Slashdot Mirror
Project Gutenberg 2 Raises Some Hackles
An anonymous reader writes "LISNews.com reports on a new web venture called Project Gutenberg 2, offering access to electronic books in Adobe eBook format on a paid membership basis. Some Gutenberg volunteers are concerned about the use of the PG name in such a context. The news raises questions about PG's ongoing commitment to the ideals of free distribution and nonproprietary formats. Last year PG celebrated the release of its 10,000th title, accomplished with the help of many volunteer proofreaders, many of whom aren't happy about charging people to view these titles in Adobe eBook format."
It strikes me that Project Gutenberg, as a valuable educational tool, should be a prime project to receive lottery grants (not just from the UK) to ensure that it remains entirely free to use and publishes documents in formats suitable for all to use - both proprietary and open formats.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...I mean, would you actually have the nerve to steal an organisation or free project's name? I'd love to be reading Slashdot the day somebody comes out with Linux 2 or something.
Should the reverse be valid? Perhaps in the first instance PG could politely request that they alter thier name.
What I do not understand is, if they did sue, how would PG fix "damages"?
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Does Project Gutenberg 2 have any affiliation with Project Gutenberg? It appears not. This would appear to be trademark infringement.
Apart from that, there's nothing wrong with it. People are making money off of public domain works. Good for them. That's one of the benefits of the public domain. People can do this. I'm not quite sure why people should want to buy something that they can get for free, but that's beside the point. If they want it, PG2 is providing the service.
"Project Gutenberg 2 is not affiliated with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and has received no funding, materials, or any other support from the Foundation." So despite the stigma of paying for IP, this project will do little harm to PG, which will still release other public domain works for free.
By including PG2, they are becoming a first-rate library that will be able to release material that the free service wasn't able to. I'm sure schools and universities will watch for what PDFs will be made available. I'll be watching to see what audiobooks they put out.
This is certainly no worse than IMDB going commercial. Just because they will charge money for some products doesn't mean they are EVIL. Few people raise hell because Mandrake charges for a boxed set of their distro. The free stuff will still be there, but some value-added services deserve remuneration.
A company wants to sell ebooks with copyright expired titles? I don't see the problem? They want to call it Project Gutenberg 2/too? That must be such a clear cut tradmark court case? If they'd copycatted a big multibucks company rather than a small non-profit setup this news wouldn't even have reached us before they'd be cluttered with corporate lawyers. Try set up a MS 2 webpage...
Actually PG books aren't available in HTML. Not even in the sense that they're relatively unformatted text embedded in an HTML page. Rather, the books (or plays, manuals, etc) are generally stored as zipped vanilla-text files.
It's an often complained about problem, since there's no markup to identify authors, titles, chapter headings, etc. The PG administrators use plain text because they don't want to require readers to use fancy software to read (be it proprietary or not). The consequence, though, is that it's difficult to use fancy software if you want, since it's difficult for a computer program to parse the books.
So, the service offered by this company is non-trivial and is fulfilling an expressed desire. The fact that people are willing (well, we'll see) to pay money for this service indicates that the PG administrators have underestimated (or just ignored) the need for machine-parseable text. I personally wish someone would xml-ify these books, so that there would be a number of high-quality open source PG readers out there.
I got the impression from the Project Gutenberg 2 web site that they were in no way connected to Project Gutenberg. So, PG is not "including PG2" unless PG2's claim is bogus. I'm left with the impression that PG2 is leeching the hard work done by PG in generating the raw text for the books, then squatting on a domain name which is clearly designed to imply a (business or reputation) relationship with PG. How is this not illegal, seeming to be a straight case of "passing off"?
Also notable is the fact that these people didn't even try registering www.projectgutenberg2.info -- they got www.projectgutenberg.info.
This is about as blatant an abuse of the name as I can think of.
May we never see th
I think the idea they have is a good one. I've downloaded quite a few texts off of Project Gutenburg, and for those of you who haven't, all of their files are simple plaintext files. I've wished for a long while that project gutenburg would release files in HTML or some other format. If the Project Gutenburg won't, then I see nothing wrong with what Project Gutenburg 2 is doing.
