Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
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Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#2This is my friend Theo (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sirodoht)! He always does cool stuff like this. He even gifted me a copy of the book on that page, you should buy a copy to support him, like I didn't.
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#3"Intellectual property doesn’t make sense. What makes sense is to stop trying to limit ideas about ideas."
IP only protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Fundamental difference.
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#4Hey, I wrote this!
I’m very excited about the second book we’ll be publishing next month!
Side note: should I create a mailing list to send updates or is a blog RSS enough?
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#5I don't believe it is possible under US law to "relinquish all copyrights". Merely asserting something is in the public domain does not make it so.
For instance, I could write a book today and do so... and people are probably safe to do what they want with it. Then tomorrow, when I croak, my family still retains copyright for the next 95 years. They might decide that this is their golden ticket, and everyone who continues to publish it would be in trouble (past actions shouldn't be sanctionable... while alive, I essentially gave license to do so).
Even if something is legitimately within the public domain, the courts (in the US) have at times decided to yank works out back out and give them as gifts to the various big licensing regimes (ASCAP, if I remember correctly).
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#6"Intellectual property doesn’t make sense. What makes sense is to stop trying to limit ideas about ideas." IP only protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Fundamental difference.
IP protects the tollbooths big corporations like to set up alongside culture.
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#7I don't believe it is possible under US law to "relinquish all copyrights". Merely asserting something is in the public domain does not make it so. For instance, I could write a book today and do so... and people are probably safe to do what they want with it. Then tomorrow, when I croak, my family still retains copyright for the next 95 years. They might decide that this is their golden ticket, and everyone who cont…
This is what the CC0 license is for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Zero_...
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#8Richard Stallman would shit.
Patents, Trademarks, and copyrights are distinct and different and we should not confound.
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#9> This can’t be true, I thought again. How can one limit me from singing a song at the park I heard earlier?
When we talk about policies for things like copyright we must always acknowledge this problem. Copyright is a way to fund art and in some ways it's been remarkably successful at that. But it was conceived as an intentional abridgement of our natural freedom to share, in order to reward creators. If we can keep it like that, it doesn't need to be ludicrously long term like it is today. And infringement absolutely should not be a criminal act like it is in some countries or trade pacts.
Re: Laniakea Books: Public domain books for everyone
#10There are vast quantities of public domain books freely available online, Gutenberg.org, Archive.org, standardebooks.org to name three. The latter in particular emphasizes careful production and proper editing, in effect republishing old books in modern editions, but not on paper.
I guess I can see how a person might want to promote some old book whose present-day relevance is being overlooked, but the utility of actually printing hardcopy seems minimal.