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Speaking of books online, don't forget about Baen Books, and their free online library: http://www.baen.com/library/ they know that allowing people to sample stuff for free online is good for business. So you can download many of their books, quite legal.The thought is, if you like it you probably want to buy something from the same author (much as it is with music sharing, according to Janis Ian)

They serve a very valid and necessary purpose: protecting someone else from stealing your work and thereby depriving you of what you should be earning.

• You have the right to life.
• You have the right to do what you wish(liberty) so long as it does not violate my right to life.
• You have the right to pursue happiness so long as it does not violate my right to liberty or my right to life.

I came across his writing in Analog, as usual. Higher Learning is the first one that made me remember his name.

He didn't have any books in the current batch of books in the Baen Free Library, but there are a few Borderlands of Science columns at Baen.com

Yes, I'm sure John Ringo is wondering the same thing.

Actually, humans might have a better time of it than the Posleen. I've seen similarly daunting tasks performed quite well with machine vision and targeting systems.

What I don't understand is where the law is that says you are entitled to make huge sums of money because you can write and record a good song.

It actually says you're not. The copyright owner has the exclusive right to prepare derivative works from a copyrighted work, and the courts have interpreted "derivative work" quite broadly, especially in the commercial arena, where "fair use" seldom applies. Only 50,000 melodies exist in the Western musical scale, and by now, somebody probably owns them all. It's possible to infringe copyright without even knowing it. Without the ability to build on previous works, how will it be possible to create new works?

Found Cursed using Google (http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200108/0671318594__ c_.htm). As fireboy said, only up to and including Chapter 20 appear to be there right now. Seeing as how Consulted is the other part of that compilation, when might Consulted be available?

was written by Rick Cook.

Wizard's Bane, Compiled, and Cursed are all available online.

They're stories about a normal guy who is transported using magic to a fantasy world where he's the man because he's an excellent programmer.

Mix of my favorite genre's - fantasy and computers. He brings up TLAs (three letter acronyms), R2D2, the power of caffiene, the dragon book (for compiler writers), a spell called "hello world," emacs, and a lot of other funny stuff I can't remember. And it all seems to fit (not just puns thrown in there for their own sake, like the often-criticized Xanth books).

Now I REALLY want to go buy the next three. :)

From the article:

. Book publishers like Baen and O'Reilly, however, have found that they can increase sales of their printed books by giving away the digital versions for free. This has also been my own experience with my self-published physics textbooks. It's cheap marketing: readers can browse the digital book to see if it's something they want, and if they like it, they're willing to pay for the convenience of a printed copy.

Strangely, the author fails to link to the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/

It's funny. Publishers are starting to get what Microsoft has known for a while. 'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?

Fortunately, not all publishers are so inclined. (And y'know, if I'd had to choose one to be good about digital copying and stuff, I think Baen would have been the one I would have chosen anyway--since it publishes science fiction and fantasy, and not all the boring tripe that usually ends up on best-seller lists.)

I mean literraly there are only so many chords and note combinations possible. Unless something radical comes along I think that we will only have new instruments to rely upon.

Heck not even new instruments. If you use the same melody as a previously published song, you're likely to face legal action. Four notes are enough to infringe, and there are fewer than 50,000 possible combinations.

The theoretical limit on the number of distinct works is the subject of a short story called "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson. Read it and weep.

There are individuals who can create, and those that do not. The vast majority do not, but still wish to benefit from the labor of others. In politics, this desire leads to socialism. On slashdot, it leads to whiny teenagers demanding the 'right' to steal music or books because the Internet has made it easy to do so.

Really? Given that nothing is created in a vacuum, and given the author's right under copyright law to veto derivative works, is it even possible to create anymore?

But If you wrote a book, then one copy was sold and it was then photocopied 1000 times how would you feel??

But If you wrote a book, then one copy was sold and it was then photocopied 1000 times how would you feel??

These dangerous subversives have free books posted on their website!

