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Project Gutenberg 2 Raises Some Hackles

Posted by timothy on from the eggs-for-omelets dept.

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."

3 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Well, this is largely the point, but... by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:still free by nuffle · · Score: 5, Insightful
    As far as I can tell the books are still available in HTML. It's just that if you want them in PDF, then they charge you a fee. I have no beef with that.


    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.
  3. Re:It all boils down to the lisence by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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