Hello,
Jack kindly informed me about this thread. I have been a member of this forum from the start, but because of many other duties with respect to the Buddhist Publication Society (BPS), of which I am the English editor, etc, I have little time and had not noticed this thread.
As regards the question why the
Path of Purification is not put online for free: It will be put online as a PDF for free on the BPS website and the Access to Insight website. Hopefully somewhere next year when the newly typeset and slightly revised printed edition will be put out.
Those who quickly scan in books and put them online as PDFs such as the Russian who scanned in the latest edition of the Path of Purification (1991) and put it online without having asked for permission to the BPS (Manapa gives the link) don't realize the huge amount of work it is to proofread, format and typeset a book, especially a large and complicated book like the
Path of Purification with its many headings and styles, etc. They also don't realize the cost of printing and distributing the book and the cost of maintaining an non profit publishing organization such as the BPS.
The
Path of Purification printed in by the Corporate Foundation of the Buddha in Taiwan, to which one of the posts in this forum refers, is a photocopy edition done without the permission of the BPS. The Corporate Foundation of the Buddha is careless with respects copyrights and has photocopy-reprinted several BPS books such as the
Great Discourse of Causation by Ven. Bodhi without seeking permission to the BPS.
The BPS is generally lenient in giving permission to reprint its books and regularly gives permission to organizations in Malaysia and Singapore to reprint books for free distribution. The BPS is also making all of its Wheel Publications and some other books available online on its website (
http://www.bps.lk/onlinelibrary.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;), a project which I have been organizing and which takes a lot of work. Many BPS books are also viewable on Google Books. The problem with putting larger books online is that it takes a lot of work and funds to produce them and there is the concern that organizations such as the Corporate Foundation will use the online digital files to reproduce the books without asking permission and that the BPS and its distributors in the US and Europe end up with stocks of books which can not be sold because everybody has already got the free books from our Mahayana friends in Taiwan. Another problem with making books available online for free is that everybody starts to copy it to their own websites with little effort, and sometimes without properly acknowledging the source website.
I hope to find some kind of middle way between making Dhamma books available online for free and on the other hand keeping the BPS going as an organization dedicated to publishing Dhamma books.
Regards,
Bhikkhu Nyanatusita
Editor
BPS
mikenz66 wrote:It says $20 at
http://www.bps.lk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This is a non-profit orgainization. Note that they have put many of their publications up as PDFs:
http://www.bps.lk/book_index.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Also see:
http://www.bps.lk/ourpublications.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
For the last year, the BPS has been busy digitalising, typesetting, and reprinting many of its publications that have gone out of print. We intend to digitalise most of our older publications and then make them available either as good quality printed books or as free online publications both in html and pdf formats. Eventually, all Wheel publications will be combined and republished as books. An online ordering catalogue is being created to enable our readers to order our printed books online through this website.
I'm not sure whether they intend to do this with the VM. Personally, I'd rather pay the order of 30USD for a nicely-bound version than print and bind it myself (which would probably be more expensive). I'd love to have a searchable PDF on my computer of course...
Mike