Some Books to look at:

The 1979 Hugo and Nebula Award winning novel, The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke.

AND...

The Web Between the Worlds, by Charles Sheffield, using the same idea, published about the same time Clarke published his book.

AND...

Of course, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.

Baen Books, who are known on Slashdot for their Free Library, and who also offer their WebScriptions, all of which in several formats including e-books, do not to use encryption in the e-books they publish. Roughly, their argument is that it's costly, useless and unfair.

From the 6th Prime Palaver: The Library's track record shows clearly that the traditional "encryption/enforcement" policy which has been followed thus far by most of the publishing industry is just plain stupid, as well as unconscionable from the viewpoint of infringing on personal liberties. (...) the fundamental obstacle to the success of electronic publishing [is] the industry's obsession with encryption. I suggest you read the whole document, it's quite interesting.

Baen Books, who are known on Slashdot for their Free Library, and who also offer their WebScriptions, all of which in several formats including e-books, do not to use encryption in the e-books they publish. Roughly, their argument is that it's costly, useless and unfair.

From the 6th Prime Palaver: The Library's track record shows clearly that the traditional "encryption/enforcement" policy which has been followed thus far by most of the publishing industry is just plain stupid, as well as unconscionable from the viewpoint of infringing on personal liberties. (...) the fundamental obstacle to the success of electronic publishing [is] the industry's obsession with encryption. I suggest you read the whole document, it's quite interesting.

For another answer to DRM garbage, Baen, publishers of sci-fi and fantasy books have the 100% correct idea about eBook copy restriction and encryption:

Don't do it!

They just released the latest book in their Honor Harington series on Tuesday, and it included a CD with various formats of eBooks of every book in that series and other books that they publish. And best of all, no stupid restrictions. Here's their release about the CD.

I applaud their move, and recommend purchasing this book and others from them (Note: I'm a big fan of the author, David Weber, but not involved with Baen in any way, etc...).

For another answer to DRM garbage, Baen, publishers of sci-fi and fantasy books have the 100% correct idea about eBook copy restriction and encryption:

Don't do it!

They just released the latest book in their Honor Harington series on Tuesday, and it included a CD with various formats of eBooks of every book in that series and other books that they publish. And best of all, no stupid restrictions. Here's their release about the CD.

I applaud their move, and recommend purchasing this book and others from them (Note: I'm a big fan of the author, David Weber, but not involved with Baen in any way, etc...).

I would hate to sell like one cd and have 2 more unpaid for copies floating around. That's like giving away 2 apples for every one you sell! Kind of a sad business model...

Allow me to point out a few situations of reality for you here, because you're obviously living off in RIAA-Land.

First and foremost, CD sales were at a peak at exactly the same time that Napster was. RIAA killed Napster, and raised (artificially, at that) CD Prices at the same time. Suddenly, CD sales went through the floor. RIAA howled and screamed and pointed at their sales figures as "proof" that Napster was harmful. Riiiight...

Second, your assumption that, if you sell an apple, and because of that apple being turned into three apples magically and the other two given away, that you have lost two sales, is utter garbage. Why? Simple.

Odds are, the folks with those two magically duplicated apples most likely wouldn't have bought your album anyhow. One of them is a 14-year-old kid who gets beaten up by the school bully every day and rarely manages to hang on to enough cash to buy lunch. The other is someone who has only a passing interest in the genre, and so "steals" a copy of the apple to check it out. You didn't lose a sale, you've made a pair of sales for future albums if those two like it and someday can afford to get something.

It is *not* a sad business model, it's a pretty damned good one. It creates word of mouth advertising. "Man, SteveBee's Apple Stand has great apples, and he'll even give you a couple for free! Go check 'em out!"

There is nothing on this planet better for advertising than having folks get told by those they trust how good your product is. Eric Flint and virtually every other Baen Books author understands that. Check out The Baen Free Library and read the Prime Palavers some time. Their sales have increased from free books online, why wouldn't your sales increase from free music online?

