Project Gutenberg 2 Raises Some Hackles 303
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."
This seems to go against the whole... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a fake (Score:5, Informative)
www.worldebooklibrary.info/Adobe
which is a *fake* Adobe website.
World eBook Library owns both sites.
Plus the information given below on their ISP in Maui...
I guess you shouldn't begin to give your money to them...
Anyone knows how to alert Adobe's legal department? I guess it would help solve GP problem...
Re:This is a fake (Score:5, Informative)
which is a *fake* Adobe website.
World eBook Library owns both sites.
whois:
www.worldebooklibrary.com = [ 207.175.209.173 ]
Organization:
World eBook Library
John Guagliardo
PO Box 22687
Honolulu HI 96823
US
[...]
And their ISP: Maui Global Communications Corp., Hawaii [maui.net]
Even better: the advertised eBook Reader is a discontinued Adobe product, the functionality is integrated in Adobe Reader now:
http://www.adobe.com/products/ebookreader/main.ht
Not entirely (Score:5, Interesting)
The real Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.net] 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.
Re:Not entirely (Score:5, Interesting)
It would make the point, and is substantially cheaper than suing. And if they sued, PG could simply point out that they did it first and make some use of the words "sauce", "goose" and "gander."
Re:Not entirely (Score:5, Informative)
The parent post is overrated, IMHO, since there's no background knowledge on the author's part.
Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, has given full permission to these guys to use the name. Here's part of a post to the ebook-community mailing list (a yahoo group):
PGII only charges for certain files they modified or created, and is paying PG the same royalty as we require from anyone.
and
Anyone who calls for such drastic action immediately just doesn't want to see how things will work, they want to force the worst assumption on us all. Project Gutenberg has always been open to experimentation. And we also have always had the fine print that has allowed for the production of "Project Gutenberg CDs" DVDs, etc., all by anyone who wanted to give it a try.
In my humble opinion, this dilutes the Project Gutenberg name and idea, but it's Hart's to do with as he sees fit.
Re:Not entirely (Score:3, Interesting)
What a shame, too. There ought to be a low-cost mechanism by which collaborators could be invested with some measure of formal ownership in projects like Gutenberg and CDDB so that their putative owners can't take advantage of the work of scores of volunteers and sell out in the end. Gutenberg shouldn't be owned by Hart, but rather by everyone who has contributed over the years.
Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Since I saw no such notice on the Project Gutenberg 2 Website [projectgutenberg.info], 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*
Bah. (Score:4, Interesting)
Project Gutenberg is one of the top 10 best things to happen to the internet.
Re:Bah. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bah. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
These guys are using someone elses name and charging for their work.
Re:Bah. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bah. (Score:4, Informative)
From what I understand, a specific license would fit the bill to swathe Project Gutenberg library, such as Attribution-NoDerivative 1.0 [creativecommons.org]. They have few options under which authors can license their content properly. As evident in the article, placing confidence in individuals who say they would do the right thing just isn't enough in these modern IP-dominated era.
Fortunately, all is not lost. There has got to be more to the story than just rumor based upon a spinoff website where they try to capitalize on original PG fame, however small it might be at this point.
Re:Bah. (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Bah. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wasn't the whole point of PG to be that this stuff is free to use? Well, PG2 (despite the shady naming) is free to use them too. You can't say "anyone can use this, except my competitor." I realize they aren't exactly competitors, but it's the same idea.
Re:Bah. (Score:3, Informative)
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......
The fact that one of the few restrictions on the Project Gutenberg files is that any use of the files or trademark for commercial sales requires a royalty payment of 20% of gross profits to the project. The exact legalese can be found at http://gutenberg.net/howto/header-howto.txt [gutenberg.net].
Re:Bah. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark."
Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
"Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon University"
TM Registration (Score:4, Informative)
This won't be any problem at all since the Project Gutenberg folks remembered to register their trademark [uspto.gov].
