mdp2021 7 days ago

That is an elision for "public knowledge". Of course there are nuances. In the case of books, there is little doubt: printed for sale is literally named "published".

(The "for sale" side does not limit the purpose to sales only, before somebody wants to attack that.)

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LunaSea 7 days ago | parent [-]

Books are private objects sold to buyers. By definition, its not public knowledge.

	▲	mdp2021 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Again and again: the "book", the item, is a private object, access to the text is freely available - to those member of societies that have decided that knowledge be freely available and have thus established libraries. (They have collected the books - their own - so that we can freely access the texts.)