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Don't worry, there is at least one publishing house allowing an encouraging its authors to release stuff for free, Baen. They have their Free Library and in a number of their hardbound books they include a CD that states "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but not sold" , an archive of these CDs may be found here.

Don't worry, there is at least one publishing house allowing an encouraging its authors to release stuff for free, Baen. They have their Free Library and in a number of their hardbound books they include a CD that states "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but not sold" , an archive of these CDs may be found here.

[...] if people create intellectual property they have the right to do what the fuck they want with it, including NOT giving it away for free.

Then they can keep it to themselves if they wish. As soon as they make it available to the public, I have the right to do whatever the fuck I want with it. That is until the government restricts my legal right to do so in order to grant a limited monopoly on copying and distribution to the author. That right is granted by the government as an economic incentive to encourage the production of new works. That is the stated purpose in the constitution of the United States at least. Some other countries see it as a moral right, and the U.S. appears to be moving in that direction. The explained purpose of copyright extensions is to bring the U.S. in line with other countries in the world. In fact it acts to protect the corporate interests that own the large majority of copyrighted works. This occurs at the expense of the public domain and of the people. You should read Melancholy Elephants for a look at where we're headed.

The facts of changes in music buying habits are irrelevant [sic] to the rights and wrongs here.

Since the stated purpose of copyright is to provide financial incentive for the creation of new works, something that does not financially detract from the value of copyright should not be illegal. Extending the term of copyrights to 75 years after the death of the author does little more than the original 28-year term to provide incentive to create new works. On the other hand it restricts the rights of EVERYONE. Think about that. One person gets money for his works (or not since most works that old are of little value or it is his ancestors and most don't get the financial backing for another run of publishing) for 75 years. On the other hand, BILLIONS of people have their rights restricted for THEIR ENTIRE LIVES.

I will pose a simple question .... since when? The concept of an idea as legal property began with the 'Statute of Anne' in 1709. As of the writing of the US constitution it was still not settled that this was a good thing. So, unless you would like to call Benjamin Franklin a 'hippie communist' I think you might want to look at the actual history of the system.

Given your attitude, I will assume you didn't read any of the things I referenced ... so let me make it easier - courtesy of the Baen ELibrary - Thomas Babington Macaulay pointed out in 1841 that the granting of a monopoly on an idea harms society as a whole - this is not (or at least was not from the inception of copyright through the late 20th century a question, it was a given. The purpose of copyright is to balance that damage against the bennefit of freeing authors from a patronage system by providing them financial control over their works. (Actually it was to protect the publishers, but they got a bit screwed in the process with the authors initially coming out ahead until the publishers could buy the copyrights from them) The vast irony is that for music, we now have both the copyright system and the patronage system - both known to damage/restrict the public domain.

I really suggest you read the Macaulay speachs since they points out quite clearly the fact that marking the expiration of term of copyright from the death of the author cheats some of the greatest works of protection while simultaniously granting vast extensions on the - normally - much inferior works of the authors early career. Further they delv into the simple fact that people do not write or create art for the sake of people who won't be born until after their childred are dead. The stated purpose of copyright is to create an incentive for people to write by giving them control over their works. Beyond the lifespan of the author, there is little to no incentive. As Macaulay puts it 'But what I do complain of is that my circumstances are to be worse, and Johnson's [author of the first English Dictionary & dead 51 years at the time of the speach] none the better; that I am to give five pounds for what to him was not worth a farthing.'

Perhaps the most telling point is that 160 years ago Macaulay pointed out exactly what will happen when people cease to feel that copyright balances against the damage done to society:

At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, y

Copyright is not an unjust law. It exists to spur creation and innovation,

and for a lot of artists, it's the only thing that allows them to afford to create the content you unjustly enjoy.

The concept of a creator being able to exert some control over their creation so that they can profit from it and prevent its adulteration to a certain extent is not wrong.

And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.

while you might argue that the "true artists" would create anyway... how much less would they create when the only reward was personal satisfaction?

You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime.

