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.