The responsibility of the electronic publisher generally rests with recreating the original printed material as closely and as accurately as possible in an electronic format. This accuracy relates to how the electronic edition is a verbatim copy of the originally published book. With materials whose original copyright has run out, the publisher is reprinting the original material, not updating or correcting it. Historical and genealogical publishers have been reprinting out of print books for years. The concept of reprinting is nothing new.
Electronic publishing is a new form on a very old idea.
The electronic publisher generally cannot change or correct the text, except to make corrections so that the data fits the originally published format. Generally books and other periodicals are scanned and character recognition software is used to interpret the characters and translate them. There are times when this is problematic and requires significant editing of the text after the original scan has been done. The editing and proofreading process is not perfect, and occasional errors do creep in. There are differences with those materials that are still under copyright to their original creators.