Re: [gutvol-d] Re: unauthorized PG venders
Try understanding how things work before accusing people of "stealing" and being "greedy." PG texts are completely free. No rights reserved, no nothing. 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. 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. 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
Josh, Thank you for the excellent points you made below. I would have to say that it's mighty greedy for people to rip the books from PG, burn them to CD and DVD, and then go selling them on Ebay, thier website, etc It's just plain rude for people to walk all over the hard work Project Gutenberg does and then complain when it asks for a small token in return. Brandon Joshua Hutchinson wrote:
Try understanding how things work before accusing people of "stealing" and being "greedy."
PG texts are completely free. No rights reserved, no nothing.
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.
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.
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
Thank you for the excellent points you made below. I would have to say that it's mighty greedy for people to rip the books from PG, burn them to CD and DVD, and then go selling them on Ebay, thier website, etc It's just plain rude for people to walk all over the hard work Project Gutenberg does and then complain when it asks for a small token in return.
Along these lines, would be be sufficient to take a CD/DVD of PG, roll through each of the works in an automated fashion, convert them to a format that PG does not currently support, and sell THAT for a fee? (Where the fee covers the time to convert to the other format(s) as well as for distribution of the media itself, etc.) I've been asked several times by my user community to provide something very similar, but I would also like to make it VERY OBVIOUS that the works are from the PG project. As a long-time Free Software author and community contributor, I'm very well-aware of licensing, copyright, trademarks and their common misuse. d.
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 10:41:59AM -0400, David A. Desrosiers wrote:
Thank you for the excellent points you made below. I would have to say that it's mighty greedy for people to rip the books from PG, burn them to CD and DVD, and then go selling them on Ebay, thier website, etc It's just plain rude for people to walk all over the hard work Project Gutenberg does and then complain when it asks for a small token in return.
Along these lines, would be be sufficient to take a CD/DVD of PG, roll through each of the works in an automated fashion, convert them to a format that PG does not currently support, and sell THAT for a fee? (Where the fee covers the time to convert to the other format(s) as well as for distribution of the media itself, etc.)
Formatting (or reformatting) is not the issue, it's use of the trademarked name. If someone creates, say, a PDF format eBook, the question is whether the PG trademark is used or not. The reformatting doesn't matter (except that it might change from the 15% to the 20% royalty level in the small print). BTW, the small print essentially says that anything not covered (such as CD or DVD collections) need to be negotiated separately. -- Greg
I've been asked several times by my user community to provide something very similar, but I would also like to make it VERY OBVIOUS that the works are from the PG project.
As a long-time Free Software author and community contributor, I'm very well-aware of licensing, copyright, trademarks and their common misuse.
d.
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Formatting (or reformatting) is not the issue, it's use of the trademarked name.
Agreed, but reformatting would likely include the trademark.
If someone creates, say, a PDF format eBook, the question is whether the PG trademark is used or not. The reformatting doesn't matter (except that it might change from the 15% to the 20% royalty level in the small print).
Ok, so our only real recourse, gives us the right to convert the works to another format (we're talking about handheld redistribution here) but not provide any links to PG, or use PG in any of the names or attribution? Wouldn't that be a copyright _and_ trademark violation, because we'd be forced to "remove" all references to PG from the actual works themselves. Obviously, I don't want to do this, because I respect and support the project. Doesn't that make it impossible, since our entire intention would be to include PG in each of the texts, to draw more readers of the works and generate some interest in the project. Ideally, and I can expand on this if anyone is specifically interested in the goals and design, we would be splitting the books up to include pages, chapters, TOC, attribution, and hopefully a PG logo emblazened across each work. I've got a schema and some code designed to suck the entire PG tree into the db, which we can then tokenize and output in any format we want. It isn't polished or "pretty" yet, we're still in the preliminary stages, but if we can't redistribute the converted works, giving credit to PG, the project is dead, full-stop. Let me know, because this puts a big kink in the works. d.
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 02:47:32PM -0400, David A. Desrosiers wrote:
Formatting (or reformatting) is not the issue, it's use of the trademarked name.
Agreed, but reformatting would likely include the trademark.
If someone creates, say, a PDF format eBook, the question is whether the PG trademark is used or not. The reformatting doesn't matter (except that it might change from the 15% to the 20% royalty level in the small print).
Ok, so our only real recourse, gives us the right to convert the works to another format (we're talking about handheld redistribution here) but not provide any links to PG, or use PG in any of the names or attribution? Wouldn't that be a copyright _and_ trademark violation, because we'd be forced to "remove" all references to PG from the actual works themselves. Obviously, I don't want to do this, because I respect and support the project.
?? who said you couldn't convert to another format ?? It's explicitly permitted. See http://gutenberg.net/license (the small print howto) -- Greg
Doesn't that make it impossible, since our entire intention would be to include PG in each of the texts, to draw more readers of the works and generate some interest in the project.
Ideally, and I can expand on this if anyone is specifically interested in the goals and design, we would be splitting the books up to include pages, chapters, TOC, attribution, and hopefully a PG logo emblazened across each work.
I've got a schema and some code designed to suck the entire PG tree into the db, which we can then tokenize and output in any format we want.
It isn't polished or "pretty" yet, we're still in the preliminary stages, but if we can't redistribute the converted works, giving credit to PG, the project is dead, full-stop.
Let me know, because this puts a big kink in the works.
d.
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participants (4)
-
Brandon Galbraith -
David A. Desrosiers -
Greg Newby -
Joshua Hutchinson