Re:TM Registration (Score:5, Informative)
The "Project Gutenburg folks" didn't register the trademark.
You and three mods didn't read the linked article, which is actually a blurb that quotes the real article, to wit (emphasis mine):
Re:TM Registration (Score:5, Insightful)
So given that Project Gutenburg(tm) is actually affiliated [projectgutenberg.info] with Project Gutenburg 2(tm), and that there's nothing on the Project Gutenburg(tm) news [gutenberg.net] page about this... I'd guess the list reponse went something like this:
Michael Hart: PWNED!
Project Gutenburg(tm) volunteers: DOH!
still free (Score:5, Informative)
Re:still free (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:still free (Score:5, Informative)
Re:still free (Score:5, Informative)
For example, take a look at the dates attached to the marked-up texts in this list. [hwg.org] A shame--folks were mighty excited.
The Project Gutenberg XML mentioned earlier here [slashdot.org] was also exciting, but I've been off the mailing list a few years, and am having trouble finding its archives now. Anybody have more luck than me? As I recall, one of the unanswered threads that ran through it was what to do in the TEI headers [tei-c.org], since TEI [tei-c.org] was an attractive choice for a mark-up vocabulary. It is not that obvious how to accommodate the Gutenberg boilerplate and metadata appropriately in the header.
Re:still free (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, that was a shame, I had hoped the HWG project would take off too. But then again, it always seemed to me there were very few civic-minded amongst the HWG when I was a member; probably due to the fact that you really didn't have to do anything to "join" and a lot of people saw it as a quick way to load up their resume when web jobs were hot.
But, there is still vindication. Pluckerbooks [pluckerbooks.com], in addition to making ready-made pdb files for Plucker [plkr.org], also provides you with the full HTML for their books, whi
Re:still free (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Rich vs plain (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:still free (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:still free (Score:3, Informative)
Re:still free (Score:3, Informative)
I wrote it specifically for the txt files on Gutenberg. They hard-wrap the lines at 76 characters, this prog unwraps them and puts the book back into paragraphs.
This plug brought to you by a shameless karma whore.
Re:still free (Score:3, Interesting)
Not directly. But various places like http://www.blackmask.com/page.php republish many, if not most, PG books in other formats.
c.
Re:still free (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Don't smell right (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:still free (Score:5, Informative)
I've also let it be known that Dr. Hart is welcome to use my HTML as he sees fit, not pushing the issue because there are other volunteer initiatives working on this.
Re:still free (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
name use questionable, but fee is for added value (Score:3, Interesting)
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 pu
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:still free (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lottery Grants (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
It all boils down to the lisence (Score:2)
Then again, if the information is available in plain text, I feel it would be OK to charge people for typeset versions of these works. I'm not sure if this is the actual case though, anyone more informed around?
Re:It all boils down to the lisence (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:It all boils down to the lisence (Score:3, Informative)
Under the newly proposed database laws in the US (which already exist in the EU) the database would be protected as a "sweat of the brow" compilation (rather than needing a "modicum of creativity").
This would mean that although the texts are in the public domain, people would be prevented from "substantial extraction" of them from the project gutenberg website.
Whether this would be a good or bad thing makes for a good debate
Freely Distributable != Public Domain (Score:4, Informative)
Read the headers please.
You get a license to distribute the works under very specific terms.
Public Domain is impossible to implement in practice without some legal mechanism, since the Berne convention makes "copyrighted" the default.
You can get "effectively in the Public Domain" if you give a relaxed license for your necessarily copyrighted work. *All* computer files whatsover are copyrighted implicitly (we think) by their creators, if not by upstream "IP rights".
PG -- freely redistributable for non-commercial use -- doesn't even come close.
Their purpose is free-as-in-beer literature for the masses, not free-as-in-freedom for computer files. Hence, a commercial PG2 has no conflict with PG as to purpose.
