On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 1:01 AM, Lilburne lilburne@tygers-of-wrath.net wrote:
On 16/02/2016 18:39, Lodewijk wrote:
If we were publishers trying to make a buck out of selling the work, I would agree with you, and move on. However, that is not what we want to do as a movement. We don't try to take advantage, but we want to build upon works. We want to collaborate and stand on the shoulders of giants. Giants like this little girl.
But that is exactly what you are doing. A publisher can fight for the right to make a buck without WP's help. A book of the diary costs a few pence, far less then the cost of the paper and ink for individual printing it. A digital copy is still a far inferior offering from a book version. I'm not sure that many actually prefer works like this as a pdf, html, or any other format over the book.
And that is indeed what I tried to explain in the following paragraphs. A free work could offer more context (after all, it is over seventy years later now, and many of the concepts she refers to are unknown to most of us - let alone to people on the other side of the globe. Gladly, we have websites like Wikipedia where many are described where we can link to).
Also, while the book is translated a lot, and maybe even record holder with regards to availability in languages & sales, there are still languages it has not been translated into. That is also an added value. And yes, a publisher could then use those free texts to publish a dead-tree book with it.
I am primarily trying to argue that this is not so much taking 'advantage' but rather an opportunity to demonstrate what communities like ours are able to accomplish. Why the public domain is good for spreading works.
Lodewijk