Doesn't need to be digitised for most authors. They provide electronic copy to their publishers. Even for the Slush pile is preferred to be electronic.

This story has an interesting echo with Larry Niven's story "Fallen Angels," available from the Baen Free Library. It's the story of what happens when the anti-scientist green-earthers get their way and ban greenhouse gasses. Ironic that WHOI seems to think greenhouse gasses may cause an ice age.

This story has an interesting echo with Larry Niven's story "Fallen Angels," available from the Baen Free Library. It's the story of what happens when the anti-scientist green-earthers get their way and ban greenhouse gasses. Ironic that WHOI seems to think greenhouse gasses may cause an ice age.

While I agree with your cause, your statement is wrong. Sorry if this is nitpicking, but when it comes to legal semantics, you want to be as precise as possible.

Works can enter the public domain 2 ways -

1) Authors can wave it at anytime before it expires (and this does happen a lot, just check out the baen free library).

2) Works continued to enter the public domain (via expired copyrights) up until the first of a series of copyright extensions in 1961. The statement "Nothing written within 50 years of my being born has had its copyright expire" would be correct, but yours is not.

the number of possible melodies is 3^11 == 177147

Actually, 3 symbols in an alphabet of 11 is 11^3 not 3^11.

Even then, what about a repeated attack (think beginning of Beethoven's fifth symphony)? I originally had 11 there, but then I remembered repeated attacks and added the unison interval for a total of 12.

But then, every copyrighted music out there may not be copyrightable

That issue is explored in the anti-Bono short story "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson.

"Artists have been deluding themselves for centuries with the notion that they create. In fact they do nothing of the sort. They discover. Inherent in the nature of reality are a number of combinations of musical tones that will be perceived as pleasing by a human central nervous system. For millennia we have been discovering them, implicit in the universe--and telling ourselves that we `created' them. To create implies infinite possibility, to discover implies finite possibility. As a species I think we will react poorly to having our noses rubbed in the fact that we are discoverers and not creators."

She stopped speaking and sat very straight. Unaccountably her feet hurt. She closed her eyes, and continued speaking.

"My husband wrote a song for me, on the occasion of our fortieth wedding anniversary. It was our love in music, unique and special and intimate, the most beautiful melody I ever heard in my live. It made him so happy to have written it. Of his last ten compositions he had burned five for being derivative, and the others had all failed copyright clearance. But this was fresh, special--he joked that my love for him had inspired him. The next day he submitted it for clearance, and learned that it had been a popular air during his early childhood, and had already been unsuccessfully submitted fourteen times since its original registration. A week later he burned all his manuscripts and working tapes and killed himself."

Would you like to read more? :)

--

Why don't these people put their time to some constructive use and learn how to write actual music on their own

Could it perhaps be because songwriters either are close to running out of unique melodies or already have run out of unique melodies? (There exist fewer than 50,000 possible melodies; read this article to see why.)

That is why you do something like the Baen Free Library. Treat the free electronic copy as advertising.

The RIAA's fear and loathing of Napster notwithstanding, file sharing could be your best promotional tool, and a uniquely Internet-age opportunity to build a fan base without signing your interests away to the music establishment.

Make your songs freely available. Allow fans to trade them legally. Don't give up your copyrights entirely, but noncommercial copying should be explicitly allowed and guaranteed with the proper legalese. If someone wants to redistribute your songs and charge more than a nominal copying fee, they should negotiate a license with you. If Joe Sixpack likes your stuff and wants to burn free CD's for all his pals, count your lucky stars and leave him alone. The "lost sales" are more than compensated by the promotional value, and how many of Joe's buddies would have bought your songs if they've never heard of you anyway?

This will get you more exposure and gain you new fans who never would have heard of you otherwise. Signed bands with serious financial backing can afford to purchase exposure outright. Small indie bands cannot. Don't fret over control like the RIAA does; learn to let go control and the rewards will be much greater. It's kind of a Zen thing; go with the flow... (The Grateful Dead always encouraged their fans to trade "bootleg" recordings of their concerts; did it hurt them or create legions of Deadheads? Think about it.)