Some Companies... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Some Companies... (Score:2)
Re:Some Companies... (Score:5, Funny)
GET WITH THE TIMES MAN!!
And in related news... (Score:5, Funny)
*btw We are not associated with the original Humane Society.
Issues (Score:5, Informative)
Paying for ebooks i have no problem with but why use the PG name that so may have come to associate with the free PG.
Even if they do put this on the front page...
" 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. "
Re:Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope PG has lawyers and covered their bases. This has shades of 1999 and Flooz and "gaining mindshare." I hope they go bust.
Re:Issues (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Sue them? (Score:2, Insightful)
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"?
Well, this is largely the point, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Well, this is largely the point, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
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).
Project Gutenberg 2 = Michael Hart (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well, this is largely the point, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 simila
Re:Well, this is largely the point, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Domain Name: PROJECTGUTENBERG.INFO
Created On: 09-Nov-2001 05:08:24 UTC
Last Updated On: 05-Jan-2004 07:01:05 UTC
Expiration Date: 09-Nov-2008 05:08:24 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar: Network Solutions, Inc. Registrar (R122-LRMS)
Status: ACTIVE
Status: OK
Registrant ID: C1449260-LRMS
Registrant Name: Greg Newby
Registrant Street1: CB 3360 Manning Hall
Registrant City: Chapel Hill
Registrant State/Province: NC
Registrant Postal Code: 27599-3360
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Email: gbnewby@ils.unc.edu
This is the SAME Greg Newby who is the CEO of the original Project Gutenberg. Make of that what you will.
Not affiliated with Project Gutenberg (Score:5, Interesting)
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. . "
Re:Not affiliated with Project Gutenberg (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a trademark issue and claiming is not the same as being right.
This is a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Is this really a good thing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Trademark infringement (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trademark infringement (Score:2)
Hey if Windows(TM) can be trademarked, then Lindows, sure a hell outta be trademarkable, it isn't even a generic term!
Now, Microsoft has an interesting case in other countries, because they don't speak English, so Windows doesn't h
Expect more of this in the future (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
More BS from the PG 2 people (Score:3, Insightful)
This is about as blatant an abuse of the name as I can think of.
Re:More BS from the PG 2 people (Score:3, Insightful)
Essentially what they are saying is "you don't want the old project guttenberg, you want the new better one that you have to pay for".
It's pretty clear to me that their aim is to confuse computer users to start up the adobe ebook program rather than loading it into a plain text reader/editor.
I especially like the "public access section" as if that is the "official"
Good idea turned asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Their ISP (Score:4, Informative)
$ host projectgutenberg.info
projectgutenberg.info has address 207.175.209.175
$ whois 207.175.209.175
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
Genuity GNTY-207-175 (NET-207-175-0-0-1)
207.175.0.0 - 207.175.255.255
Maui Global Communications GTE-CUST-MGC (NET-207-175-209-0-1)
207.175.209.0 - 207.175.213.255
Hell of a weird-ass place to base a server (on an ADSL line on Maui), when the Project Gutenberg 2 guy is registered as being in either North Carolina (billing whois) or Alaska (admin whois). I'll bet they're regretting it in retrospect, given the slashdotting the thing is getting now.
Something doesn't look right... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Something doesn't look right... (Score:5, Informative)
More info here (Score:5, Informative)
Especially of interests are the following 2 points:
- PG trademark owner and PG2 owner are supposedly friends.
- PG2 tries to claim copyright over the files as well, even though the text themselves are supposed to be in the public domain.
Hypocrites (Score:3, Insightful)
DMCA (Score:5, Interesting)
Profiteering Skum. . , (Score:3, Insightful)
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
PG2 on shaky ground (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Dr. Greg Newby is the CEO of Project Gutenberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't PG allow this though? (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternatives to PDF (Score:5, Informative)
But that is not the point, as I am quite sure this idea will be expressed with different accents in thousands of posts. The points are: 1) yes, it is good that PG is trying to get away from pure text. That is the way to go.
