Amazon charges Kindle users for free public-domain eBooks

By on Nov 30, 2010 at 10:57 AM
eBooks November 30, 2010

A report in Tuesday’s Washington Post reveals that Amazon is apparently selling free public-domain eBooks that have had their license information stripped. The eBooks in question originate from Project Gutenberg and are available there for free in a variety of formats including ePub, HTML and Kindle. Project Gutenberg — not to be confused with 80s legend Steve Guttenberg — was founded by eBook inventor Michael Hart and is known as the first generally available collection of free eBooks. It is also maintained by volunteers who are not paid for their services. Amazon’s alleged practice of selling rebranded Gutenberg eBooks is not illegal — in fact it doesn’t even violate Project Gutenberg’s license terms. It is, however, unethical at best and very disturbing at worst. In response to inquiries, an Amazon spokeswoman told the Post, “These books were uploaded by a third party using our self-service platform. I’ve sent your note to the appropriate team internally.” Amazon did not state that the Gutenberg eBooks would be removed from its Kindle store, nor did it condemn the practice of selling reformatted versions of free public-domain eBook files.

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  • http://twitter.com/mamorgan1 mamorgan1

    Did you ever consider that maybe they are charging for the convenience of being able to directly download to their device? If I remember correctly, they aren’t charging much. There are a lot of people that wouldn’t be able to figure out how to get an eBook from Project Gutenberg to their Kindle.

    • http://schultzter.ca Schultzter

      I agree! (and I Liked your comment)

      I don’t know how much they’re charging, but there’s nothing wrong with charging for the convenience and service of making Gutenberg books easily available on the Kindle. Especially for people who bought the Kindle because it was so easy to browse, click, and read.

      Back in the day you could get tons of free software on the Walnut Creek CD-ROM, but you had to pay for the CD-ROM. The convenience of getting the CD-ROM shipped rather than waiting (probably just as long :) to download the software over dial-up was worth the cost.

      Yeah, it’d be sweet if Amazon participated in Project Gutenberg to make those books available directly from their free, public domain library as well. But it still wouldn’t be free – the cost would still come out of Amazon’s revenue so it would be reflected in all the purchases you make, and not necessarily just eBook or book purchases. It might be cheaper if Amazon, with it’s vast resources, did this. But the way it is now people who are not interested in public domain books don’t have to subsidize their cost for people who are. And the cost is transparent to those people who are interested in them.

      And now, since my Walnut Creek reference is making me feel older than I am, I think I’m going to make myself a nice warm cup of tea.

  • Anonymous

    It took a “report in the Washington Post” for this to become news? A quick look in the Kindle bookstore makes it pretty obvious. Sometimes these have been enhanced to work better on the Kindle but mostly there are just quick-and-dirty copies from Gutenberg.

    In other news reports are coming in that the sun did indeed rise this morning…

  • Len

    Just curious, when are we going to get an article about Apple banning Android magazine from their app store?

    “You know.. your magazine… it’s just about Android… we can’t have that in our App Store”

  • http://mindmirror007.blogspot.com Sathya

    Some one is getting greedy! About time for Google Books to drop on tablet devices in a pretty format and become main stream!

  • Anonymous

    I don’t know why Amazon’s response is brushed off. Any third party can upload a book to the Kindle store. Much like, say, the Android Market, there isn’t much of a vetting process here. If Amazon deems it unworthy, they’ll remove it, and it appears they are looking into doing so. Hardly a big deal.

  • Frank Castle

    Night of the Living Dead is free domain (I got my copy for free w/ a magazine, of all things), yet you can still walk over to Best Buy and PURCHASE a copy. So?

    I love the people that come out of the woodwork who never realized these things before. Go back to your World Of Warcrafts.

  • http://twitter.com/stalkbrandon Brandon V. Fletcher

    I bought John Carter of Mars for the Kindle app. There were free versions but i opted for the $.99 version. Not a big deal to me.

    • Anonymous

      I did the same thing for Sherlock Holmes. Pictures were added and I was guaranteed to get all of it in one file rather than having to hunt all of it down on my own. Convenience pure and simple.

  • Steel

    Seriously, if people will pay for it then there’s a market. No foul.

    The real crime here is that the Kindle doesn’t allow .epub format. That’s like a store not taking cash.

    • http://twitter.com/jeffreyboyland Jeffrey Boyland

      Didn’t Apple originally do that for the iPad?

  • serpentor

    Just because the Washington Post wrote something doesn’t make it worth talking about. This is a non story.

    Plus the headline makes it sound like Amazon is the one charging for the titles, which is false and kinda tabloidish.

    • serpentor

      Also, bring back the neg button.

      • Brett

        We need a negative button for the articles too.

  • Anonymous

    It wasn’t Amazon themselves, it was some third party schmucks. So this should read “Third-party assholes charge Kindle users for free public-domain eBooks.” That would be valid.

    That said, those guys are super-assholes. Not because they sold something you can get for free — some people will always pay for convenience, and others are using Kindles because they don’t want to bother thinking, they just want to go to the store and click until the happy comes — but because they’re stripping the license information out. That’s massively disrespectful to the originators of the work.

    I guess it’s necessary from their point of view. You wouldn’t want people finding out that they were paying for something that they could get for free, after all.

  • Harrison

    Isn’t this the same as buying a public domain book at Barnes & Noble instead of printing it out at home by ourselves? This is neither unethical or disturbing, this is free enterprise. If you can sell someone something they can have for free (i.e. bottled water), more power to ya…

  • Konklifer

    BGR calls Amazon unethical and yet they don’t even point out that it is a third party selling these books and simply using Amazon as an outlet. It is not Amazon themselves. Pretty misleading and unethical on BGR’s part.

  • Jksdfl

    Amazon is a righteous company. They will amend things!

  • Brett

    It doesn’t violate the terms of the license, so who cares if people are too lazy to find the free version?

  • Anonymous

    This article is much ado about nothing at best and very misleading at worst.

  • Vernon

    Greedy yes. But you can always refuse to hit the “buy” button. So what if they are trying to make a buck.
    That’s one reason I bought my Nook. I don’t like to do business with a company who only offers ebooks in a proprietary format. Nook is epub, which I like.

  • emellaich

    I’m echoing what several others have said, but I’ll put it a different way.

    The real news here is that Amazon (and others) now make it easy for anyone to publish books (e-books). This will have huge consequences on the book market. I do recognize the value of publishers in terms of filtering out dreck, editing, and marketing. However, I also think that offer those of us in the outside access to the market can bring exposure to hidden gems, niche writers, and new thinking.

    As a result, we will also see some really awful self-published works, some new publishers with ‘unique’ business models and some scams and illegal activity. In the case of this publisher, what they are doing is completely legal, but it is akin to the folks who run out to ‘clean your windows’ for a tip at the stoplight.

    Amazon, however, isn’t the one offering these books. They are simply offering the public a publishing platform with minimal censorship, and I applaud their effort.

    Blaming Amazon is like blaming the Internet (or DARPA) because someone is publishing porn, gambling, pushing propoganda, telling political lies, etcetera on the Internet.

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