Don't just make 128 Kbps MP3's available, either. Offer uncompressed CD-quality .wav files for download, and let people redistribute those too! (Yes, they'll burn perfect CD's with them; deal with it.) Also offer high-quality as well as low-bandwidth versions in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats. (MP3 has the mindshare, but Ogg Vorbis is better.) Anyone who prefers a different encoder or bitrate can simply download the .wav file and encode it themselves.

Of course, there's a downside to this -- bandwidth costs could become significant. The best way to deal with this is to charge for downloads ($1.00 or less per song) and thereby encourage people to get it, legally, from a friend instead. This would reduce your costs (OPB -- Other People's Bandwidth!) while retaining the promotional value.

However, don't charge for the lowest-bitrate encodings! You need to make some version of each song available completely for free to seed some interest in the high-quality versions. The free version could be a 64 Kbps MP3, but it has to be available so people can hear the songs without paying any money or looking for copies elsewhere. If they like the song, they could then pay to download the high-quality .wav file...

For all versions you offer for download, publish the MD5 checksums on your website so people can get a copy from a friend, yet still verify the authenticity of the file.

Also, offer a way to "buy" songs (or simply donate money) for fans who want to support you, but don't need to download another copy. And, of course, sell CD's online for those who'd rather get something more tangible and simpler than dealing with downloading the songs.

Major record labels can afford to spend millions of dollars promoting the chosen few. Since you can't afford that, leverage Napster-like services to your advantage by allowing (and encouraging) free trading of high-quality digital copies of your songs. Trust that you'll do better with a smaller piece of a larger pie than jealously guarding a little pie...

(For an perspective from a different content industry, check out the Baen Free Library for similar arguments.)

p.s. Everybody knows Courtney shot Kurt Cobain. :)

--

Well, Cliff,

There's plenty of good stuff out there, but you'll have to do some editing. As somebody who grew up around teachers and has worked in textbook publishing I can assure you that teachers all have to do it too. Their stuff sucks far worse than anything referenced here.

While Project Gutenberg is great, you should also check out on-line encyclopedias like NuPedia, and Everything2 which are all open source, as is The Open Directory Project . A great source of fiction, which can be a wonderful learning tool, is Baen Books who have put hundreds of book online and are eager to have them downloaded and spread around.

For science materials, there are lots of great sites for kids done by educators pursuing whever they're into. All of which you'll want to use to spice up access to sites like Science Daily that are handy but a bit too serious some days for young minds.

Which brings me to Make Stuff which should fill in quite nicely for the "arts and crafts" part of most school curricula.

For biography I'ld check out American National Biography and for history a good start can be made with pages like Anyday which can be amazing or useless, all based on where *you* go from the starting point that they provide. Places like Colonial America are designed just for this but again, check out more than one.

For reference material you should check out Theodora which, while not meant to be open source, is very handy, Geographic.Org, which is open source and student-oriented, should do the rest. I've found that the CIA sourcebook is terrible, as folk should have long since figured out. Biased, misinformed, and sometimes just wierd; leave it behind. However if you hunt you'll find that within various.gov sites there's tons of great stuff, from manuals on camping to stuff on solar panels.

The space science community is very kid friendly, from NASA down to the local Mars Society chapter, having plenty of materials on quite a range of topics that you're free to reproduce and spread around. If you can handle it, the neopagan community is reliably eager to provide information and links on ancient indo-european history, from the government of Sumeria, to Celtic ironwork. (You might be surprised at how many neopagans have advanced degrees in history and/or literature.)

Speaking of limits, you'll always have to be careful that your kids aren't ending up places they shouldn't be but again, every teacher and librarian faces that one.

Lastly, the reason that I've got all this ready to hand is that I took it from my source database, more of which can be found on my web site, which is primarily oriented towards adults and older kids but does have plenty of other links like the ones here.

