Is it legal to resell free content in USA ?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by H-P

Open a commerce, the day that you will see, next to the door a new shop, which break alls prices, because all products are done for free by volunteers. Tell me: is it a fair competion? Is it legal in US ?

It would be perfectly legal.

There are laws about unfair competition, but they do not apply in this case. Any company or person is free to make use of volunteer labour.

Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of unfair competition.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by H-P

You're right about "that's another matter". English is not my native langage so IF.

English is my only language so I can't criticize anyone writing in it as a non-native speaker. However

Also like i wrote. If a website write in the mention, you're free to kill your mother". Private mentions are not above the law. The value for the reader let me laught , all this content is alredy available for free on Amazon and co...The value is for the bank account of this kind of publisher.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean that something is not the case just because a website writes it down? That's true. But in this case it's not the fact that Project Gutenberg say that their stuff is PD that makes it PD - it actually is PD.

Open a commerce, the day that you will see, next to the door a new shop, which break alls prices, because all products are done for free by volunteers. Tell me: is it a fair competion? Is it legal in US ?

I'm not in the US but as far as I know yes. It's not illegal to sell things that were created by volunteers. Charities do it all the time. They don't pose a serious threat to commercial businesses because volunteer labour is unpredictable and it's hard to e.g. impose quality control etc.

Anyway free PD books are only really competing with other free PD books. Of course on some level a copy of Jane Eyre is competing with the latest Stephen King. But that's on a level of what to do with my leisure time. I could read the Jane Eyre or I could read the Stephen King or I could watch a movie, take a walk outside. Hey maybe walking should be illegal since it's unfair competition to paid-for entertainment!

So if you accept that PD is only competing with PD then because it's PD everyone has the same "raw material" i.e. the text - available which makes it a more fair market than many others. Well less barriers to entry anyhow.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by H-P

You're right about "that's another matter". English is not my native langage so IF.

Also like i wrote. If a website write in the mention, you're free to kill your mother". Private mentions are not above the law. The value for the reader let me laught , all this content is alredy available for free on Amazon and co...The value is for the bank account of this kind of publisher.


And about the matter,

Open a commerce, pay your bills, tax, salaries.... the day that you will see, next to the door a new shop, which break alls prices, because all products are done for free by volunteers. Tell me: is it a fair competion? Is it legal in US ?

Actually it's not only fair competition but the law in the U.S. At one time Bell Telephone was the big company that controlled most of the phone service in the U.S. and then someone argued that that was a monopoly which is against the law. People need to have the right to choose what type of services they want and what price they are willing to pay for them. So Ma Bell was broken down into separate companies. That's how come we have so many different phone companies now. And in fact if I have read postings in other topics right that's why the courts have been getting on the case of companies like Apple. Because they try to keep control of all the ebook markets so that they can set the price as they want it and decide which book becomes an ebook or not. Monopolies are bad economically usually (IMO) because not only does it stifle creativity but it limits accessibility of the product to the few who can afford the high prices. For example if an old movie in PD could be claimed to be the sole property of one distributor they could set a high price on it so that only a few people could afford to buy it. You see it with TV shows on DVD often. They want $40.00-50.00 or more for a season of some of the old programs so some people can't afford to buy them. And you're also forgetting that the same publishers who can't claim sole right to publish PD books are often the same ones who publish new authors who aren't in PD.

[H-P]

Latepaul, Crich70,

time to eat, i'll reply to you tomorrow.

[DrNefario]

If you are reselling an ebook created by volunteers on Project Gutenberg then you are competing against the free version that is available at PG. That doesn't seem like much of an advantage, to me.

Is there a good business case for paying people to create ebooks from PD sources that don't use the PG version? and maybe aren't available at PG? Probably not.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

If you are reselling an ebook created by volunteers on Project Gutenberg then you are competing against the free version that is available at PG. That doesn't seem like much of an advantage, to me.

Is there a good business case for paying people to create ebooks from PD sources that don't use the PG version? and maybe aren't available at PG? Probably not.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that even some of the publishers of PD books get their raw data from PG.

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by crich70

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that even some of the publishers of PD books get their raw data from PG.

It's very much so. This came up as a discussion on the internet about three years ago. Greg Newby's comment on this should still be findable if you are interested in what he said.

Greg

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There are laws about unfair competition, but they do not apply in this case. Any company or person is free to make use of volunteer labour.
[/URL] of unfair competition.

