Anyone know why Blackmask.com–one of my favorite hunting grounds for public domain books–has been down for some hours now? Normally David Moynihan has been exemplary in keeping it up. His uptime is probably better than TeleRead’s. I’ll assume that the blackout has nothing to do with his battle with Conde Nast. I’m writing him now. I hope that this ends up just being a plug to steer people in his direction, regardless of my disagreement with him over the wisdom of fighting Conde. If the site is down for CN-related reasons, could David be busy removing disputed books? That actually might be helpful, as opposed to his going out of business.

Meanwhile, yes, eBookAd is still down, very possibly for keeps. A good week for e-books not!

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23 COMMENTS

  1. There seems to be a large net outage. I can’t get to any place in France, for example.

    I don’t know where Blackmask’s servers are located, but it’s certainly possible that they are in the outage area.

  3. I don’t mean to make light of the situation, but perhaps it is for the best; I’ve downloaded hundreds of ebooks which I still haven’t read. I have enough to keep me busy for a very long time. Still, in a few days my appetite will be whetted for more.

  6. Hi, John. Second result is from the TeleBlog itself–in fact, the item above.

    Meanwhile let’s keep our fingers crossed about David Moynihan. As for helping Blackmask–well, that’s a tricky one. Best thing would be for David to settle, because his legal arguments are pretty iffy.

    If he’s responsible for Conde Nast’s legal fees, perhaps people can chip in.

    There are fights well worth fighting, such as the one against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, but in Blackmask’s case, the arguments just aren’t strong enough in today’s legal climate, alas. – David R

  7. I hope people will post anything they hear about the court situation today. I just searched Google news and got nothing. I would be interested if someone could handily summarize the arguments for both sides. Is Conde Nast arguing that the copyrights of the reprinted Doc Savage paperbacks from the 1960s are still under their control? Is David saying that he is putting online the pulp texts from the 1930s (that had slightly different endings) and so working with public domain titles? I would hate for Blackmask to be shut down, but it seems as if the worst-case situation would be for all the Conde Nast titles to be taken down.

  8. Blackmask has been a web site I’ve visited for years. If this site is gone it will be a big hole in my enjoyment of literature. If CN is responsible I wonder how I can make them know what I think of them?

  9. Recently and for a few days now have tried to find Blackmask after a long time of not visiting…and no response. I appreciate finding out frm your comments that there are these problems. Sure ho e for a quick resolution…miss this a lot.

  12. I am French and have really enjoyed Blackmask since I bought a PALM. Have discover lot of book (in English) that I would never have thought of bying or getting from our town library.
    I do hope that the site will be back on line….

    Philippe

  13. I am very saddened by the absence of Blackmask. I used the “what’s new” page as my homepage. I found at least one treasure there about every other day. Blackmask had become a nesessity. Now I’m in withdrawl.

  15. Hi, Everyone: I’ve been buying the Doc Savage books from Blackmask for about nine months now, and suddenly went to buy more and the site was down… from the postings here, I’m gathering that the company is in a legal battle? Anyone with any news?

    Thanks!

  16. My analyses on the Blackmask situation can be found at Writing on Your Palm There is no more recent information beyond what can be found in Teleread—that Conde Nast is apparently going for a court order that will keep Blackmask down for longer.

    As Moynihan is in touch with Rothman, I expect Teleread will have the scoop on any further breaking developments.

  20. Thanks, Randy. Like you and countless others, I badly miss Blackmask. At the same time the copyright issues are far from clear.

    In a related vein, let us know if you find Doc Savage and other disputed titles at the gutenberg.cc. Last I checked, within the past few weeks, they were still listed. Are the actual copies still there?

    I’d hope not, in terms of Gutenberg’s good name. I don’t like the copyright laws, but if pub domain projects named Gutenberg (whether the original or not) don’t follow them, we may end up with still-worse laws.

    Michael Hart really does strive for copyright compliance, and I hope that his partners, affililates, etc., will feel the same.

    Meanwhile, having found that a previous letter went astray, I’ve again asked CN for its side. – David

  21. I believe that if a copyright had not been used for over 50 years then the copyright should be made null and void. Yes my external hard drive library contains much copyrighted material that I had gotten from several ebook sellers, but my hard drive library of ebooks and programs works similar to a public library.

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