As to the major points made below: 1. The more people PG eBooks get to, the more successful we are. Period! If our efforts are multiplied by those of Amazon, Sony, et. al. then a whole world should be better off for it. Personally, I would have the effort be one of cooperation, thanks, and reinvestment. 2. If you look at "Eldred v Ashcroft" which was previously labeled as per "Hart v Reno" you will see that our copyright law must consider itself to be permanent for all practical intents and purposes. 3. Even it not permanent, anything new you expose your 5 year olds to now won't have the copyright expire until they are 100 years old. That is certainly permanent enough for me, as I cannot legally show the movies I was FORCED to see when studying slavery in grade school, which would have been public domain no more than 56 years after copyrighted, which means the CONTINUITY OF OUR CULTURE is being left to corporations that have "lifespans" of over 100 years, but attention spans of 1 quarter. On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, James Adcock wrote:
When I speak of “competition” it is in the context of taking a good close honest look at what PG contributes to the world, for good or for bad, in comparison to that which others contribute to the world, for good or for bad. For example Google *claims* a slogan of “Do No Evil” but as one who has had to work with Google, I find the slogan laughable. Whether you want to call them “competition”, “frenemies”, “other ways for readers to get good books to read, etc.” shouldn’t stop you from taking a good hard look at what PG is doing verses what “the other guy” is doing – and seeing what one can learn from them. I work a lot on a volunteer basis for one non-profit which “competes” with other non-profits, and we always need to ask ourselves how what we do interacts with what the “competition” is doing – even though both sides would agree we are serving the public good. Then again, most for-profit enterprises ALSO believe they are serving the public good! The argument can always be made: if you don’t like what we offer then just don’t buy it!
Re “Unlimited Distribution” PG puts *some* legal terms on those distributions, terms which presumably PG means. If some individuals or organizations violate the terms of these distributions, then presumable PG *would not* consider that a “win.” If PG *does* consider the distribution a “win” even when distributed contrary to the stated terms, then I would suggest that PG needs to alter or remove the terms. Also PG lives and dies via copyright law, and I would think that PG would find any company or government action which takes books out of the public domain, or which moves them from a limbo status back into a private ownership status, or which violates a reasonable rational spirit of the Article 1 of the Constitution: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for LIMITED TIMES to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” – any of these are bad things from the PG point of view and therefore represents “competition.” The whole Google limbo thing – I would claim – arisen because of the Mickey Mouse extensions to copyright duration such that publishers really aren’t interested in supporting a work of art anymore -- but they are also interested in making sure that no one else can support that work of art either!
Further, in my interactions with PG in terms of trying to get them to support distribution on this that or the other E-book reader, and in terms of Michael’s comments on this forum, it would seem to me in practice PG is very conflicted re the issue of distribution to “support” this that or the other E-book reader, presumably because at least some people associated with PG are pretty uncomfortable about many of the DRM side-effects associated with the growth of those E-book readers. Personally, I find many of the DRM issues uncomfortable also, but again, I am an omnivore when it comes to my reading, and I usually find it pretty easy to “route around” the greatest stupidities in for-profit companies offerings and still read what I want to read – and without stealing anything. One of the most uncomfortable things about the Kindle DRM scheme, for example, is that it prevents lending of E-Books by libraries to Kindle users – and I think that is a pretty bad thing! Also “competition” is a good thing, and tends eventually to limit the extent that for-profit companies can do stupid things – look for example how the music market has played out.