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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."
...idea of the original project :o(
If it goes to fund the free books, it's a godsent.
Project Gutenberg is one of the top 10 best things to happen to the internet.
The leader says that this raises questions about PG's commitment to providing free books? How so? They aren't in any way affiliated with them (at least according to their site).
taken from http://www.projectgutenberg.info/
"Today Project Gutenberg 2, an eBook library consortium adds an additional scope to eBook preservation and access. 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. . "
-- Using the preview button since 2005
But is this an issue? Does anyone actually read books on screen?
I read ebooks almost to the exclusion of paper books as far as entertainment books are concerned - textbooks and manuals are another story. However I do the reading on my iPaq, and there is no Adobe eBook Reader for PocketPC (Abobe eBook != PDF). So I guess I'll have to stick with the free stuff.
Oh no... it's the future.
Yeah, the name was chosen entirely at random, in fact they didn't even know of the first one, and just stuck a "2" on the end cause it's pretty.
I hope PG has lawyers and covered their bases. This has shades of 1999 and Flooz and "gaining mindshare." I hope they go bust.
In this case, some clever business has realized that Project Gutenberg has a good name and is now attempting to make money off it. Thankfully they've had the good sense to put a (rather oblique) disclaimer disassociating themselves from the original Project Gutenberg.
That said, in my opinion, it's certainly unethical and in some case, may even be illegal to attempt to generate business based on fooling the consumer. Perhaps someone should alert the RMS and the EFF of this new method of co-opting open source.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
Project Gutenberg is nonpolitical (and given that they can only use out-of-copyright works, not even particularly topical in their choice of additions).
Project Gutenberg doesn't really directly compete against any companies that I know of, and facilitates people obtaining things in the public domain. I think that Project Gutenberg would be an excellent destination for grant money. If I had some way to vote on US grants going to Project Gutenberg, I certainly would do so.
May we never see th
From the website: Over 27,000 HTML eBooks Over 60,000 PDF eBooks Sure looks to me like the effort people put into making these books free has been subverted into making more than half of these book more available to paying customers, err I mean "members", than to the generaal public. I too think it stinks.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Perhaps if Project Gutenberg started their own PDF distribution people would complain less.
Continue to provide the texts in the plain text formats but also in PDF. That way they can also provide the original layout of the text and the images in the right contexts like some of the old Celtic books (eg. Book of Kells).
If the ebooks are encrypted, isn't this a valid reason to possess an ebook encryption cracker? It's primary purpose would not be to crack the encryption on copyrighted works, but to crack the encryption on public domain works.
A couple of things:
It's unlikely that anyone would start a business like PG2 without first establishing a licensing plan with PG, unless they are situated far off-shore or have less than three braincells.
--Bud
So that answers your first question.
Looks to me like it's time for Mr. Hart to talk with a lawyer though. The name is definately 'confusingly similar' to the one he has trademarked, and being used in the same area.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The use of the name is very questionable because it misappropriates the good name of Project Guttenburg and the good will people have towards Project Guttenburg.
However, the whole point of Project Guttenburg is to make texts already in the public domain readily available. A reasonable person will know that the same works exist for free in plain text format and will only pay for the added value (to them) of having them in a different format.
Anyone who wants to is still free to make PDF or HTML files of public domain works Project Guttenburg has made into e-texts. Project Guttenburg CANNOT release their books under the GPL because the copyright has already expired on these works. (For the vast majority, if not all of their works. Are there any exceptions?). That's why Project Guttenburg can get them free in the first place.
Project Guttenburg probably does have a strong trademark case, though.
Actually PG books aren't available in HTML.
Not directly. But various places like http://www.blackmask.com/page.php republish many, if not most, PG books in other formats.
c.
Log in or piss off.
The real Project Gutenberg is unchanged. Furthermore, the whole idea of the original project seems (at least to me) to be to take Public Domain works, and make them freely available to as many people as possible so they can do what they want with them. If what you want to do is sell PDF eBooks with these works, that's fine. To quote the notice on the top of Project Gutenberg works:
So the problem here isn't what these people are doing, but the cynical and callous adoption of the "Project Gutenberg" name, which seems designed to cause confusion in the community and the market. I think it might be time for Project Gutenberg to remind the World eBook Library Consortia the nature of trademarks.
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Open mind, insert foot.
For an interesting read on the issues (and in fact numerous others affecting eBooks), check out Teleread's Blog
On the one hand, plain 7-bit ASCII text is the single most compatible format; just about any platform and app can handle it in some way or other. And it's likely to last longer than almost any other format. So as Gutenberg says, it's the most accessible format and the most future-proof.
But on the other, it's very thin. It has no structure: nothing to separate chapters, scenes, volumes, &c. It has no metadata: nothing to identify authors, translators, editions, dates, even titles, in a machine-readable manner. And it has no way to represent accented characters, directional quotes, and other characters that would greatly improve the typography.
The compelling argument for me, though, is that although you could automatically convert from a standardised rich format to plain text, it's impossible to convert the other way around without lots of manual work. If Gutenberg had chosen a rich format, even a very simple one, to start with, then all the benefits of plain text would come with that almost for free -- a simple open-sourced program would let people convert from the one to the other, and they could even provide both versions of texts on their web site.
FWIW, for my own reading I keep files in plain text but formatted in a particular manner: in Windows Latin-1, with accents and typography; with Palm-style bookmarks; and with conventions for chapter/scene/volume breaks, bold/italics, and metadata. It's a pain getting them there, but means they're ideal for reading on my palmtop, and also capable of being up-converted if the need arises.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Seriously, what we see here is nothing more than the anti-capitalist ranting of a bunch of GPL bigots, who can't stand the idea that someone might actually *profit* (gasp!) from the sale of bits. (And, of course, the PG license expressly permits this sort of use, as it should. Like the BSD, Apache, and X licenses, it is more concerned with good resources being used and propagated than in advancing an anti-commerce political agenda...)
Here's a quick excerpt from blackmask.com on the issue:
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Oh, it's pretty trivial, in the scheme of things. Writing a book is non-trivial. Acting as the publisher that brings a new book to market is non-trivial. Correctly transcribing an ancient book into electronic format is non-trivial. Researching the legal issues involved in releasing old books is non-trivial.
Tweaking pagination and saving a file to pdf is, well, pretty trivial. Ditto on putting the files up on a web page and creating a web storefront to sell the files.
And I wouldn't have any problem with them profiting from their trivial improvements to Project Gutenberg's work, but they shouldn't try to confuse the public into believing they are a replacement to Project Gutenberg. Of course, that's likely to be the only way they could sell such trivial improvements.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga