stop violating the FLP copyright

[ghost]

The online edition of The Feynman Lectures Website posted at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu and www.feynmanlectures.info is free-to-read online. However, it is under copyright. The copyright notice can be found on every page: it is in the footer that your script strips out! The online edition of FLP can not be downloaded, copied or transferred for any purpose (other than reading online) without the written consent of the copyright holders (The California Institute of Technology, Michael A. Gottlieb, and Rudolf Pfeiffer), or their licensees (Basic Books). Every one of you is violating my copyright by running the flp.mobi script. Furthermore Github is committing contributory infringement by hosting your activities on their website. A lot of hard work and money and time went into making the online edition of FLP. It is a gift to the world - one that I personally put a great deal of effort into, and I feel you are abusing it. We posted it to benefit the many bright young people around the world who previously had no access to FLP for economic or other reasons. It isn't there to provide a source of personal copies for a bunch of programmers who can easily afford to buy the books and ebooks!! Let me tell you something: Rudi Pfeiffer and I, who have worked on FLP as unpaid volunteers for about a decade, make no money from the sale of the printed books. We earn something only on the electronic editions (though, of course, not the HTML edition you are raping, to which we give anyone access for free!), and we are planning to make MOBI editions of FLP - we are working on one right now. By publishing the flp.mobi script you are essentially taking bread out of my mouth and Rudi's, a retired guy, and a schoolteacher. Proud of yourselves? That's all I have to say personally. Github has received DMCA takedown notices and if this script doesn't come down pretty soon they (and very possibly you) might be hearing from some lawyers. As of Monday, this matter is in the hands of Perseus's Domestic Rights Department and Caltech's Office of The General Counsel.

Michael A. Gottlieb Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition www.feynmanlectures.info www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

[ansell]

Always interested by this discussion. As a serious question, if you offer a free for personal use HTML online version, where is the loss to your institution or you if someone reads it on a Kindle after personally using this script compared to just viewing your website in Safari on their iPad? I just could never see how they are not equivalent forms and seeing that you are a scientist I thought you might be able to rationally explain the subtle difference w.r.t. "bread-in-mouth".

[ghost]

There are many reasons we don't want people to publish the flp.mobi script (or others like it) on a public server, besides those mentioned above. There are issues of quality control: the online edition of FLP isn't finished yet -- it's still rough around the edges in some ways, and we're still working on it. For that matter we are still correcting errata in FLP, and we don't want inaccurate, incompatible copies of FLP to proliferate for pedagogical reasons. Moreover, we downloaded and ran the flp.mobi script and the epub it makes is, in our opinion, ugly. We wouldn't want this barely legible copy of FLP circulating any more than the horrid PDF scans of ancient editions that abound in torrents. Above, I mentioned that we are currently working on ePub/Kindle versions. The reason it is taking us so long to complete them is because our standards are high: it's taking a lot of cleverness to figure out how to do it right. (It's only too bad the programmers who are contributing to flp.mobi did not come to us and ask our permission, because if they had, I would have worked with them. That is, in fact, exactly what has happened: A responsible adult, who happens to be a much more talented programmer than the authors of flp.mobi, wrote to me and asked permission if he could make an ePub from our HTML. I told him about the various attempts to make FLP ePubs, why they had failed thus far, and invited him to do better. And he has!! So now he is working with us. If we publish his work he'll, of course, be paid for it. That's what you get for asking :-). However, the issue that concerns me most is the possibility that Perseus or Caltech might take the free-to-read online edition of FLP offline if the legal expense of defending its copyright becomes excessive. Perseus, who licenses exclusive reproduction and distribution rights on FLP, allow us to serve the free online edition only conditionally, if it doesn't hurt their sales revenues or cost them anything otherwise.

[lachesis]

A responsible adult, who happens to be a much more talented programmer than the authors of flp.mobi, wrote to me and asked permission if he could make an ePub from our HTML.

Are these ad hominem attacks really necessary?

However, the issue that concerns me most is the possibility that Perseus or Caltech might take the free-to-read online edition of FLP offline if the legal expense of defending its copyright becomes excessive.

That would be unfortunate. At this point, though, the damage is done. The content has been thoroughly distributed on torrents, and I'm sure epub and mobi versions will be within a week as well.

Github has received DMCA takedown notices and if this script doesn't come down pretty soon they (and very possibly you) might be hearing from some lawyers.

Attacking open source hosting is not a way to earn good will among the "bunch of programmers" that you hope will buy your book. As many in the industry have said, piracy is a service problem. If you want people to stop using this script, release your mobi and epub editions today. Otherwise, it's too late to control the content.

[fmap]

As of this morning, the work is no longer publicly available.