James,

Share-holder corporations have a legal duty (at least in the US) to
maximize shareholder value, as expressed in dollars (not in
good-behavior scouting badges), and that is exactly what they do. They
are large, monopolistic, and will do anything to make more money and
spend less -- if they would have had even a trace of ethical behavior,
they wouldn't have become that big: competition is eager to go after
them. It is a rat race. Apart from a significant political change, that
is probably going to stay, and I don't see that change coming anytime
soon, with ideological positions so horribly polarized as they are today.

My own take on this is to not be bothered by them. Continue to do what
you like to do, but make sure you do not get into a position that you
are depending on people who can take away your work at a whim. There
isn't much money in those books, and by placing them in their
infrastructure, you handed them the power to take them away. If you like
to share your work, you can also place them on your own website, where
nobody has that power. You could even place them on a server at home (if
your internet connection is fast enough), or you could upload them on
the Internet Archive (although they are working hard to kill that as well).

The people who work for them often also have hard choices to make:
either do that work, or nothing else. Not everybody has the luxury to
quick and go work for an ethical company, or start one themselves.

Just take another wonderful book, and recreate it for others to enjoy.
There are also a huge number of books on Project Gutenberg that could
use a neatly designed cover (using only public domain materials).

Jeroen.

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