Best of luck to you and be sure to post back to slashdot in a few years about how it's going.

Rustin H. Wright - Information Geek
"It's all about the information, Marty. Little ones and zeros!"

There is a law, the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA"), that provides blanket authorization to sue the government. However, the FTCA only allows suits based on "operational" aspects of government duties. "Discretionary" decisions are not actionable.

Really? Then what's ACLU v. Reno? What's Eldred v. Ashcroft? (I wouldn't have so much of a problem with the Bono Act that Eldred et al. seek to overturn, except that in some fields such as songwriting, there exist only a limited number of possible original works, and it's possible to run out of them.)

In general, if a fellow wants to sue the government over a "discretionary" action, he sues the persons in charge of enforcing the regulation, such as the Attorney General, the head of the USPTO, the examiner who approved the patent, etc. in their official capacities. Hence, ACLU v. Janet Reno in her official capacity as AG, Eldred et al. v. John Ashcroft in his official capacity as AG.

From http://llr.lls.edu/eldred/martin-original1.pdf:

The fact that creators of new works cannot merely re-use the expression contained in copyrighted work of others without permission forces them to be creative. Composers cannot rehash the melodies created by earlier composers, they must create their own new original melodies.

How is this possible? Case law states that copying four notes of another song's "hook" is enough to get a songwriter in trouble with copyright law, and that the standard for copying is not an exact match but merely substantial similarity. Another case that I've read somewhere states that there is no unprotected "idea" in music, only "expression".

Melodies are determined by the distances between adjacent notes in frequency (intervals) and in time (note duration). Four notes will contain three (interval, duration) distance vectors. Assume that the scale contains twelve distinct intervals and that a judge will distinguish three distinct note durations (eighth, quarter, and half); thus, there are 36 possible distance vectors from one note to the next, and 36 to the third power equals 46,656 distinct melodies. No other melodies are possible in the Western musical scale. If only one hundred songwriters in the world were to create one melody each week, they would run out of melodies within nine years.

"Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson details the dire consequences of literally running out of new ideas.

"The Right to Read" by Richard M. Stallman is another interesting short story.

Free Speech doesn't give you the right to steal someone's work.

I understand what you're trying to say for code and for text, but music is different, as there is only a finite number of melodies. There are only 12 distinct notes in an octave, and about three meaningful durations in music (eighth note, quarter note, and longer than quarter note). Thus, the musical alphabet consists of 36 letters. In the United States, having four notes match four notes in a previously copyrighted song will get you sued; the precedent is the "Yes! We have no bananas!" case. For reasons explained in music theory (namely transposition and fermata), you can ignore the first note and the last duration, giving you effectively only three symbols in a melody. (If you're unclear on the math, reply, and I'll try to explain further.)

If you take 36 to the third power, you get fewer than 50,000 possible "hook" melodies, and given the number of musical works already registered at the Library of Congress, a songwriter is bound to write a song whose hook is "substantially similar" to one of them sometime or other. Arguing the coincidence defense (which is a valid defense under US copyright law, called "independent creation") costs more in legal expenses than most songwriters make in a year. So when almost all possible melodies are copyrighted, how will anybody be able to write music?

The solution is to nix the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and to set more realistic standards for what constitutes musical plagiarism.

I don't know of a p2p network that doesn't have a win32 client of some kind.

Somebody wrote comments in reply to this article, pleading for more testers of GNUnet and giFT, neither of which is "ready" enough to release Windows binaries, or even a source tarball that will compile properly under MinGW.

In a true p2p system, and user can kick any other user from their own server.

I was specifically referring to the policies of many Direct Connect hubs.

In other words, if someone has a bunch of files you want, download them one at a time.

I already do that, using software such as WinMX that supports a local queue.

[they'll] download when you're available [or if not] resume the file from other hosts.

And if I'm not available often (I only get 150 hours per month on my dial-up plan), then I feel like I'm cheating people who try to download rare stuff from me when I cut them off.

