Blackmask.com

I remember reading that Blackmask.com is being sued by Conde Nast over the rights to some novels. I wonder if they brought down the web site until the dispute is resolved. I am just making a guess...maybe someone else knows.

That's depressing.

More information here and here.

Season,
It appears that Blackmask packaged two pulp novels (The Shadow and Doc Savage) as public domain e-books when if fact Conde Nast owns them. I guess Project Gutenberg has been more careful to check rights.

Soloset, thanks for adding the links! I did more searching and found some interesting details here .

Great link, oarsman! That really clears it up.

What an ugly copyright situation -- I think it's good that the site owner's willing to fight it out (maybe it'll settle some things) but I'm not sure I like the whole "Adverse Possession" thing.

I run a free public-domain lit site (http://www.litrix.com) similar to, though not nearly as large as Blackmask was. But the dude running Blackmask was pretty cavalier about copyright issues, and had a number of things up that struck me as iffy on that front. There used to be a good site called "Classic Short Stories" or something similar, that got taken down for the same reason.

Pay attention to copyright laws, folks. They do apply on-line.

caw.