If they would have come up with some better name, then I would have probably considered buying from them, but this is just asinine. It seems to me like they are intentionally trying to use a name very similar to Project Gutenburg so that people who may have heard of Project Gutenburg will be confused and pay them for their services.
Of course I guess this is what Trademark laws are all about, so hopefully this group will have some lawyers on their arses pretty soon.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Project Gutenberg texts are all in the public domain and the files are created by volunteers. There is no way to protect anyone's labor or philosophy. The material is free as in free.
The only "license scheme" is a protection of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you wish to distribute the files and claim them as Project Gutenberg files you must distribute them unmodified, including the license text.
Since the files are all in the public domain anyone can download them and sell them, either as a computer file, a pdf, or a printed book. Or start a "competing" website with them.
Many already do this, and if people who have donated their time to the project don't understand that public domain allows this, well, I really don't know what to say.
They are in the Public Domain, not GPLed, or BSDed or whatever.
Project Gutenberg continues unabated. Simply go there for all your ASCII format, literary goodness.
KFG
The Acrobat Reader ad/link graphic at the bottom of the main page says,
So this very likely is not a legitimate graphic from Adobe, Inc. but rather something that this PG-2 site may have made up themselves.
What gave you the idea that it was going to fund free books or the original project gutenberg? This looks like an attempt to make money from someone else's work to me......
This is just one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. If they want to sell access to PDF copies of Project Gutenberg texts, that's fine by me. However, they're quite clearly trying to use Project Gutenberg's good name to sell their material. True, they say that they are unafilliated on the page, but think about it. Their site is www.projectgutenberg.info. Not www.projectgutenberg2.info. The name, Project Gutenberg 2, means a sequel to Project Gutenberg. Most people would see "Project Gutenberg 2" and assume it's an extension of the original Project Gutenberg. They can claim they're not trying to exploit name confusion all they want, but they picked their name with full knowledge that it would be confused with another project with similar goals that already existed.
Karma: Contrapositive
Try delivering a software project named 'Photoshop bis' or 'Windows XP 2', claim you are not affiliated to Adobe or MS.
This is a trademark issue and claiming is not the same as being right.
The company deliberately chose a name designed to manipulate people. They are the sort where, if they gain any money or power, would think about trying to shut down the original Project or some other such SCO-style nonsense. (And who knows where copyright law will be five years from now; the DMCA is an insanity I certainly thought was too far out-there to come true, but here it is.)
PG2's character and motivation are clear from the outset and they cannot be expected to change or improve. They deserve to be destroyed.
-FL
Aside from the fact that this goes against the principles that PG was founded on, this venture will no doubt discourage more proofreaders and typers from volunteering.
They should at the very least change the name of their venture/website.
Yes, just like most of the bigger Linux distro makers out there. Commercial Linux distros are bad things, right?
From my point if view, most things that help promotes free projects and also add some value is an added value. If the ppl complaining doesn't like what's happening, they should have thought of ways of protecting themselves beforehand.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
The glitz of their webpage, the lack of proof-reading (ye gads!), the pushing of a minor feature as if it was sliced-bread, the data mining of Project Gutenberg's hard work suggests that this is a Get Rich Quick cheesy operation.
Since they were stupid enough to step on Project Gutenberg's good name, hopefully the Flush of Justice will remove this turd quickly.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I think give all the current solutions plain tex files would be the best.
It is rather easy to add the LaTEX markup to given books and from there all the necessary plugins and filters are given to generate every fileformat there is under the earth.
The step from plain text to LaTEX would be a rather small one.
Paying for ebooks i have no problem with but why use the PG name that so [many] have come to associate with the free PG.
You answered your own question right there. They are using the Project Gutenburg name as it's already fairly well-known for being a good source of books.
Agreed. Their use of the project's name doesn't seem very nice, but some people seem to be complaining because they are converting PG's texts into proprietary Adobe eBook format and charge for the effort. I really fail to see how that is a problem, as long as the original, vanilla text files are still out there.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
it's oft complained about by the lazy or uninformed. I personally LOVE the plain ascii text versions. I am able to convert them EASILY to my eBook's format and extend the life of that device that they decided to discontinue and all the books for it.
