Teleread reports on public domain price gouging (Public domain classics priced to make Jack Valenti smile). Apparently, eReader.com will provide you 250 public domain ebooks for the low, low, low price of $995. Act now and for $1,495 you can get 500 titles (aka the "Gold" edition)! Purchase the Educational Classics Collection CD now! Operators are standing by:
In a move designed to give schools an affordable way to use eBook technology, eReader.com and Lightning Source Inc. developed The Classics Collection CD, a comprehensive collection of 500 titles that includes "The Red Badge of Courage," by Stephen Crane, "Little Women," by Louisa May Alcott, "Night and Day," by Virginia Woolf, the works of William Shakespeare, and other books commonly found on middle and high school reading lists.Or, you could download the works via Project Gutenberg for free or, for a very modest fee, get a CD from Blackmask Online.This collection provides schools with a cost-effective way to easily distribute eBooks to students. The eBooks cannot be lost, stolen, or damaged, and the license entitles the school to internally distribute as many copies of the eBooks as it wants, as many times as it wants.
And don't forget to proof a page or two, okay?
Category: IP Abuse
I don't see what the hubhub is all about. This is how the public domain works: everybody can use any work from it in any way that they see fit. Even 'sell' it for hundreds of dollars. That freedom is a good thing. Realising that that freedom is a good thing is also a good thing.
Of course, the irony may be that schools (and others) have been so coaxed into believing that everything has a price, that they'll gladly pay (taxpayers') money to buy books that they, as members of the public, already own. But do we really have any data to support such an assumption?
Oh, and the man is right, do proof a page or two. There's a small quiz at http://www.pgdp.net if you're uncertain about your proofing skills, and very helpful people at the forums.
I don't know why this is classified as "IP abuse".
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Gotta side with Ernest Miller and TeleRead here. Seems as if
[Read More]Tracked on August 4, 2004 10:31 AM