Copyfraud - public domain's fate?

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

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.

I agree with much of that, and thought that my second paragraph about private diaries and letters made that clear.

I don't think that anyone should be forced to publish, and I don't think that coyright law has that effect or purpose.

I just don't think that someone who does not publish should be able to rely on copyright law to protect that desire. Copyright law should protect anything offered for publication. If it's not offered for publication, perhaps some other reason exists to protect it from being copied. Perhaps the unauthorized publication of material never intended for publication should be a criminal offense.

Of course, there is a difference between "ought" and "does," and in this case, copyright law generally "does" protect what you want it to.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by charonme

I'm not saying you can't disagree with the PG reseller, you may even boycott him or advertise the competition's alternatives to his potential customers, but you didn't justify using violent force against him for what he did or to prevent him from doing it. If he prospers in the long run, he's doing a valuable service to the community. If not, he'll go bankrupt. Either way, no one else would be damaged.

You are still confusing what should be done about the behavior with whether the behavior is moral or not.

[Andrew H.]

I do agree that it is exploitative to sell unmodified, easily available PD e-books for some non-trivial cost.

But I'm not really sure that the issue is about disclosing the PD price, and I don't really think that *raud is the best way to think about this.

If Target sells a bookcase for $100 and Walmart sells the *exact same bookcase* for $80, I don't think it is in any way morally dubious for Target not to tell potential customers that they can get the exact same bookcase down the street for $20 cheaper.

Similarly, if Borders is selling a book for $19, they have no moral obligation to tell a customer that they can buy the exact same book for $12 at Amazon.

It's commonly accepted in the western world that prices vary, and only a very tiny group of individuals, if that, would believe that a retailer is obligated to disclose that a competitor is offering lower prices.

I think that the real reason that selling unmodified PD books for a non-trivial price seems morally wrong is because charging for a freely available book seems like some form of (moral, at least) misappropriation. In the case of PG, PG and its volunteers make a lot of PD books available because they wanted a lot of PD books to be freely available. The point of their work was to make these books freely available. By taking the books that should be freely available and charging for them, you are, basically, taking the "profit" (i.e. the availability of free PD books) away from PG. I think that's the real reason that this is wrong. It's kind of like going to a soup kitchen set up for the needy when you are not needy: as the purpose of the kitchen is to help the needy, you are interfering with this purpose if you take the free soup while not being needy. (Even if there is soup left over).

Of course (returning to e-books), if you told people that the book PD you were selling could be had for free, this might get rid of the moral issue with selling the book - but probably only because no one would buy the book. However, pointing out that the book is available for free would also serve PG's goal of making PD books freely available.

To summarize: IMO charging a non-trivial price for PD books that are available elsewhere is wrong not because you aren't telling the purchasers that the book isn't free, but because you are interfering with the intent of the people who edited the free PD book that PD books be free.

Not speaking for Harry, but I suspect that if you sold a copy of his edited version of "Small House at Allington" (the one in which the woman are not howling on the lawn) for $2, the real victim would be Harry, who did the work so as to offer the book for free, and not the ignorant customer who bought the book for $2 without knowing it was available for free. In fact, the ignorant customer could be quite happy with the purchase since he or she might have never found his or her way to MR in the first place.

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

As opposed to fraudulently passing off something that has a value of $0 as something that have a value of $10? The essential point here is that it is not just "any competitor" who is offering a lower price, it is the competitor whose product you cloned.

The concept of "value" is perhaps where we diverge. I don't regard something as having a value of $0 just because someone chooses to give it away free.

I could agree that taking a copy of a PG ebook, which volunteers have spent many hours creating (scanning, OCR'ing, proofreading, marking up) in order to make the book freely available, making a few minor changes such as removing the PG blurb, and selling it, is greedy and tasteless. But not immoral or fraudulent.

[kovidgoyal]

@Andrew: An excellent post, thank you. I do agree that you are also harming the producers of the work when you take it and sell it for your personal profit.

However, I still think that this behavior is fraudulent. I agree that it is not reasonable to expect a retailer to inform his customers of every competitors' lower prices.

However, if said retailer has "magically" duplicated the product of his competitor and is then selling the very same product, that he got from his competitor, fully knowing that the product is indistinguishable, then he is committing vraud. And please note, I dont mean that what he is doing is illegal, I mean that it is dishonest.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

However, if said retailer has "magically" duplicated the product of his competitor and is then selling the very same product, that he got from his competitor, fully knowing that the product is indistinguishable, then he is committing vraud. And please note, I dont mean that what he is doing is illegal, I mean that it is dishonest.

