Agreed! I hope that these will either be completed or deleted, and that pretty smartly before too many people fall for it and waste time and resources downloading them.

The files don't even follow PG guidelines; no text version, no Gutenberg headers on the RTF. This is absolutely what PG does not need.

On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 12:47:41PM +0200, Marcello Perathoner wrote:

Andrew Sly wrote:

...

Does anyone else have an opinion on PG#33374 and #33375?

They appear to be copyrighted "trailers" containing the "First 25,000 words" of the respective novels.

That is the kind of thing that I hope PG does not get many more of.

Looks to me like another try at commercially exploiting PG, like the infamous `Project Gutenberg II´ saga.

My vote is: UNPost until the author coughs up the complete texts.

Why do these things always happen without prior discussion?

Greg?

Dunno what the stink is about. We've had trailers and teasers and extracts and such for many years, though never in huge numbers. This is not likely to be the start of a torrent. It's completely on-mission for us. There's no commercial intention, hidden or manifest. This was just a well-established writer who got in touch to make this offer. It happens sometimes, and I like it when it does. The meta-data for this are intended to be clear that it's an extract/teaser. Maybe we should edit the Title field to make it even clearer? Perhaps this is a situation where many people (rightly) have different views of what PG is, and its strenghts, and where effort should be devoted. Recall that our mission is a single line: To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks. ...and this is intended to be broad and inclusive. -- Greg

Greg Newby wrote:

Dunno what the stink is about. We've had trailers and teasers and extracts and such for many years, though never in huge numbers. This is not likely to be the start of a torrent.

Who knows? These `ebooks´ are incomplete and arbitrarily so. There is no motive to offer "the first 25,000 words" of a text for free, if not for the same reason the fisher offers the worm. Also they have no plain text version, which is a clear violation of PG policy, and do not contain the PG license.

It's completely on-mission for us. There's no commercial intention, hidden or manifest. This was just a well-established writer who got in touch to make this offer. It happens sometimes, and I like it when it does.

There is a clear commercial interest in driving people to his site. Following the link and then clicking on the book covers brings up a page that is chock full of book sellers. Kindle versions: $9.65 and $13.79 respectively. There are offers we should clearly refuse.

Perhaps this is a situation where many people (rightly) have different views of what PG is, and its strenghts, and where effort should be devoted.

The more reason to reach a consensus before creating facts. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org

These `ebooks´ are incomplete and arbitrarily so....

Or, stated another way, if a trailer is to be considered a "free ebook" then Amazon offers 500,000 "free ebooks." Taking such a position would be an insult to all the volunteers who work so hard to provide *complete* and accurate books to PG. Tracking down and fixing even one missing or damaged page in a book we are trying to get submitted to PG can often easily represent a hard day's work. Rather, let us state clearly what a trailer is: it is an *advertisement*. And people who place advertisements on PG are attempting to *advertise* for free rather than placing their advertisements on a for-pay venue where they belong. Accepting free advertisements on PG would IMHO violate its NFP status, not to mention other obvious problems, like hiding the real value provided by the real [complete] books on the PG website. At the very least PG would need to remove the byline: "We carry high quality items..."

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Greg Newby <gbnewby@pglaf.org> wrote:

Dunno what the stink is about.  We've had trailers and teasers and extracts and such for many years, though never in huge numbers.  This is not likely to be the start of a torrent.

It's completely on-mission for us.  There's no commercial intention, hidden or manifest.  This was just a well-established writer who got in touch to make this offer.  It happens sometimes, and I like it when it does.

There certainly is a commercial intention; there is no point in putting in making only the first half of a novel online except in convincing people to buy the whole thing. And it degrades the work the rest of us put in; when people start feeling that PG includes a bunch of commercial spam, it'll make them less likely to come here and read what we have. -- Kie ekzistas vivo, ekzistas espero.

Marcello Perathoner wrote:

Looks to me like another try at commercially exploiting PG, like the infamous `Project Gutenberg II´ saga.

My vote is: UNPost until the author coughs up the complete texts.

Why do these things always happen without prior discussion?

Greg?

Or just UNPost. There are venues for authors to commercially market their works. PG hasn't been (and really shouldn't be) one of them. Maybe 33374/5 are a stunt or experiment, but I have a higher expectation of sense from SF authors with Robert's experience and level of success. (The rest of the industry, not so much.) David

On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 08:09:47PM -0700, Andrew Sly wrote:

...

There are venues for authors to commercially market their works. PG hasn't been (and really shouldn't be) one of them.

Personally, this is the view I would tend to share.

Although I do understand Greg's message about PG having fairly broad goals. There have in the past been many one-off items that are a little outside of the normal things that PG offers.

However, here is another view that I just received via the catalog report address:

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 16:28:51 -0700 (PDT) To: catalog2010@pglaf.org Subject: Spam disguised as books

The publicity samples of Robert J. Sawyer's novels Wake and Watch have somehow been added to your catalog. If Project Gutenberg is now augmenting its finances in this way, there will obviously no longer be any need for me to donate. If not, please either put forth the entire books, or remove the spam.

-John Fluker

The response I sent: John: 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. 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. 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. Best regards, Greg Newby Dr. Gregory B. Newby Chief Executive and Director Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation http://gutenberg.org A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with EIN 64-6221541 gbnewby@pglaf.org

...

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

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

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: that it would be through something less irritating and 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? 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 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

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