Also I was able to convert one to a Sony Bookman CD to be read on a friends Bookman... a reall old failed attempt at a ebook reader that the screen utterly sucked, was huge but was cool in the fact it had a 3" CDROM drive in it.
the plain ASCII format is the absolutely MOST valuable format for the PG books, conversion to other formats do not take much time at all if you have the tools.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think a lot of people are getting the issues confused. What seems to be happening is not an evil corporation hijacking the name of an innocent open source project, it is the head of said project being personally involved in a corporation called PG2 run by a good mate offering the paid options. I have to snigger at all the declarations of evil corporations and telling Michael Hart about this and calling up the lawyer attack dogs, because the article plainly states that he is behind all this. All these statements show is that people really don't read articles on slashdot and have knee-jerk reactions.
What this is, is if Linus (who I think personally owns the Linux trademark) starting up a company with some good mates, which takes the current Linux source, close-sources it and sells it for a profit with the name Linux 2 and takes the domain name, www.linux.com as his company's front. Not only that said company heavily promotes propietry closed-source formats and programs.
Basically, has Michael Hart sold out?
1. There is no trademark issue, because Michael Hart, the founder of PG, who *personally* owns the trademark "Project Gutenberg" is personally involved with the commercial entity called "Project Gutenburg 2" which is run by a good friend of his. The people running PG2 seem to have *permission* from Michael to use the trademark. They are NOT co-opting the name illegally. They have the full permission of the right holder. Calling lawyers to sue in this case is stupid. The issue seems to boil down to a lot of PG people disagreeing with Michael this is an appropriate use of the name, not that they can do anything about it legally. The issue the article raises is whether a single person should have the right to the name and hopes that this incident will lead to a more formal control structure for the project (eg. a committee) which is independent of any single person's control.
(2) There seems to be some problem with the license. Not sure about this. I think the license on the PG2 website asserts copyright over the contents of the public domain books as well.
(3) There is the question over whether Michael is personally profiting from PG2. Whether or not you think he should is another issue, but it is one of the issues the original author of the article is pressing Michael to explain.
(4) In relation to (1). The issue is not whether or not you should be able to repackage and profit from PG's work as this is allowed. The issue is the name PG2 seems to indicate that this is the successor to PG. And also the association with the PG name with closed, propietry formats.
Anyway my idea was to simply enhance the existing system (plain text), not replace it. Obviously this would require the creation of a WYSIWYG editor, but the formatting involved would be fairly basic and could be extended as needed. A library this extensive would warrant a format custom designed for it, as opposed to trying to drive a square peg into a round hole using existing formats (pdf, html, etc, which would introduce a whole new set of compromises).
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
So given that Project Gutenburg(tm) is actually affiliated with Project Gutenburg 2(tm), and that there's nothing on the Project Gutenburg(tm) news page about this... I'd guess the list reponse went something like this:
Michael Hart: PWNED!
Project Gutenburg(tm) volunteers: DOH!
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Project Gutenberg's goal is to create books in electronic format. Marking up in XML takes time and effort; not a lot, perhaps, but it adds up over 10,000 texts. That time and effort has been used to make more texts available.
If someone else wants to mark the text up, no one will object. Unless you're willing to do so, though, there's no point in complaining that something done for you for free isn't done the way you like.
TANSTAAFL.
Given that the texts in Project Gutenburg are all out of copyright, does PG have any (moral or legal) right to impose restrictive licences on the library, and if so, would it be possible to enforce such a licence?
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
And so one would think these titles, since they are part of "PG2," are also of expired copyright?
So what's then to stop someone from payng the 8.95, downloading those 48k typeset and proofed texts, and then contributing them to the real PG?
I think these people who intend to make money from the good name of Project Gutenburg should be drawn and quartered. Thats inexcusable.
I hate to see the real project folks have to waste money on attornies to kick these jerks where it hurts, but I don't see a real, usable, alternative to doing just that.
Maybe its time we found a place to submit donations if the real PG site doesn't have such a facility available. I don't have very deep pockets as I'm on SS as I approach my 70th birthday, but surely there are folks out there with deeper pockets than mine, and equally committed to shooting back instead of being mugged by the likes of these low lifes.