You shouldn't go that far, though.

Calibre costs you free download, PG text costs you free download, the result of the format-shifting is still not a clone of the PG text.

It has laughably small amount of work invested in it (a click of the mouse), it requires laughably small familiarity with the computers, but it is still NOT an outright stealing of the PG text. The fraud, if it exists, is in the amount of money charged for laughably small modification, not in outright duplication of the PG text.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Ankh

It has laughably small amount of work invested in it (a click of the mouse), it requires laughably small familiarity with the computers, but it is still NOT an outright stealing of the PG text. The fraud, if it exists, is in the amount of money charged for laughably small modification, not in outright duplication of the PG text.

But the text is duplicated (and if calibre is working well) so is the formatting. Its like water in two different containers. The fact that one container is plastic and one is metal doesn't change the water.

[kovidgoyal]

For general interest on the subject of copyfraud (I apologise if this has been linked to before in this thread). This has nothing to do with the ongoing discussion on the morality of selling PG texts, it's just something I found while googling and thought may be of interest.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...#PaperDownload

Copyfraud is everywhere. False copyright notices appear on modern reprints of Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's piano scores, greeting card versions of Monet's Water Lilies, and even the U.S. Constitution. Archives claim blanket copyright in everything in their collections. Vendors of microfilmed versions of historical newspapers assert copyright ownership. These false copyright claims, which are often accompanied by threatened litigation for reproducing a work without the owner's permission, result in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce works that are free for everyone to use.

Copyright law itself creates strong incentives for copyfraud. The Copyright Act provides for no civil penalty for falsely claiming ownership of public domain materials. There is also no remedy under the Act for individuals who wrongly refrain from legal copying or who make payment for permission to copy something they are in fact entitled to use for free. While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare. These circumstances have produced fraud on an untold scale, with millions of works in the public domain deemed copyrighted, and countless dollars paid out every year in licensing fees to make copies that could be made for free. Copyfraud stifles valid forms of reproduction and undermines free speech.

Congress should amend the Copyright Act to allow private parties to bring civil causes of action for false copyright claims. Courts should extend the availability of the copyright misuse defense to prevent copyright owners from enforcing an otherwise valid copyright if they have engaged in past copyfraud. In addition, Congress should further protect the public domain by creating a national registry listing public domain works and a symbol to designate those works. Failing a congressional response, there may exist remedies under state law and through the efforts of private parties to achieve these ends.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

There is no special moral connotation to "free ebooks," nor have you advanced any such argument. All you've done so far is appeal to your own emotional position that "there is something rotten in Denmark." Unfortunately, it simply is not persuasive.

It is not an emotional position, it is an ethical one. Business transactions require a certain level of "fair dealing." A seller is entitled to a "fair profit." In other words, business transactions occur in an ethical climate.

Kovid's position is a way of saying that when a seller, at no cost to himself, has done nothing to improve a product otherwise available for free, there is actually NO profit that can be regarded as "fair." Therefore, it is incumbent on the seller to reveal that the product can be had for free.

In the real world, of course, one cannot ignore the "convenience factor," nor can it be true that the product does not cost the seller something, if only the labor involved, to put up for sale. But under those circumstances, I think that an ethical seller would say something along the lines of "This product is in the public domain, and the identical product is available for free elsewhere. It is being made available here for charge of $X if you wish to have it immediately."

This makes it clear that the seller is selling "convenience." If he doesn't say that, he is misrepresenting what he is selling.

Earlier in the thread, Kovid asked someone if he allowed Congress to govern his conscience (or something to that effect.)

In asking this, he was identifying what I see as a very serious moral problem, which is that many people regard behavior which is lawful as coterminous with behavior that is ethical. But while the realm of ethical behavior overlaps that of the law, in some respects it extends BEYOND the boundaries of the law. Thus, asking "is it legal?" does not necessarily answer the question "is it ethical?."

It is not ethical to sell something a buyer something that he and everyone else already owns, and to hide that fact from the buyer.

EDIT: One interesting thing about this discussion is that the ethical dimension of the selling of PD books only seems to exist in the digital environment. It seems to somehow be related to the question of the legal implications of copying files (absent copyright law.) In some fashion, the absence of a physical object (in the Newtonian sense) seems to impact on how the ethical question is addressed.

