George the Librarian wrote:
> BlackMask.com reprints public domain editions (they
don't pay the
> author or surviving family for the rights to
publish) of classic noir
> fiction writers like Elliot Chaze, Day Keene, Wade
Miller, John
> McPartland, Lionel White, Charles Williams, Charles
Willeford, and Jim
> Thompson. It's probably legal (Authors are often not
good about doing
> the paperwork required to extend copyright
protection). But is it
> ethical?
Nope, especially since many of these public domain downloads
being sold on-line from various sources are frequently just
low-quality pan- and-scans that offer no respect for either
the work or the author.
Too often these quickie books offer blurry (and occasionally
incomplete) scanned text and are awkwardly formatted. Then
you add in the inherent problem many people have with reading
novel-length fiction off a screen and it's no wonder that
many readers may prefer prowling on-line and in used
bookstores for affordable reading copies rather than buying
them in low-quality electronic form -- and that's regardless
of the possibly murky ethics of selling someone else's work
-- without their permission -- for profit.
Maybe if they treated the material with a bit more respect
and a bit less blatant opportunism, instead of merely using
it to turn a quick buck, I wouldn't mind buying them.
On the other hand, some people have been buying one copy from
some of these guys and then sending them free to all their
friends or even serving them up for file-sharing for the
world to grab, which seems like a sort of rough
justice.
I mean, ripping off those who rip off dead authors? Is that
legal? Or ethical? Or just a little literary Robin
Hood?
> Shouldn't the families get something? They may not
be owed
> anything, but wouldn't it be nice?
Yeah, I think it would be a class act.
Maybe if some of these "publishers" were putting some real
work into these things, maybe adding a foreword by someone
who has a clue that offers some sort of interesting
perspective on the work in question or perhaps some new
artwork, plus, of course, actually re-setting
(and occasionally re-editing -- a sixty-year old typo is
still a typo) the text so it's uniformly readable (and even
searchable), and perhaps offering the estates some sort of
compensation, I might be more tempted.
But as it is, buyer beware...
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.thrillingdetective.com
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 24 Apr 2006 EDT