We need the literary equivalent of a CWP, and a posse comitatus. To paraphrase Willy Nelson & friends, "whiskey for my men, and beer for our horses" when the job is done seems like a hell of a good idea.
Cheers, Gene
I spent a day, 11 years ago, discussing with Michael Hart his plans, at a conference I organized and also driving him from Chicago to Urbana-Champaign where he lived at the time. At the time, I was running a similar project aiming at creating freely distributable e-books.
You must remember that PG started before the Free Software movement and Open Source movements changed our ideas of commercial distribution.
Today, we take for granted that work that is under GPL or other open licensing will be distributed freely--not necessarily free as in beer, but free as in freedom.
Many people in the late 80s and early 90s were willing to contribute for free, but a number of variants were common. One of the most common was:
Free beer yes, free as in freedom no. There were any number of dual license schemes with various restrictions for commercial use. Free ASCII beer, but not Public Domain, not free as in freedom.
RMS and Linus created a revolution by *convincing* large numbers of persons that allowing others to "commercially exploit" their work was in fact a net gain for the community, because it increased the mobility (sharing) of software. What seems dogmatic doctrine today was Enlightenment for many in 1992-1993.
Michael Hart came out of the *DOS* tradition, not the *UNIX* tradition. Freeware binaries with enhanced versions for commercial use.
Read the PG headers. They are NOT public domain, but the text is licensed for non-commercial use. More specifically, this was not refined in the early versions of the header, which allow the header to be removed so the work would truely be public domain (if proven in court).
Michael Hart's concern was that putting work in the PD, even might leave HIM *liable* to copyright infringement charges, even if he made a innocent mistake. PG has a copyright vetting process and a license for this reason. Recent and future events may well prove him wise in that regard.
In any event, he is well aware that commercial use brings possible liability to a different level.
I would suggest, in looking at any of the views of Richard Stallman, Michael Hart, Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, or any other leader of the "free/open" movements, as well as innovators like Bill Gates (inventor of the "binary application") that you consider the totality of legal, social, and economic issues they work with.
Perhaps there is no single "right way". The PG way is maximum utility but not necessarily freedom for the non-paying masses, legal protection for the distributors, and a definite non-commodity commercial prospect.
Both the GPL and the PG license make a balance of rights, profits, and efficient distribution. The key is to learn that one must continually revisit the social and philosophical model underpinning any distribution method--Stallman very rightly guides us to the philosophical and social issues here.
Err... I mean, why would having PG books in Adobe eBook format be a good thing? Adobe eBook files are a hassle, and with no reader for any PDAs, be it a Palm OS, WinCE or Linux device, I can't see any advantage. I prefer txt, html or rtf for my ebooks, formats I can read on any PDA and any computer. And if it has to be something proprietary, at least PDB files for MobiPocket or Palm Reader allow me to read the files on PocketPC, WinCE or Palm OS. For WinCE or Linux though, I have been buying my books in .LIT, which can be converted to HTML. Yes, I actually *buy* the book, but I need some way to read it.
But Adobe eBook... bleh. The only place to read that is on a desktop/laptop OS. And who the hell reads books that way? Not I!
And for those who are out of the know- yes, every modernish PDA platform out now can read PDFs. But Adobe eBook files are *not* just simple PDF files, but something different. But even if the ebooks came in regular Adobe PDF format, it'd still suck- compare using something like Adobe Reader or Picsel Viewer for Palm OS or PocketPC or even worse, qpdf2 for the Zaurus with a nice app *designed* for reading ebooks- Palm Reader, JustReader+ or uBook.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I was unaware at the time of writing that they were using the Trademark with permission . Generally, if you are using someone else's trademark with permission, among other things you identify whose trademark it is as part of the message, something like "Project Gutenberg is a trademark of Michael Hart".
Since I saw no such notice on the Project Gutenberg 2 Website, I assumed they were in violation of the trademark.
Assuming they are legitimately using the trademark, this is a really disappointing usage. They give no credit to the work of the volunteers of Project Gutenberg, and they make their site sound like they are the new, improved replacement for the project. This is confusing to many people, and seriously dilutes the trademark, two things that licensing is supposed to minimize. *sigh*
----
Open mind, insert foot.