I quote:

1. Scope of Application

(a) FeedBooks.com: FeedBooks.com (hereinafter also referred to as “The Website”) is a free book hosting website which enables users, after registering and opening an account, to download, store, share and comment on the electronic books proposed for reading. The books are available in different languages. The books are free from copyrights as they fall in the public domain. The users have the possibility to upload electronic books. Before they are posted on the Website, FeedBooks will determine whether the publication of the said book is authorized.

–emphasis added

Later in the same TOS:

4. Intellectual Property Rights

FeedBooks being registered in France, the content of the Website is subject to the French legislation on copyrights and other intellectual property rights. However, the electronic books offered for reading are free from copyrights as, in accordance with the legislation of France, the said books fall in the public domain.

–emphasis added

Not being familiar with the legislation of France, I can’t comment either on the root of their claim that the books fall in the public domain or on its veracity, but I would take these factors at face value. I would assume that anything listed there either is or becomes public domain work.

This is far more serious than simply allowing your work to get out there and acquire readers for you. If your story enters the public domain, you no longer have any control or authority over it at all. Anything you can imagine can be done to it. Anything. It can be republished, in a paid format, with someone somewhere making stacks of money off of it, and you will have no recourse.

If that’s what you want, go ahead and post your stories on Feedbooks, but if all you want is something more closely approximating the Creative Commons license, then I strongly advise that you find some other place to post.

For the record, everything on this site, including the stories and novellas that you can download for free, remain my copyright-protected intellectual property. You may pass them on, but you may not claim them, sell them, republish them, etc.

In the end, I decided not to register at Feedbooks after all.

• Piracy isn’t really stealing, because the so-called victim of the piracy never loses anything.

• Piracy isn’t a violation of copyright law, because you’re making a copy for your own personal use, and that’s legal.

• Copyright law was never intended to protect the artists, it was intended to protect the printers.

• The only people rooting for the preservation of copyright law are the big corporations, because all it does is perpetuate their profit model.

• Copyright law is immoral because a worker who creates an original work for an employer never holds the copyright to it.

• Copyright law is immoral because so-called “content” is information and information should be free because it is in the best interest of the common good.

• Since the incremental cost of digital distribution is near zero, the price of digital work should be near zero.

• Artists will always produce art, whether they get paid for it or not, because it is in their blood.

• It is immoral for any artist to make more off their art than I declare reasonable.

• Blah blah blah blah blah …

But rule number one, life’s Standing Order Number One, is “Always identify the problem.”

The problem here is very simple, and it has nothing at all to do with the fairness or validity or history or purpose or origins of copyright law.

It’s the piracy, stupid!

In actual point of fact, none of the arguments above, and most of the arguments I haven’t listed, have anything at all to do with the problem, which is that we seem to have raised an entire generation who want something for nothing. Yes, I know. That’s a generalization, and it’s as unfair as any such statement, but it has become increasingly obvious that there is a generational divide in operation here.

Want to know where the ducks are? Look to where the shotguns are pointed. And in the battle over piracy, the guns are pointed squarely at copyright law. Why? Because it’s the one thing standing between the pirates and their victims. And what does that mean? That we, as artists, as creators of intellectual property, must protect the existing copyright law. It may not be perfect. It may not be what it was intended to be. It may not exist for the reasons we think it should, but the fact of the matter is that, as it stands now, copyright law is an impediment to the progress of the pirates.

Of course copyright law protects the printers, when they are the copyright holders.

Of course copyright law prevents information from being free. Your social security number, bank account number, and current bank balance are information. Are you going to make it free?

Of course artists will always produce art, but will you ever get to see it?

The only way to guarantee the continued production of any art, whether it is fiction, painting, drawing, or hand-decorated mud pies, is to see to it that the creator is granted full protection under law from the theft of that art. If the artist chooses to transfer that copyright, as part of some contract, to a printer, publisher, or other third party, that is their right.

Stop talking about whether piracy is theft or not.

Stop talking about whether copyright is moral or not.

Start asking yourself this:

What is a world without any art going to look like?

mispeled.net — What They Steal

And be warned: he’s going to point you to a post or two you should read even before that, so if you haven’t kept up with this conversation, go ahead and get caught up. We’ll wait.

Ok, for those of you who haven’t kept up with this issue, and who didn’t go read Luke’s post, here’s an excerpt:

Both of Mark’s scenarios that don’t involve the taking of something from someone else, but still involve physical piracy (free newspaper and concert), stem from the same given: content creators have a right to decide how, why, when, and where their content is experienced, if for no other reason than they created that content.
I’m not sure I agree with that given as it stands… [emphasis added – LM]

People should only have a right to distribute content if their profits from said content are reasonable. What right, beyond the creation itself do I have to price my novel at such an exorbitant price? I created the content, but if the book is so good that it might improve lives, what right do I have to price it so only a few lives can be improved?

Some of the following is actually a reworking of a comment I left on Luke’s blog, but I’m including it here for the sake of completeness (and for those of you who didn’t bother to go read it. Go read it. Really. We’ll wait. Really. While you’re there, subscribe to mispeled. Also Ditchwalk. Both are required reading.)

Before I go any further, I should mention that I know Luke Bergeron nearly as well as I know anyone else that I’ve only met online, and within the constraints of cyberspace, I consider him a friend. I’ve read his novel-in-progress, and it’s a great read. None of the following is to be taken as an attack.

But seriously, Luke? I don’t have the right to price my book at $10,000,000 a copy? (Oh, look. Someone just decided to go read that post after all.)

