they get conflated then you have positions hardening about the first issue because people disagree about the second.

So please, I promise we can have the discussion about what should be done after we are all agreed that duplicating a PD text and then selling it without informing the customers that it is a duplicate is wrong.

And let me just say, that I have no idea what, if anything should be done about it. What I do know is that just because it may not be possible to do anything about it does not mean that it should be dismissed as harmless.

[kovidgoyal]

@charonme: How would you decide something is immoral?

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Doesn't "the right to commercial exploitation" include the right to choose NOT to commercially exploit it? Are you suggesting, for example, that anyone who keeps a private diary should be forced to publish it?

As to your first question, I think it's certainly a matter for discussion. Keeping something off the market for a while can be part of a marketing plan. On the other hand, the purpose of copyright is not necessarily to allow the copyright owner to squeeze out his or her maximum profit, else there would be no "fair use." The purpose is to encourage the production of creative work, and to reward those who create it. If something is not made available to the public, it seems to me to be outside the purpose of copyright. My personal view is "use it or lose it." (But there may be no practical way to reach that result.)

As for private diaries - and personal letters - I would say that they are not the kind of material normally intended for commercial exploitation, and that they should be under permanent and total copyright - not even fair use - until the copyright owner either publishes or otherwise relinquishes their private status - as by giving his papers to a library.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Once again, I'm not saying that you cannot sell a PD work for >0, I'm saying that if you do and the edition you are selling is identical to an edition available equally easily elsewhere for $0, then you need to inform your customers of that little fact, otherwise you are deceiving them.

A Gutenberg edition is not "equally easily" available as the Kindle version for Kindle users; buying from Amazon gives them instant download, saved annotations that work across all their devices, and a record of it in their Kindle library.

The version might not be "identical" either--the Gutenberg text might be stripped out, and the formatting might have (or lack) a table of contents; images might be left out (theoretically, some people would prefer books without the images), and so on.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by charonme

Ankh, it's not about "agreeing" or "disagreeing", nor it is about emotions.

But it is. "Moral" and "immoral" fall into the personal set of values, and it is impossible to argue about them before agreeing what the baseline is.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

I know that I don't think it's right that people take work from the Gutenberg project and profit off of it. But right/legal/reality are all different things, aren't they?

I wonder, though, what PG would think about it? After all, the mission of PG is to get PD pbooks into electronic form, so that they will be available to everyone. Doesn't having the books put on Amazon further that objective?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Harmon

As to your first question, I think it's certainly a matter for discussion. Keeping something off the market for a while can be part of a marketing plan. On the other hand, the purpose of copyright is not necessarily to allow the copyright owner to squeeze out his or her maximum profit, else there would be no "fair use." The purpose is to encourage the production of creative work, and to reward those who create it. If something is not made available to the public, it seems to me to be outside the purpose of copyright. My personal view is "use it or lose it." (But there may be no practical way to reach that result.)

But, with the very greatest respect, neither is the purpose of copyright to force everything that is written to be published. I have the absolute right to write material and choose not to have it published - at least until 70 years after my death, when it becomes public property. I would personally not wish to see that changed.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@Ankh: Glad to hear it. I just want this to proceed in steps. Lets first all agree that it is wrong. Once we do that, we can move on to discussing what/if anything should be done about it.

The reason I do this is that the two issues are separate and if they get conflated then you have positions hardening about the first issue because people disagree about the second.

So please, I promise we can have the discussion about what should be done after we are all agreed that duplicating a PD text and then selling it without informing the customers that it is a duplicate is wrong.

I'm afraid that I can't agree that this is wrong, Kovid. Imposing restrictions - any restrictions at all - on what can be done with material that's in the public domain is a perversion of the very idea of the public domain.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Selling an unchanged e-text is like bottling up the atmosphere and selling it. Fraud, plain and simple.

I think what is really bugging some is that people who do sell unchanged e-text might be charging some sucker more than the "convenience charge" amount.

So the real problem is an information deficit on the part of the buyer, which is not rectified by the seller. This is a classic problem in any buyer/seller transaction, and there are some circumstances in which the seller is obliged to reveal defects in his product. I'm not sure that the e-text being available somewhere else for free is covered by the term "defect," though.

Maybe one answer is for Amazon to require that the sellers of PD works identify the work as being within the PD, and include a statement of the source of the e-text, all of which will be (1) contained at the beginning of the ebook and (2) incorporated into the description on the Amazon page.

I believe that Amazon is taking a different approach, though, and is weeding out PD books from its offerings. Maybe it is just limiting the number of "different" versions of PD books.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by charonme

I still address the morality issue. It has not been shown why would the above mentioned case be immoral/deception nor what is the crucial difference between one case of not informing about a competitor's lower price which is not immoral and another case which allegedly is immoral.

As I said. One obvious difference is what is expected from the knowledge the customer has. If the customer is expected to know something the situation is very different from the case were the customer is not expected to know it.

If you get a bottle marked poison you are expected to know that you should not drink it. But if it is marked with a name of an obscure poison it is deceptive not to tell you that it is poison.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Harmon

After all, the mission of PG is to get PD pbooks into electronic form, so that they will be available to everyone.

Although it is not explicitly stated as their mission, they do run servers for free download. One could easily assume that "for free" falls into the "best effort" goal of the organization.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm afraid that I can't agree that this is wrong, Kovid. Imposing restrictions - any restrictions at all - on what can be done with material that's in the public domain is a perversion of the very idea of the public domain.

So the notion of public domain is a sacred cow that cannot ever be modified in any way? I'm afraid I don't buy that.

For example, a park is a public space (in the public domain, so to speak) that does not mean vendors are allowed to sell drugs in a park

And more specifically, would you be willing to countenance a scenario where someone changes the text of a public domain work and then sells it as the original work. Just because a work is in the public domain, that most definitely should not mean there should be absolutely no restrictions on what can be done with it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And more specifically, would you be willing to countenance a scenario where someone changes the text of a public domain work and then sells it as the original work. Just because a work is in the public domain, that most definitely should not mean there should be absolutely no restrictions on what can be done with it.

I entirely agree with you that there are all sorts of things that one would not like to see people doing with books that are in the public domain, but the price to pay for imposing legal restrictions on its use would be one that would be too high to pay: the effect would almost inevitably be to harm the legitimate user far more than the (very rare) abuser of this material.