I never got into fantasy novels though. "Boobs & Swords" books always struck me as cheesy.

There aren't hit points, or spells to cast (unless you're in the universe of Rick Cook's Wiz Zumwalt stories),

Actually the reality is authors who distributes their works for free (and of course sell hard copies) do very well as people like nice hard copies of books and most important is free books equals publicity.
Go here and read the first page, http://www.baen.com/library/ and while there download some books.

Here's a direct link to the referenced column on filesharing and the RIAA written by a music artist.

There is a great article posted on Baen's site about media pirating. It basically says anything I could possibly say but better. It comments on how badly the situation has been handled, how most artists should love the free exposure, and also states that the consumer and tax dollar should not be responsible for the music industry. If you are interested, it is part of the Prime Palaver by Eric Flint. Go to http://www.baen.com/library/ and the link is on left side of page - the article is #11 in the series (dated 9/16/2002 which shows that this is no new thing).
Incidentally - it is posted as part of the comments for their free library. That's right free. You don't even have to register. Is there anything better than a FREE BOOK? They have over 60 titles from some big name sci-fi and fantasy authors available to read online 'cause they practice what they preach. A perfect example of how giving people a chance to experiment with new authors (or musicians) will actually increase your sales.

eBook readers are perhaps a flop in that few will invest a device that does solely that, but eBooks as a whole gain in popularity every year.

One of the things that I really love about my Palm Treo is the ability to carry a small library around with me on an SD card. Wonderful for those 'downtime' moments like waiting at the mechanic or the doctor's office or useless meetings.

The format issues are a problem, but I figure they'll eventually all just be available as HTML and be converted to whatever "native" format is needed later. Sort of like what Baen Books is doing. (They're successful, too.)

No, it's actually the real-life location mentioned in Antigrav Unlimited.

Hmmmm, I think something along the lines of Dahak would be cool. For those that don't know about Dahak, read here

As a bonus, it would give me a fairly safe refuge from all those annoying IT patent laws etc that are getting passed around these parts.

Baen has been doing this for years: http://www.baen.com/library/

cdguru wrote:
Let's say you work for a book publisher. Today it is impractical to redistribute a book that you buy in a book store. And books in digital form aren't generally sold or not sold without some kind of protection.

Since you mentioned books, if you read sci-fi/fantasy, you might be interested in www.webscriptions.net. They sell electronic copies of books in convenient, DRM-free formats. You can also find the first few chapters or even entire books (with the author's permission) free of charge at the Baen books free library. If you like the author's writing, they likely have other books you can buy (in electronic or paper form). I appreciate being treated like a responsible adult by these authors and publishers, and have spent a fair amount, buying books by authors I normally wouldn't have tried.

I know some musicians are trying the same thing (They Might Be Giants, IIRC). I think the recording labels could learn a few lessons from them. Most likely, they'll continue sueing their customers, though.

The music market and the book markets may not be directly comparable, but Baen Publishing's experience with non-DRM'd open format ebooks (including some given away as free samples) show that (a) given a fair price, most people will pay for a product (even if they could get it "free" with a bit of hassle) and (b) free ebooks boost the sales of the paper copies.

Authors who have books with both Baen and other publishers, or who have compared notes with authors published by other publishers, note that their ebook royalties (at $2.50-$5.00 retail per book) are much better, both in $ and absolute number terms, than similar ebooks (same/similar authors & genre) at publishers that charge $15+ with all kinds of format restrictions. (Big surprise, eh?) They also not e that their books stay in print and selling longer if free e-versions are available (see Baen Free Library for more details, although I think some of the above data is from one of Eric Flint's editorials in the Baen's Universe zine.)

So, your "My money is that the DRM-free version makes a lot more money, simply because of its ease-of-use." is correct at least as far as ebooks go. I'm sure it'd be true for music and video, too.

But oddly enough, at least some people have found that free on-line editions of textbooks make the print versions sell better, too. See Flint's Prime Palaver #6.

