From: Joshua Hutchinson <joshua@hutchinson.net>
Try understanding how things work before accusing people of "stealing" and being "greedy."
PG texts are completely free. No rights reserved, no nothing.
Actually, several hundred of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are copyrighted, and thus cannot be legally resold without receiving permission from the authors or copyright holders.
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.
Trademark law basically forbids "trading on the good name" of the trademark holder. Thus is it illegal to resell PG eBooks without permission if you use the Project Gutenberg name to do so. Project Gutengerg is a registered trademark.
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.
Yes, it is also illegal to diminish the trademark's value in this manner. I send off an inquiry about this, but, as usual, never received a reply. Legally I have to send off such a message to defend the trademark, if you don't, you end up losing the trademark, as with aspirin, ping pong, etc. Apirin was Bayer's trademark, Ping Pong was from Westinghouse, as I recall. mh
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 -- http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-graphics-dev for developers of open source graphics software _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
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