the washington post article said:
>   Even though it’s not illegal, Project Gutenberg
>   Literary Archive Foundation chief executive Greg Newby
>   finds the practice unethical. He would like to see Amazon
>   offer Project Gutenberg texts at no cost and DRM-free.

if greg _really_ wants that, he could make it happen,
easily, by setting up project gutenberg as a publisher
who distributes its e-books through amazon, because
publishers set the price, and can turn off amazon d.r.m.

and until p.g. does that, other rogue re-publishers will
continue to take advantage of the door p.g. left open...

***

here's someone who took jim's "magic catalog" and
turned it into a for-sale e-book, albeit for just $.99...

>   http://www.amazon.com/Download-Gutenberg-CATALOG-download-ebook/dp/B004BDOWPQ

there are also versions for feedbooks and mobileread.

***

and even though i thought the tone was a bit off,
the point behind the article was a rather good one,
in the sense that kindle owners do need to be told
-- directly, and perhaps often -- they can populate
their machines with content not bought from amazon.

***

walter said:
>   It only proves that ease of access
>   and a nice representation are valued
>   over just having the content available

that's right, as far as it goes, just as long as
we recognize the caveat that many of these
rogue re-publishers do _not_ create books
that have "a nice representation".  they just
take whatever was there, with absolutely no
concern at all for the quality of the product.

***

walter said:
>   It only proves that ease of access
>   and a nice representation are
>   valued over just having the content
>   available in archaic ASCII-formats.

kudos to walter for trying to smuggle in a political point.

but ascii is _not_ "archaic".  it's the 128 lower bits of utf-8.
and utf-16.  and all the other various older encodings too.

walter was trying to make you think something like .html is
superior.  i will agree that an .html book _does_ look nice,
at least if you are viewing it with a browser or some other
piece of software that understands how to render that .html.
(otherwise, an .html-book is _painful_ to read, lacking that.)

but it's important to remember that that .html itself is _also_
comprised mainly of the lower 128 bits that walter claims are
"archaic".  so obviously he's not telling us the _whole_ truth...

it's also tremendously meaningful and relevant and important
to understand that -- if you route the p.g, ascii-format through
a viewer-program that understands how to render that format --
you will _also_ get a book that looks nice.  and one that can have
just as much power -- or even more -- than an .html book has...

indeed, the iphone app "eucalyptus" takes exactly that approach.
and its output looks just as good as an .html-book or an .epub...

so it's simply not true -- at all -- that ascii is "archaic", no sir.

it _is_ unfortunate that project gutenberg has never seen fit to
distribute a viewer-program that makes its plain-text format
look nice and be powerful.  but that's not the fault of the format.

-bowerbird