2) There already exists a mature project called FictionBook. Basically, it is a derivative of the DocBook format, XML-based, but optimized for books instead of documentation (yes, there IS a difference!) Thousands of books (unfortunately most of them in Russian) are already published and readily available on the net. The standart itself has survived so far for at least 2-3 years, so it is proven by time to work. And there are lots of tools to create, modify and archive books, and readers for almost every platform.
So why reinvent the weel????
I suggest they rename it to (Score:4, Funny)
Numbers don't add up. (Score:5, Informative)
Project Gutenburg 2 claims to have 27,000 books available for free in HTML format, and 60,000 books they charge for in PDF/eBook format (Those aren't the same format, and their site confuses them.)
So, they're obviously ripping off PG's trademarked name (unless they have permission, as a couple people have speculated), but are they really ripping off their content? And even if they are, where are they getting the rest of their books? Presumably, all 27,000 HTML books are duplicated within the 60,000 PDFs, since they claim they pioneered converting from HTML to PDF... But that still leaves 50,000 books that had to come from somewhere other than PG. PG2 is a front for the World eBook Library [worldebooklibrary.com], which claims to be a consortium of either 45 or 'hundreds' of companies, depending on what page you're on. But their counterfit Adobe page [worldebooklibrary.com] doesn't exactly instill confidence. Then again, with them claiming support [worldlibrary.net] from the likes of PG, the Internet Archive, Google, Amazon, Systran, and the LOC, how can they be bad? I mean, on that page they even list the CIA as one of their contributors, and have an outdated mirror [worldebooklibrary.com] of the CIA world factbook. That book is, of course, in the public domain, except that they didn't bother to strip out the official CIA logo, as required by the CIA [cia.gov]. Talk about the wrong people to piss off.
So, this whole thing smells like a major scam, but I still want to know where they got the rest of their content (assuming they actually have it...)
People really didn't read the article did they? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Michael Hart == good (Score:3)
What amazes me is how cynical people here are. Project Gutenberg owes everything to Michael Hart, and so you think that admirers of the original would be supportive of the new venture.
Thanks Michael.
Re:People really didn't read the article did they? (Score:3)
No, the PG license does not assert copyright over the contents of public domain books. The license states that you can do anything you want with the text as long as you remove any mention of PG from the modified version. To rephrase, the license only protects the PG trademark and not any copyright claims on the public
Commercial was always in the cards (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Gutenberg books are fine! (Score:3, Informative)
Project Gutenberg will accept any format of an ebook, as long as there is also a plain text version. So, many ebooks are available in plain text and HTML, and sometimes other formats (including PDF!!).
The major producer of PG ebooks, Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net], ends up producing an illustrated HTML version of almost every book that would benefit from it.
As long as the public domain PDF ebooks are eventually added to the real Project Gutenberg, and PG2 pays the proper royalties to PG, I don't have a problem with this site.
Oh wait, I do... I think it's fishy that a friend of Michael Hart (the founder of PG) is awarded one of the domain names owned by the real Project Gutenberg. The "owner" of the domain is Greg Newby (the CEO of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. He does a fine job, and this isn't his fault ;).
PROJECTGUTENBERG.INFO Registrant:
Newby, Greg
(PROJECTGUTENBERG2-DOM)
Format (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Format (Score:3, Informative)
I've been looking around for a docbook reader/editor for a while. OpenOffice.org has some basic docbook import/export support, and there are some commercial apps that can do docbook, but most are really expensive (FrameMaker, XMLSpy I think.)
If we can get a really nice, friendly docbook editor/converter, ideally that doesn't use TeX (Arcane and HUGE)
A reader could be a modified browser, ideally one that would let you apply styles to your taste, like, oh, mosai
Who cares? I'm waiting for... (Score:3, Funny)
Text is dead; long live video. Free Steve's work now!
