A brief word regarding bibliotecapleyades.net.

10-15-14: This so-called library website is producing fraudulent webpages. I discovered a page on bibliotecapleyades where someone had extracted some text from a couple of my webpages (circa late 2004), removed my copyright notice, and then added multiple images to it that were apparently collected from other websites. Bibliocapleyades then associates the page with my name, passing it off as my creation. In August 2014, I sent an email to the website itself demanding the removal of the page and all duplicates (translations). The page is still up. Incidentally, the webpages from which the text was extracted from have never been taken down, only re-written and restructured. The only thing I have not done at the time of posting this is to send a DMCA notice to the webhost, which I intend to do. If the fraudulent page is still up after that, I intend to seek litigation against the website for copyright violation and false representation.

Regarding these website “libraries” in general: Brief passages or small segments of copyrighted material have historically been overlooked, of course, but my personal view is, this idea of copying and publishing large tracts of other people’s material on the Internet without their permission is quite underhanded to begin with, even if material happens to be an accurate representation. The US copyright office’s definition of publishing is creating a copy and making it available to the public. There is nothing in the law, as far as I know, that voids someone’s copyright simply because the material was not sold to the public. If it has a copyright notice—it’s copyrighted. These “libraries” must, of course, copy a webpage before making it available. Digital music and book files are downloaded by the millions every day for a price. If such downloads of nothing but ones and zeros can be considered copies, then a web page cannot be considered any differently. So I would like someone to show me one historical example of a library that was in the business of publishing copyrighted material without the consent of the author and then knowingly allowing its patrons to make copies. In short, these libraries do not fit the definition of a library at all, rather a publishing house.

1/01/17, Fair Use: While Fair Use may allow certain materials to be used for educational purposes, as far as I can ascertain, there is nothing under Fair Use that provides for the publishing of such material. If it did, it would allow for many thousands of books to be scanned and posted on the Internet, without consequence, on the basis they were educational in nature. So while anyone can download a web page and store it for personal use, reposting it on the net constitutes nothing less than the act of publishing. As far as the fraudulent aspect of the bibliotecapleyades page is concerned, I have come to the opinion that it is probably best to consider such things a civil matter between the fraudster and the victim. The copyright infringement aspect is another matter, and I agree with the DMCA procedures that are in place (if only they were enforced).