Josh, Thank you for the excellent points you made below. I would have to say that it's mighty greedy for people to rip the books from PG, burn them to CD and DVD, and then go selling them on Ebay, thier website, etc It's just plain rude for people to walk all over the hard work Project Gutenberg does and then complain when it asks for a small token in return. Brandon Joshua Hutchinson wrote:
Try understanding how things work before accusing people of "stealing" and being "greedy."
PG texts are completely free. No rights reserved, no nothing.
The PG TRADEMARK ("Project Gutenberg") is not free. If you create a CD with PG's trademark all over it, you are required to pay licensing fees for that trademark. If, however, you strip the PG trademark, you can do anything you want with those texts.
The reason is basically two-fold.
1) PG does need a revenue stream to maintain is admittedly frugal operations. (In reality, the licensing accounts for almost nothing in revenue. Hence, the greedy quote is particularly laughable.)
2) (And more important, imo) PG has to defend its trademark and good name. If you are putting together a DVD of texts, but somehow do a flat out terrible job (ie, half the files on the DVD are corrupted), and PG's trademark is all over the place, we look bad. PG itself is getting tarnished by actions outside our control. By putting licensing over the trademark in place, it gives us *some* control over the content that bears our name.
Josh
----- Original Message ----- From: Juhana Sadeharju <kouhia@nic.funet.fi> Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 15:09:12 +0300 To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: unauthorized PG venders
On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Greg Newby wrote:
On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 02:34:06PM -0500, Aaron Cannon wrote:
Just found the following link on google. Is this permitted? I was under the impression that the DVD was not supposed to be sold.
Resale for the DVD (unlike the CD) is not explicitly prohibited.
He needs to pay trademark royalties, however, and to my knowledge has not done so.
Sometimes Michael likes to go after such trademark infringers.
So, what is this CD and DVD thing? I have never ended up to such issues with GNU software. What one should do when releasing PG etexts on CDs or DVDs? Pay royalties? How much? Why the permission to use PG trademark is not cost-free? Are people being greedy here?
Would it be enough to remove every reference to Project Gutenberg?
Yet again: Are the PG etexts free (in GNU like sense) or public domain? Who has copyrights to the etexts in the PG archives?
I have a solution: Lets move all etexts to my project Truly Free Etexts. Then everyone can do anything with them, burn to CDs and DVDs and sell and re-sell them. The etexts would last forever and nobody can take the joy away -- this is what happens with GNU software.
Of course, people should check twice to where contribute etexts. Apparently PG has not been the best place in terms of freedom. (Websites have re-copyrighted the PG etexts, and PG persons have started their own business, PG2, with other's contributions.)
I would like to remind that it is great gift that old texts goes to public domain. Lets not abuse this gift. Keep them in public domain and spread the good word.
Juhana