• If my house has three hundred bedrooms, does it become a hotel, and can I charge for the rooms in my hotel, or must it be free?
• If my yard extends beyond some maximum of good taste, does it become a de facto park? May I charge admission?
• If I drove to the job I don’t have in a 14-passenger van, would that make me a bus service? May I charge fares?
• Do I have the right to create a sculpture and put it in my living room, where no one will ever see it?
• Suppose I take a photograph of wake patterns in Deception Pass, from the bridge there, on a perfect grey day? Suppose I chose not to make it available, but to only hang it in my dining room? Do I have that right?
• Suppose I can do perfect impersonations of every president since the dawn of recording technology, but I refuse to do so for anyone except my wife? Do I have this right?

But someone has said that all comparisons are odious and someone else has said that analogies always break down, so let’s go back to books.

• If I don’t have the right to price my novel at $10,000,000 per copy, and if the denial of that right hinges upon the fact that some people cannot afford that price, then what price may I set? $24.95? There seem to be a lot of books released at that price, for hardcover, at least, but there are a lot of people that can’t pay $24.95 for a book. There are people that can’t afford a buck for a book.
• If I don’t have the right to limit readership based on price, then may I limit readership based on scarcity? You mention selling three copies to the three richest people on Earth. Suppose I write a novel, make three handmade copies of it, and give them to those same three people for free? Is this not just as unacceptable?
• If I don’t have the right to limit readership based on scarcity, then do I even have the right to not write at all? I have a fifth novel completed, but not published. My wife and some of my horde of offspring have read it. @JESeanachai has read it. Can I leave it at that? Do I have the right to not publish this novel at all? Do I have the right to limit the readership of A Place to Die to those few who have already read it?
• Do you have the right to not publish your novel, which I’ve read, but most of the population of the planet hasn’t? It’s a great book, a lot of people would like it, it could effect the lives of many people. Is it more immoral for you to publish it at $10,000,000 per copy, at $24.95, for free, or not at all?

I think I said it best in the comment:

I don’t care if it’s a novel, a software company, or the cure for all cancers, it’s property. It belongs to someone.

In the portion of your blog post that I quoted above, you seem to exclude from this discussion the “taking of something from someone else.” I can’t help but wonder why. Could it be that “something” can be owned, but “content” cannot? Could it be that if I own “something” I can charge what I want for it, but not if I only own “content”?

In a world where everything was given away free, then perhaps we could all afford to give things away free, but this isn’t that world. It’s never going to be, and requiring certain things to be given away (or idly standing by and allowing them to be) isn’t even the first step in getting there. You say that if my yard is too big, it becomes a park, that if my house is too big, it becomes a hotel, and yet you say that if you won a million dollars in hard cash in the lottery, you would invest enough that you would never have to work again. I say that a million dollars is too much for one man. I say that you have to find the poorest man on Earth and keep as much as he has. Give the rest away.

I don’t say any of that actually, nor will I accept the stipulation that the “the ultimate goal of long-term capitalism” is for one man to own the entire planet (the ultimate goal of long-term capitalism would obviously have to include a thriving market, which implies the existence of a lot of other people who own things, and the ultimate actuality of long-term capitalism (if we could ever get there) would be the existence of cheap, readily available fiction, art, and cures for cancer, but that’s another rant). But there certainly are people who say that owning one penny more than you “need” (by their definition, not yours or mine) is a sin (against God, god, or gods) and a crime against humanity. There certainly are people who say that extreme poverty as a way of life is a form of holiness. When you win your million dollars, are you going to let them decide how much you need to invest?

If there were a place where writers could just crank stuff out and let it go out into the world to sink or swim, I’d pack today. I’d live there in peace and happiness the rest of my life, writing my stories like the guy in Snow Crash spins his ideas out into the Metaverse to live free.

But until then, writers have to be paid, or we’re going to be stuck with amateur fiction forever.

Triond – Publish Writing, Poetry, Music, Video & Content Online

Ok, my suspicions were raised by the fact that they listed “content,” as though the other things in the list are chopped liver. Ignoring that, I went straight to their terms of service, which contain a few more writing errors, but that’s not what worries me:

5.  Rights Granted . By submitting your Original Content for publication on the Site, you hereby irrevocably and unconditionally grant Triond, and any of its affiliates (hereinafter also referred to as "Triond"), a irrevocable, perpetual, unlimited free of charge and exclusive right to publish the Original Content on the Site and/or on other Internet Sites the Original Content shall be referred to by Triond (hereinafter also referred to as the "Site"), as Triond shall deem suitable under the terms and conditions of this Agreement, as well as allow I users of the Site to view and further use the Original Content, free of charge, for any such purpose permitted by Triond, provided such use shall not be for profit generating purposes. Without derogating from the above, Triond shall be entitled to edit, delete, cutback, rephrase, reproduce, copy, translate, merge, add, use and make use of the Materials, in whole or in part, in any way or manner and at any time, as Triond shall deem appropriate in its sole discretion.

6.  Author’s Rights. You shall continue to retain all authorship and copyrights to the Materials submitted for publication through the website.

In other words, a) you are giving it to them forever, b) you are giving it to them free, c) you can’t publish it anywhere else, d) they can give it away, e) the people they give it to can do anything they want to with it (except try to make money), f) they can “edit, delete, cutback, rephrase, reproduce, copy, translate, merge, add, use and make use of” it in any way they want to, BUT (oh happy day!) “You shall continue to retain all authorship and copyrights . . .” What authorship? What copyrights? THEY TAKE IT ALL!

Bottom line: Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t even think about it.