You can still get free books on your PDA. (Score:3, Informative)
I did this just the other day and now I have a copy of the manual for MySQL readable on my PDA complete with a table of contents. Sweet.
PG vs PG2? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
...why would this be good? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Might as well try for fp (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Trademark Law (Score:2, Informative)
There is no sense of "de facto" trademarks, where an institution can recieve protection for a lower amount of money. I suspect Project Gutenberg ha
Update (Score:2)
Re:Trademark Law (Score:2)
Also (admittedly, I should research this), but I'm not sure if a trademark being registered is a definite, unshakeable legal claim that cannot later be challenged. It certainly isn't for patents. So it doesn't have to be perfectly infallible. I would think that it's reasonable for a system to give me "garblelublubschopass" as a trademark, since I'm quite sure that there isn't a single reference on the We
Re:Why PDF? And why bogus claims? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why PDF? (Score:5, Informative)
There are no good open source projects that I know of to let you read ASCII ebooks on a computer screen.
Constraints I would put on such a project:
* Must support antialiased text. If I'm going to be reading masses of text, I'd rather not see jaggies.
* Must support keyboard and mousewheel navigation.
* Must support some form of good resizing to run in fullscreen mode.
* Must support display with a proportional font. This is harder than it sounds, since proportional display is usually done without a hard-wrapped source, and the PG texts are all hard-wrapped.
* The ability to bookmark locations in the text, and zip back to these saved locations.
* The ability to read gzip- or zip-compressed files. ASCII compresses well, and there's no reason to leave ebooks around uncompressed.
* A find feature. It would be nice if this had glark [sourceforge.net]-style features, so you can do context searches and the like. (actually, it might make a lot of sense to just be a frontend to glark).
* (Optional but nice) the ability to feed output into festival or a similar speech synthesis sytem for listening. Open Source speech synth isn't quite to the point where I'd want to use it for ordinary usage (as opposed to use by the disabled), but it's not awful and some folks may like it.
* (Optional but nice) the ability to remember where you stopped reading.
I've looked at a *lot* of approaches to getting a nice, readable book. This hack takes in a text file and seems to spit out a pretty good pdf viewable in full-scree-mode in xpdf:
#!/bin/bash
# Converts a text file into a nice, computer-readable PDF
# Usage bookize
cat "$@"|tr -d "\r"|enscript -B -f Palatino-Roman24 -M Compscreen --word-wrap -p
"$@".ps
ps2pdf "$@".ps && rm "$@".ps
And the required ~/.enscriptrc:
# Media definitions:
# name width height llx lly urx ury
Media: Compscreen 858 644 0 0 858 644
It is, unfortunately, still not perfect. I've tried writing scripts to feed things in to LaTeX (to enjoy the superior kerning of LaTeX), but I've never been that happy with the results. It's easy to have something that's a metasequence in LaTeX isn't escaped.
Re:project for free distribution of written knowle (Score:4, Informative)
The project has not lost its zeal and ideology. Project Gutenberg is alive and kicking, and even revolting to some extent against Michael's unilateral decision to partner with the World Ebook Library through the device of projectgutenberg.info (aka Project Gutenberg II). As an active volunteer of PG and DP [pgdp.net], I have seen the discussions over the past few days, and the zeal has increased if anything. People are still holding true to the ideals of PG, even if its founder has made a bad decision.
Project Gutenberg is not an "open source project." It is a project to get public domain texts into electronic formats and distribute them to whoever wants them--including commercial enterprises. Linux and others are projects that work in copyrighted materials. Verbum Vanum requires specific licensing, which is very much against PG philosophy (yes, PG does have some copyrighted texts, but it does not require authors to give up any rights as the OLPA does, only to provide PG non-exclusive electronic distribution rights).
Yes, PG puts a license on every one of its texts. But it is the only license I know of that says you can remove the license altogether and redistribute however you desire. That is a benefit, not a detriment.