One publisher "gets it" (and has for quite some time now):

http://baen.com/

Baen books (sci-fi and fantasy) does NOT use, nor support DRM, and offers all of their books in multiple DRM free formats for very reasonable prices (even their new releases are much cheaper in ebook form than in dead-tree form - as they should be).

Also see their new e-magazine, Baen's Universe, which includes a very good series of articles that tears down the idea of DRM:

http://preview.baens-universe.com/
(free preview version)

And one of the big publishers of e-books, Baen Books, not only doesn't bother with DRM, they make the content available in multiple formats, and even offer entire ebooks free (see the Baen Free Library.) They occasionally put out a CD full of big name SF and fantasy books, and encourage copying (just don't charge money for it). Anything to get folks hooked ;-)

The authors involved agree that this helps get their names out and generates demand for paper copies and paid-for e-copies of their work. The reduced overhead of e-publishing compared to paper publishing more than covers any "piracy", I guess. The "Baen's Universe" e-magazine pays the authors better rates than the current paper magazines (Asimov's, Analog, etc) do. (Don't know about the book payment side. I hope to find out first hand at some point ;-)

Actually ... the best "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" books I've read recenetly is the Council Wars series by John Ringo.

Any series whose first book ("There Will Be Dragons") starts with a future earth where teleportation, nanotech, true A.I., and personal force fields exist, and ends with the fall of civilization, orcs, and the forshadowing of dark elves is rather neat in my book. :)

Sony Portable Reader System PRS-500 is $350. That's without actually paying for the books. The couple of sites I've looked at recently have ebooks ranging in the $7-8 around the price of a paperback. That's another 50 or so books that you could have bought instead of the e-reader. You can pick up new hardcover books from Amazon's other sellers dirt cheap after a book has been out for awhile. There's about 50 sellers that have Davinci Code Hardcover for $7.50 shipped. I've never found a e-reader that justified its price. Since they haven't met the first criteria, I've never had to worry about whether or not DRM was used. I've read plenty of ebooks though on the computer. There are plenty of legal and illegal sources of free ebooks on the internet. http://www.baen.com/library/ has over 90 free books in various formats including RTF.

I guess I could just link to Baen Books here, or to any number of bands like the Barenaked Ladies who oppose DRM and have somehow managed to make an oodle of cash. If examples don't convince you, then you should think about the theoretical persepective that file sharing is nothing more than advertising for the work in question.

Baen has been including promotional CDs with selected hard-cover novels. You can get a copies of the cds here: http://oberon.zlynx.org/
Baen has a free library from many of their aurthors you can read them here: http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm

I've only bought 2-3 hardback books from them, but they've all been the ones with the CDs. (The CDS contain the text in txt, rtf, doc, html, and lit format.) If slashdot really wanted to collectively put our money where our mouth is we'd buy a copy of the 2-3 books or find other publishers that do the same thing and start making a list of books that have the text DRM free at no additional charge. I couldn't afford entire 10 book series from David Weber, but I can afford one book that has e-books of the rest of the series with it. I'm cheap and can support baen. If I've been able to do this, others should be able to do something similiar for the book genre that they like.

Phoenix stood in the center of the enormous room. It looked like a giant ice cream cone, sixty feet high, standing on its big end. At the slightly rounded base it was half as big across as it was high. It stood alone, with no scaffolding around it.

The book is available online from the Baen Free Library at: http://www.baen.com/library/

I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.

This is why I really love the ebook philosophy at Baen. Baen is a fairly large publisher of science fiction books. Real, paper books, sold in real bookstores. For the past eight years, every book they've published in paperback has also been for sale in electronic format on their web site. The ebook prices are comparable to the paperback editions, or somewhat less if you buy a bundle of all the new titles for a given month. The thing that makes Baen special is that they really dislike DRM of any kind. All their books are available as plain ol' HTML. No encryption, no special reader needed. I buy a lot of their books, and convert the HTML to something my Palm Pilot can handle. If the Palm ever dies, I can reconvert the HTML to whatever other format I need. If somehow all knowledge of HTML is lost to the world, I can still open the files in a text editor and read around the markup.

