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I don’t know if you’re the e-book reading types, but this blog post from the Washington Post is worth reading.
Reporter Rob Pegoraro notes that at least one contributor to the free, public-domain e-books site Project Gutenberg is complaining that Amazon is taking user-uploaded texts, stripping out the Gutenberg license information and reselling the e-books.
“They took the text version, stripped off the headers and footer containing the license, re-wrapped the sentences and made the chapter titles bold,” Gutenberg contributor Linda M. Everhart told the WaPo.
Her Gutenberg version of Arthur Robert Harding’s 1906 book “Fox Trapping” was being sold on the Amazon Kindle store for $4. The text is available for free at Project Gutenberg.
Moreover, this practice is allowed by the Project Gutenberg license.
Read Pegoraro’s post for the full story, and be sure to check out Project Gutenberg before shelling out money for an older title at an online e-book store.