Maybe they can and maybe they can't. It wouldn't be a case of unfair competition, but it gets very gray around minimum wage laws. A for-profit company very rarely can accept direct unpaid volunteer labor without falling afoul of the minimum wage requirements. A non-profit almost always can. As long as there is no direct financial ties between the for-profit and the non-profit, the for-profit may use the output of the non-profit. You would need to talk to a lawyer that specializes in this for details.

Greg

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by gweeks

Maybe they can and maybe they can't. It wouldn't be a case of unfair competition, but it gets very gray around minimum wage laws. A for-profit company very rarely can accept direct unpaid volunteer labor without falling afoul of the minimum wage requirements. A non-profit almost always can. As long as there is no direct financial ties between the for-profit and the non-profit, the for-profit may use the output of the non-profit. You would need to talk to a lawyer that specializes in this for details.

Greg

An interesting point. I suppose it would depend on how much it was truly voluntary. I suspect it's very rare for any for-profit business to get fully-informed voluntary labour.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

An interesting point. I suppose it would depend on how much it was truly voluntary. I suspect it's very rare for any for-profit business to get fully-informed voluntary labour.

Isn't that what working as an "intern" is? That's unpaid work to get work experience, as I understand at.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Isn't that what working as an "intern" is? That's unpaid work to get work experience, as I understand at.

And it seems to me that that often gets very close to not-truely-voluntary.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by H-P

Is someone here has allready recopy a full paperbook to create an ebook ?

If the contents of the paperback are in the public domain, it's legal to copy it and convert the contents to an ebook.

In my case, i definitly think that is unfair competition to cut and paste content done by volunteers, and making business with this kind of work.

This is unfair, because a publisher which work in this book industry can't pay salary, tax,...to create ebooks publications and stay in competition with someone who's pay nothing by using this kind of work.

The publisher is also allowed to copy the content and create an ebook. If they can't do it as cheaply as an individual, they won't be able to compete with the private individual.

Work done for free by free volunteers has to stay outside the business market. that definitly my point of view. I also think than a lot of volunteers who's created textes this last 10 years, didn't do it for some f... lazy guys.

Volunteers are welcome to require their work stay out of the business market--if what they're working on, is something they can legally control.

The use of public domain texts is not. The text of a book in the public domain is free (libre, not gratis) for anyone to use. The *format* of a book--paperback, hardcover, epub, or mobi--may be not-free (not gratis), but the text is available to be used by anyone who has it.

That's the way copyright law works. A person can cut and copy a book in the public domain, and anyone can use that text--including a big-name publisher that wants to re-issue a paper book in a new size.

---> Joykin, when you work 2, 3 weeks to make serious work for one ebook. And someone come with the full gutemberg in one ebook for 1 dollar. Do you think than you can sell your ebook for one dollar = one month of work.

Why did you spend 2 or 3 weeks making a book you could grab from Gutenberg for free?

If your version is *better* than the Gutenberg version, then you have to convince the customers of that. There's nothing illegal about selling a cheaper version that's lower quality, and there's nothing illegal about buying it. If your book is better than the Gutenberg version because it has better fonts, some pictures, an introduction with the history of the book, and annotations explaining the details--you can probably sell it for more. But some people don't care about all that, and they will buy the $1 version for their Kindles, or go to Gutenberg and download it for free (gratis).

Anyone who doesn't want to compete with free public domain books, or cheap public domain books, is welcome to write their own books instead. The contents of those books will be protected by copyright law, and other people will not be allowed to sell them at a lower price. Nor at all, if the author doesn't want to allow other people to sell them.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by gweeks

It's very much so. This came up as a discussion on the internet about three years ago. Greg Newby's comment on this should still be findable if you are interested in what he said.

Greg

Can you add a bit more detail? Just a name and that the man made a comment is kinda vague.

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Isn't that what working as an "intern" is? That's unpaid work to get work experience, as I understand at.

Most jobs in the U.S. do not allow un-paid interns. Interns must be paid at least the minimum wage. There are a few exceptions where the value of the training supposedly received is in lieu of wages. Taxes must still be paid on it. Universities and other non-profits again aren't bitten by this rule.

Greg

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Isn't that what working as an "intern" is? That's unpaid work to get work experience, as I understand at.

Every intern I've ever had was paid. Usually about twice to three times minimum wage or about half the going rate if they had been hired for the job as someone other than an intern. The expectation was that we would provide significant training and they would work for a set period, usually just for the summer. I've had at least one intern that wasn't during the summer session of school.

Greg