I want to preface this comment by saying that we have committed the electronic version of Alice for free and unrestricted distribution (in the US), although we have not abandoned our copyrights. You're right that FONTS cannot be copyrighted. However, the editorial and artistic expression involved in creating the look and feel of a book, or a particular page, is protectable artistic output.
The Hyperlaw case is a follow-on to Mead Data Central v. West, a case ultimately decided by the Justice Department in the context of a merger between West and Thomson Publishing Co. The Hyperlaw opinion follows the Justice Department's directions on use of West content exactly.
I'm not Adobe's lawyer, so I won't comment on what they do, but VolumeOne's policy has always been to protect our editorial content while encouraging the most free and open distribution possible for all works (including ours). Those who believe that the copyright act trumps EULAs should look at ProCD v. Zeidenberg, a Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case, for guidance.
Jim Judge
Vice President and General Counsel
VolumeOne Publishing.
Another user made a good guess. The VolumeOne/Glassbook Alice text is absolutely AWFUL for a voice-synthesizer to decode. Vision-impaired and manually-challenged people would do lots better to download the original Gutenberg TXT file, than try to play with our highly formatted stuff.
Jim Judge
VolumeOne
Folks, we're getting a great distance afield here. As someone mentioned, the "Can't read aloud" permission applies to mechanical voice-synthesized readers. You can (and should!) read "Alice" and any other excellent literature to your kids.
Our founder is very close to the Project Gutenberg people, and we're grateful that they gave us the original text file. What VolumeOne did with the text, however, was to re-typeset it with original editorial and typographic expression, converting the raw text into a new work, even though the output looks distinctly similar to the original printed edition. Our typographers spent WEEKS getting this right, with a very fragile copy of an 1860's reissue (from Chicago's Newberry Library) as a guide.
This is very different than just making the raw text available, as you could imagine. It attempts to recreate the look and feel of the original, but translates it into a new medium.
We are very happy that the VolumeOne electronic and book-on-demand editions of "Alice" are so popular. PLEASE read them to your kids. Just don't use them for a commercial purpose without permission.
Slashdot Mirror
The Hyperlaw case is a follow-on to Mead Data Central v. West, a case ultimately decided by the Justice Department in the context of a merger between West and Thomson Publishing Co. The Hyperlaw opinion follows the Justice Department's directions on use of West content exactly.
I'm not Adobe's lawyer, so I won't comment on what they do, but VolumeOne's policy has always been to protect our editorial content while encouraging the most free and open distribution possible for all works (including ours). Those who believe that the copyright act trumps EULAs should look at ProCD v. Zeidenberg, a Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case, for guidance.
Jim Judge
Vice President and General Counsel
VolumeOne Publishing.
Another user made a good guess. The VolumeOne/Glassbook Alice text is absolutely AWFUL for a voice-synthesizer to decode. Vision-impaired and manually-challenged people would do lots better to download the original Gutenberg TXT file, than try to play with our highly formatted stuff. Jim Judge VolumeOne
Folks, we're getting a great distance afield here. As someone mentioned, the "Can't read aloud" permission applies to mechanical voice-synthesized readers. You can (and should!) read "Alice" and any other excellent literature to your kids. Our founder is very close to the Project Gutenberg people, and we're grateful that they gave us the original text file. What VolumeOne did with the text, however, was to re-typeset it with original editorial and typographic expression, converting the raw text into a new work, even though the output looks distinctly similar to the original printed edition. Our typographers spent WEEKS getting this right, with a very fragile copy of an 1860's reissue (from Chicago's Newberry Library) as a guide. This is very different than just making the raw text available, as you could imagine. It attempts to recreate the look and feel of the original, but translates it into a new medium. We are very happy that the VolumeOne electronic and book-on-demand editions of "Alice" are so popular. PLEASE read them to your kids. Just don't use them for a commercial purpose without permission.