And what about recordings of my own performance? I'm a musician, but I suck at vocals so I just record instrumental music. How do I make those available on a P2P network? I can't use the "legit" solutions (Vivendi's MP3.com or Bertelsmann's New Napster) because they ask me to verify that nobody has already "taken" the melodies that I use in my compositions, and I don't know how to do that. Any pointers?

No. Using gnucleus on a modem is not a problem.

Is using gnucleus and WinMX on the same modem a problem?

You could profile the music and make a "Tolerance Level" where the song would just have to be close

And this is what commercially available audio fingerprinting solutions do.

but would that affect cover bands?

Why would that be a bad thing? When a fellow pirates a song, he breaks two copyrights: the copyright on the recording and the copyright on the underlying song. The original recording and a recording by a cover band are covered under the same copyright on the same musical work by the same songwriter.

BUT:

Pretty soon, songwriters will have the entire space of Western music covered with copyright. There exist only a limited number of notes in a chromatic scale (namely twelve) and a limited number of possible melodies of a finite length, and sooner or later, they'll all be used up. This is why you must petition your legislators to repeal copyright term extensions.

For long flights, I depend on my Visor Deluxe. Palm eBooks (such as the ones in the Baen Free Library), plus various Palm games: Rally 1000, Kyle's Quest, Taipan, etc. Kyle's Quest isn't free but there are a ton of levels for it that are free, and there are dozens of good free PalmOS games.

A PDA fits well on the tiny tray table, extra AAA cells are easy to bring, and battery life is excellent.

A Visor Deluxe is about $100 these days.

If you bring an iBook, you might want to look into a cable that will let you power it from the airplane somehow.

steveha

The first two books in the Honor Harrington series (On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen) are available in the Baen Free Library. You can download them and read them for free, or just read them from a web browser.

Reading those two books was enough to get me hooked on Honor Harrington, and I have bought all the rest. I bought them all as ebooks, from Baen. (I'm sure David Weber would be happy to hear that, since for ebook sales Baen pays authors double the paper-books royalty.)

http://www.baen.com/library/

steveha

Now if only they will do the same with Lois McMaster Bujold's "Miles Vorkosigan" series (also publish by Baen), I'll be a VERY happy girl.

The early Bujold works (including the books Falling Free and Ethan of Athos that others in this thread have mentioned wanting) are available at www.fictionwise.com. Combine this with several of the newer works that are available on Baen's www.webscription.net site, and there's just a few in the middle that are not currently available in ebook format. The latest WebScription setup even lets you buy individual books instead of a monthly bundle of books, if you prefer that.

I'm certainly hoping that the gaps in the Bujold ebook availability will get closed in before too long has passed, but I haven't heard if this is planned or not.

For those that haven't read any of Lois's work, you can get one of her short stories for free at the Baen Free Library -- The Mountains of Mourning. I heartily recommend it.

He also has a site.

Baen Books also has 40 books available for free at Baen Free Library in HTML, Palm, RTF and other formats. Check it out.

Dean Ing wrote a short story called "Malf" in which he describes a legged vehicle designed for logging. One of the walkers gets stolen by a Mafia-linked guy who uses it to rob a bank (!) and the good guys have to chase it down with another walker.

The story isn't online anywhere, but it can be found here.

Well, you can take a look at how trends in society have affected literature. I remember picking up a copy of The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle and finding that this newer edition had totally removed all references to the word "negro", since the original text might offend some younger readers (the Gutenberg linked above has the original, I think.)

I recently read a book by Ben Bova (The Watchmen), a re-release of a pair of novels originally written in the 60's, where he specifically says in the 1994 foreword that he did NOT alter the original text, and hence you would find women referred to generically as "girls".

I recommend reading through some of the rationale behind the Baen Free Library.

Before /. explodes into a massive frenzy against the recording industry and the senator from Disney, I have a question for the community:

What is OUR solution to the (perceived) crisis of "piracy" that is today's filesharing world?

