Canadian Ebook Store Offers 'Free' Public Domain Ebooks -- Claims Copyright Says You Can Only Make 1 Copy
from the not-this-again dept
Brendan writes "Chapters/Indigo, the dominant book retailer in Canada, just recently launched their eBook store, thinly disguised as an independent 3rd party called ShortCovers. Both companies are children of the parent company Indigo Books & Music Inc.The fact that they have launched an eBook program is not a problem. It's great, in fact. I'd like to see more action in this space, and anything to help people read more is a step in the right direction. The problem I have is with how they've done it.
When announcing the service on Monday, the company trumpeted loudly the offer of "FREE eBook downloads!" in a mass email and on the main Chapters page. Can you guess what all the eBooks offered for free have in common? That's right, they're almost all public domain works. They do list the publisher as "Gutenberg" for all the PD books, but do they explain what that means? Do they inform the user that these are public domain works? Do they include a link to Gutenberg.org, where any user can download these books in plain texts to use however they want? No, of course not.
Instead, they wrap the books up in their tight little DRM package. Each page (according to their idea of a page) loads painfully in a flash frame and within the text of the book is non-selectable. And most are not available as downloads (as they are on Gutenberg).
The worst offense? That dangerous little line at the bottom of each page of each book: "(C) All Rights Reserved All copyright ownership rights relating to this content are specifically and expressly reserved by the owner thereof and are marked © by the owner of this content, 2009." An interesting claim, to be sure. What am I to do with this book, ShortCovers?
"All Rights Reserved. You are free to make one (1) copy of this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you abide by the following:I can make one (1) copy? Wow! I better use it carefully."
* For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
* Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
* Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights."
This isn't the first time we've seen bookstores DRM up and claim copyright over public domain works. The DRM stuff is dumb, but understandable, since they just want to have one system and often seem to choose an anti-consumer one. But telling people that they are only allowed to make one copy of a public domain work and putting a © sign on it is pretty ridiculous.
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Filed Under: copyright, ebooks, public domain
Companies: chapters/indigo, shortcovers
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It SHOULD be illegal.
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Re: It SHOULD be illegal
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Re: It SHOULD be illegal
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Can Mike/ed fix that text to be Project Gutenberg please? Gracias.
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Fixed.
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Messed that one up good.
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Messed that one up good.
Aye! Fixed again. :)
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Thanks. I'll be more diligent in the future.
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There's different layers of copyright
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Re: There's different layers of copyright
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Projectgutenburg.org
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Gutenberg link is wrong
Just clicked through to the project gutenberg but the link goes to the wrong site.
This is the link you want: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
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Circumventing DRM
Good to Techdirt for exposing these fraudsters.
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Re: Circumventing DRM
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http://www.gutenberg.org/
:)
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"All Rights Reserved"
Don't even get me started about the line in the clarification regarding "moral" rights.
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This could be helpful
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Either that or they had an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters...
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Mistake? Yes. Malevolent copyright grab? Heck no.
Considering that we're planning to add a lot more PD works to Shortcovers soon, we're trying to get this straightened out as soon as we can. This is totally an example of an error made in haste as we sprint along.
Regarding lack of epub downloadability, it's something we're working on. Some Gutenberg epubs are a bit shaky in terms of syntax, so rather than pick-and-choose good ones and reject bad ones, we're processing directly from the Gutenberg .txt into XHTML for display on web and mobile devices, which gives us a cleaner file. But that does mean we don't have an epub to serve up. As we make our epub parser more forgiving, we'll fire up the epub download goodness for all. (Of course, you can always zip over to Gutenberg and grab them direct.)
Recap: Mistake? Yes. Malevolent copyright grab? No. Fixable? You bet, and we're on the case.
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recent US law
and ill add let them try and sue me in a court of law for killing the drm for a public work
will be VERY VERY VERY BAD PRESS especially when the word "FREE" is used WRONGLY as it is not free you are not free to do certain things according to them and ill argue with a public domain work you are free to TRY and get people to go along with said stuff but they are under no legal obligation to do so.
I am allowed by law to crack smack and toss around anyhting thats public domain if its intent is to merely tell the EXACT same story and is not a modified story or made more new ( 75% under canuck law if you change it its a new work)
then it is NOT a new work and thus you can color the writing change the fonts add drm in back ground and it changes nothing IT IS THE SAME WORK.
I went through this with the GODWARS mud code which me and a friend rewrote 80% of the code and the original owner tried to push copyright and FAILED in both the USA and Canada.
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@ Michael Tamblyn
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