[charonme]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

it is dishonest.

you keep repeating that, but you gave no reason why that should be the case. I think he's completely honest about his evaluation of the product - he values it somewhere between 0 and his asking price X. He managed to get it for 0 and if somebody is willing to give him X, he'll rather take the X.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

So you see nothing immoral in tricking people?

Anybody that is selling something is "tricking" you in the same way. And it isn't immoral, it's business.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

As opposed to fraudulently passing off something that has a value of $0 as something that have a value of $10? The essential point here is that it is not just "any competitor" who is offering a lower price, it is the competitor whose product you cloned.

I'm very certain that the "value" of the PD books is much higher than $10. If you mean that he is selling it for more than he paid, you are right, but that is what everybody doing business does.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

However, if said retailer has "magically" duplicated the product of his competitor and is then selling the very same product, that he got from his competitor, fully knowing that the product is indistinguishable, then he is committing vraud. And please note, I dont mean that what he is doing is illegal, I mean that it is dishonest.

How is it dishonest? There are books in the used books shops that look like they have never been opened by the previous owner, and therefore indistinguishable from those in shops. Does it mean that it is the retailer's moral duty to inform the buyers that a few months after a book is published, they can find it cheaper in a used books shop?

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

But the text is duplicated (and if calibre is working well) so is the formatting. Its like water in two different containers. The fact that one container is plastic and one is metal doesn't change the water.

Actually it does. Gases diffuse through plastic for example. And in the case of ebooks if the format is different, then the book isn't exactly the same. Do you assume that everybody has a copy of calibre on their computer? And do you assume that everybody knows about PG?

[kovidgoyal]

@Harmon: Thanks for that, that is indeed exactly what I am trying to say.

[Fbone]

I think a good example of what Kovid is saying is ...

While grocery shopping you see an endcap display of tuna fish for $1.69/can. You remember you need a can or two and pick them up from the display. Buy them and leave.
But in the aisle on the shelf there is the exact same can of tuna fish on sale for 99 cents.

Do you feel the retailer is obligated to alert you to the 99c price? Or that they should give everyone the sale price whether they are aware of it or not?

This is what I believe kovid is saying.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Anybody that is selling something is "tricking" you in the same way. And it isn't immoral, it's business.

If you think that business is carried out with a complete lack of morality (or to borrow Harmon's phrasing) ethics, then you are sadly mistaken. If that were the case, the transaction costs of doing any business whatsoever would be so high as to make business impossible. It would mean that you would have to cross check every statement anyone ever makes to you in the course of a commercial transaction.

I am frankly appalled by the attitude of some people that because a transaction is commercial it is perfectly acceptable to deceive. Does deception happen in commercial transactions, undoubtedly, as in any other human interaction. Does that mean that we should approve of deception in commercial transactions, absolutely not, just as we don't approve of lying in personal interactions.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

So you see nothing immoral in tricking people?

No one is getting "tricked."

Works in the public domain are libris, which does not require they also be gratis. And no one is legally or morally required to sell you something at the lowest possible price.


Whoever sets a price has no legal or ethical requirement to index the price to their costs. If it costs Movado $250 to manufacture and market that watch, and they sell it to Tournado for $500 wholesale, and Tournado sells it to you for $1000, there's nothing wrong with that. This is how retail works.

Similarly, there is absolutely nothing legally or ethically wrong with profiting off of public domain works. Publishers and retailers have done this for years. Barnes and Noble put out "classic literature" (read: public domain books) for years. The paper probably cost them $1 or $2, they were publishing it themselves, so if they charged $10 they were making a profit. Is that immoral? Is that a "trick?" Is it immoral if someone else sells that same exact book for $7 or $8?

Compare the following scenarios.

• Barnes & Noble prints a paperback version of Pride and Prejudice with no editing and no additional material. They sell it for $10, and from this capture $7 in profit.
• Mobipocket sells an ebook version of Pride and Prejudice with basic formatting, no additional material and no DRM. They charge $7 for it, and that's all profit.

Is Mobipocket acting immorally, while B&N is not? After all, both are making the exact same profits off of the PD book.

If you say "yes," then you're having an emotional reaction to the concept of "free (gratis) ebooks." Because really, there is absolutely no difference whatsoever in "earning $7 in profit from a PD book" and "earning $7 in profit from a PD book."