Baen also makes a huge portion of their back catalog available for free. Some of their hardback books have come with CDs chock full of free, complete novels. People are encouraged to copy and share the freebies with their friends. The Baen editors and authors say that the more free ebooks they give away, the more paper books get sold.

I do almost all of my fiction reading electronically. Probably 75% of what I read comes from Baen, because they have the titles, price, and philosophy that all hit my sweet spot. The other 25% are books that I own paper copies of, but that I've downloaded bootlegs off of alt.binaries.* because the ebook editions are either completely unavailable, locked to a format I can't use, or priced higher than the hardback paper editions. I don't mind paying for what I read, but ain't no way I'm going to pay a premium for an edition that will evaporate if some fragile piece of electronics dies.

I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.

This is why I really love the ebook philosophy at Baen. Baen is a fairly large publisher of science fiction books. Real, paper books, sold in real bookstores. For the past eight years, every book they've published in paperback has also been for sale in electronic format on their web site. The ebook prices are comparable to the paperback editions, or somewhat less if you buy a bundle of all the new titles for a given month. The thing that makes Baen special is that they really dislike DRM of any kind. All their books are available as plain ol' HTML. No encryption, no special reader needed. I buy a lot of their books, and convert the HTML to something my Palm Pilot can handle. If the Palm ever dies, I can reconvert the HTML to whatever other format I need. If somehow all knowledge of HTML is lost to the world, I can still open the files in a text editor and read around the markup.

Baen also makes a huge portion of their back catalog available for free. Some of their hardback books have come with CDs chock full of free, complete novels. People are encouraged to copy and share the freebies with their friends. The Baen editors and authors say that the more free ebooks they give away, the more paper books get sold.

I do almost all of my fiction reading electronically. Probably 75% of what I read comes from Baen, because they have the titles, price, and philosophy that all hit my sweet spot. The other 25% are books that I own paper copies of, but that I've downloaded bootlegs off of alt.binaries.* because the ebook editions are either completely unavailable, locked to a format I can't use, or priced higher than the hardback paper editions. I don't mind paying for what I read, but ain't no way I'm going to pay a premium for an edition that will evaporate if some fragile piece of electronics dies.

Book publishers are, more or less, on the side of good in this fight, so I think you have it wrong.

For example, I was buying eBooks off of Fictionwise long before anybody was selling music downloads. Fictionwise mostly offered and still offers PDF downloads that are almost completely unencumbered. (They often have silly prohibitions against printing which are easy to work around, but nothing ties the document to a single machine.)

The Baen Free Library offers a lot of Baen titles for free, even though they're still in print. Baen's WebScription offers a huge number of titles for electronic purchase.

Now, Baen is an extreme case, but in general it seems that publishers are significantly ahead on the technology curve compared to their less-enlightened brethren. In fact, book publishers seem to be the most enlightened of any traditional media (possibly excepting newspapers) and I would not be surprised if a large number of publishers started licensing their libraries for use in these machines, if they ever become more than a curiosity.

I'm not sure if you're accusing me of making a one-dimensional analysis,

Sorry, not at all. Just pointing out the limits of common run of the mill view points. Even a double axis may have its limitationsas you noted yourself. Note for comparision the Pournelle Axis.

You can probably have as many dimensions as seem reasonable. The fact of simply recognizing the issue does make it easier to deal with.

I hope you're right that DRM will kill itself, because there is a better way. For a look at how electronic books *should* be done, check out Baen. No DRM, explicit permission to share with friends, a library of completely free material to get you hooked, the first few chapters of *every* book are free, innovative ideas that really take advantage of the nature of electronic publishing, like electronic advance reader's copies -- read your favorite author's next book 4-6 months before it hits the shelves, and see it exactly as it came from the author's word processor.

