I'm trying to think on a well-considered and reasonable response, but cannot get beyond the label of "spam" which several critics have used. It doesn't fit any definition of spam that makes sense to me. So, here are a few standalone comments, rather than point-by-point responses to some of the messages people have sent. The unfortunate thing about this debate is people have weighed in with a voice of "no," "not," "never," "stop," "remove," and "unpost." As has been argued before (by Michael and me, and others), we do like to try different things, and try to pursue a broad approach to our mission. We like to say "yes." While I'm writing here: I spoke with Michael today (he drove me from O'Hare to a conference in Champaign, Illinois) and he said that he had approached Sawyer, not the other way around. Sorry for getting that wrong. The first messages I saw about the two book extracts seemed like Sawyer had initiated. Also, I think someone wondered, what if a publisher offered thousands of these. My answer is, I don't know how w'd proceed. But it would be a good problem to have to solve. We don't have such a problem today. Ok, my final thought for now: there is no way I would allow PGLAF to accept payment for adding items to the collection. Ever. It's amazing that people would think any such deal could happen. Project Gutenberg is able to do great work with the donations we get ($30-40K/year US), but we are very very conscientiously immune to funding or the lack of it. Not that I don't have great ideas for "what if we had $millions" (who doesn't?), but the fact is that we can continue to function with essentially no $ at all. (Just a little for our few server hosting costs, which I would [and do, sometimes] pay out of my own pocket.) -- Greg On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 10:00:51AM +0200, Jon Richfield wrote:
Subject: Spam disguised as books
You said: There is no financial interest that Project Gutenberg has in those books. If you look at them, you'll see they are of a topic complimentary to the Gutenberg mission. The fact that project Gutenberg has no financial interest in those books is not a mitigation but an aggravation. If project Gutenberg were to gain from them, that would at least make some sense. I could have hoped that it would be through something less irritating and
They were offered freely by the author. We have a small number of such extracts, and also a relatively small number of copyrighted works, scattered throughout the collection. The vast majority of the collection is, and will remain, public domain. All is freely available. Offering advertising material freely to the public at the expense of someone else is a pretty parsimonious act of charity as such things go! Offering them freely to the publisher is not charity, but outright parasitism unless the publisher shares in the profits. The fact that worthless snippets, "teasers" and the like, become or remain public domain is no extenuation. As I think I said, I have no objection to project Gutenberg
Greg, I am sure that everyone accepts your good intentions in this matter, but it is plain from the correspondence that I am not the only one to see this as an example of: possibly more profitable, but needs must. The point was not whether project Gutenberg stood to profit, but who else did? Specifically in this case it was the author who used project Gutenberg for free advertising (spamming). The fact that the topic might be complimentary to the project Gutenberg mission, seems hardly relevant, if not actually an aggravation. Who would want to be complimented by a party that dissociates one with an irritation? profiting from some such commercial relationship, as long as it is not so formatted as to annoy either contributors, volunteers, or users, but at the very least I would want the teaser warning to be explicit and visible in the listing entry, including that it is commercial and incomplete. Even better would be to list such teasers only in a separate and explicit category. In that way, as long as project Gutenberg shares in the profits (if any) there should be no problem, because uninterested parties would not be annoyingly and wastefully misled, whether understandably or not.
In the Watch volume, you will see that the author was inspired by Project Gutenberg. This, we believe, motivated his offering these extracts to us. We have tried to make it clear in the metadata that these are extracts of copyrighted works, so that readers won't be surprised by what they get.
I hope this explanation helps.
In turn I hope that my cynicism anent his motivation is clear, as well as my suggestions for the satisfaction of concerns on both sides of the discussion. In summary: volunteers should not be offended by having their work lumped in with spam. If spam of any sort, or anything that might reasonably be interpreted as spam, is to be offered by project Gutenberg, then it should be so clearly characterised as to reduce accidental downloads to trivial levels. Such spam or "teasers" should be separately presented, and possibly separately stored as well. Any such spam should be presented only on some reasonable condition calculated to recompense project Gutenberg reasonably profitably, presumably on the basis of so much per hit and so much per download. If the author does not like that idea, then I have no objection to presenting his works on the project Gutenberg site, as long as whatever is presented is complete. We need not be unreasonable; to present volume 1 of a trilogy complete, or possibly even one short story or one play out of a collection should be unobjectionable, even if it were to include a remark in the text that the full sequels or anthologies were available at such and such a site or shop. But fragments and synopses are impositions and insults, not favours. Any remarks, anyone? Go well, Jon