Powerful lobbying interests are hell-bent on coming up with some sort of solution. We've all seen the laws being proposed to combat this and other DRM-related problems.

File-sharing may have a detrimental effect on sales. Then again, it may be helpful to sales. Either way, most file-sharing is theft - plain and simple.

I propose that if the online community can not come up with a way to deal with this issue, then the politicians and the lobbies will; and I am pretty sure that whatever they come up with will be a lot less freedom-friendly than what we'd like to see.

So moaning and complaining aside, what are our options? What can be done that is fair to artists and to consumers?

(steps off soapbox, slips on soap, lies unconcious for some time...)

Visit this link
Falling Angels

It is a book by Niven and Pournelle. It makes some excellent points about how little we know about climate change.

Right. Libraries. The publishing industry doesn't make much of a public fuss of it, but one of the goals that they are starting to consider reachable is using the growing copyright restrictions to shut down public libraries. In the eyes of publishers, libraries are nothing but open copyright violations. All the arguments being made about "piracy" apply directly to libraries.

In some quarters, yes, the above is true. (Harlan Ellison, ^h^h^h.) However, the publishing industry is much more divided on the question of "piracy." The audio industry (the corporations, that is) all agree that song swapping is inherently bad for their business. But in the publishing industry you find people who actually encourage book swapping -- and not just some authors. Check out the Baen Free Library, an archive of freely available books. There are some non-trivial names on the author list there (Jerry Pournelle, Lois McMaster Bujold, Mercedes Lackey) and it has official sponsorship from Baen Books, which is one of the largest publishers of science fiction and fantasy.

The introductory page by Eric Flint, "Introducing the Baen Free Library" is an eloquent argument for the share-and-share-alike crowd. Anyone who is interested in this debate, regardless of which camp you prefer, would be well advised to read that essay. (It's fairly lengthy, but worth the effort.)

This was, by the way, discussed multiple times on Slashdot.

Since you're probably too unmotivated to read it, let me extract a couple relevant sections:

Or, to move to American literature, I find the politics of Ernest Hemingway a lot more to my liking than the politics of William Faulkner. Yet, as a rule, I dislike the fiction of Hemingway -- I find his obsession with issues of "manhood" boring ("c'mon, Ernie, I figured this stuff out by the time I was seventeen; grow up, willya?") -- and I adore the fiction of William Faulkner.

Literature is not politics. The only time I will refuse to read the fiction writings of someone whose political views I strongly disagree with is if their actual writings are simply a thinly-disguised veneer for their political program.

...

Literature -- and popular fiction is no different, there's no Chinese wall separating the two -- is not politics. A writer as a political figure and his or her fiction are not the same thing. Their political and social views will, of course, influence their writings. But the way that influence works its way through can get extremely complex, even contradictory. And since no political viewpoint -- not even mine, as amazing as it may be -- ever captures all of human reality, you will often discover that a writer whose expressed viewpoints on political matters seems stupid or offensive to you still has something to say in his fiction which strikes a chord.

All points he makes apply directly to the Warcraft 3 / Blizzard situation. Blizzard's politics and the quality of their products are independent -- especially when you consider the people who create the games are a wholly separate group from those who make the political decisions.

And that applies to the MPAA, too. You can despise their political actions, but still appreciate the work by Sam Raimi, Stan Lee, and company; Peter Jackson, J.R.R. Tolkien, and company; and so on.

So by no means is it doublethink to say, "We dislike Blizzard's actions toward BNetD. In addition, we like Warcraft 3." Take your head out of that sandbox you've burried it in, and grow up.

Sort of like the Baen free library, which does the same thing with fiction. I don't know if you could do the same with software, but putting the full text of a book online tends to increase sales.

This novel is written in the present tense. If I were this author, I wouldn't do this -- it's gimmicky and will not make the novel any better.

Dune's just written in plain old past tense, yet this is one of the greatest works of Sci-Fi/Fantasy ever created.

Just write it in the past tense like everybody else.

the idea is to make it harder, since you can't make it impossible.