Amazon charges Kindle users for free Project Gutenberg e-books

Kindle readers, take note: You may have been paying for books you could legally download for free -- in nearly identical editions -- elsewhere.

The titles in question aren't just public-domain books that have long been freely available at such sites as Project Gutenberg. They appear to be the exact Gutenberg files, save only for minor formatting adjustments and the removal of that volunteer-run site's license information. This activity is, however, permitted under the Gutenberg license. As its introduction explains: "If you strip the Project Gutenberg license and all references to Project Gutenberg from the ebook, you are left with a public domain ebook. You can do anything you want with that."

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation chief executive Greg Newby expressed frustration about what he called an old problem for the non-profit organization. "Is this legal? Yes," he wrote in an e-mail Nov. 11. "Is it ethical? I don't think it is."