Best of all, Baen's approach isn't just innovative and good for consumers, the publisher and authors are making money, too. Some of the authors have commented that their monthly royalty checks from electronic versions sometimes now exceed their royalty checks from paper versions. This in spite of the fact that the electronic editions still turn a much lower volume. And we're talking about books that are on the shelves in every Border's, Barnes & Noble, etc. in the US.

Note that my only affiliation with Baen is that I've spent more money than I want to think about since discovering their electronic books.

IF I remember them well: the copyright problem is older than the american costitution, it derives from an old english laws,

promoted by the book printer corporation (ex scribe corporation) to force other to cease the printing of books (to conserve their monopoly in spite of the new printing tecnology),

they introduced the "copyright" and buyed them from the authors (at a cheap price) than the law forced anyone else to cease printing those books, monopoly reestablised!

and that had many dire consequences, for example, if the corporation ceased the pubblication of a real good work and everyone is forced not to publish it an entire generation of people never had occasion to know it.

If you enjoy pulp adventures, I highly recommend Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe" books. Sadly there are only two so far, but I'm eager for more. The first one is available completely free from the Baen Free Library:

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

Enjoy!

steveha

In addition to the comments about SF author David Brin, David Drake's "Lacey stories" (Nation Without Walls, The Predators, Underground) are exactly as proposed here. Surveillance of everyone all the time, everywhere, and the average citizen can use a public terminal to watch any public figure. Though of course the super-rich have some ways around it. They are excellent stories, if a bit grim.

Speaking of which, the original three longish short-stories are long out of print, but they have been reprinted in Grimmer than Hell , which is/was supposed to make it into the excellent and non-DRM'd Baen Free Library, but hasn't yet. Also great stories, though as the title suggests, not exactly uplifting ones.

Unlike real goods which are never copied? Doh. Anything that can be made can be copied. Anyone with a copied item, bought or stolen, just has a lame bit of crap anyway. The interesting stuff is the original. Sure someone can buy a copy of a Picaso painting but that doesn't decrease the value of the original or the creator of the original.

I once briefly looked to play SL, but it wouldn't work over dailup so I dismissed it. I've kept eye on them because it sounds interesting. I've read copies of books and played warezed games. Um my enjoyment and/or usage of the works was not reduced because I couldn't pay $20 for each book or $50 for a legit copy of game.
http://www.baen.com/library/HLMyers.htm "The Creatures of Man" has an interesting short story where commerce is run by a variable apprecation amount that was determined by AIs. I eat the same thing from McDonald's each time I go there and it costs $6.09. Under the apprecation scheme some days that meal could vary from $.10 to $10 depending on how much that I apprecated the meal.

After reading about the premise behind CopyBot was just to give users import/export ability so that they could backup their stuff, I was kinda of stunned that they couldn't do that it some form or fashion esp. since SL seems to cost much more real world money to play around in if you aren't running your own shop there. I'm kinda surprised that a content creator couldn't backup everything that they've created. I'm kinda neutral about SL's DRM since I don't know how it works and haven't played around in that world. I'm kinda curious that the SL doesn't have way to for your content consumers to copy/backup your sold content and if they make copies for friends or what not for each copy to automatically give you the game currency amount that it was worth unless it was a restore from backup. I'm kinda confused though. This CopyBot is supposed to be for Content Creators and not for what I'd term Content Consumers. I'd want a backup tool of some kind for the content consumers, but they shouldn't be able to clone/copy and take ownership of content. It sounds like the CopyBot is a bit flawed to me. Though they did say that in one of those lines that they were able to copy the premissions, but it was a one line comment to remove that premissions copy from the program.

I predict that this will happen shortly after all composers simply re-arrange themes and phrases from previous musical pieces in order to create any new compositions

Unfortunately, this already happens. The standard for a "substantial" portion under US copyright case law is so short that most melodies are likely already taken. Spider Robinson wrote a short story about such a situation.

Quite a few it turns out.

http://www.baen.com/library/
The Baen Free library provides free scifi works which are also published by Baen books.

Some of these are entire works, some are as you suggest the first book (or two or three) of multi-part works. The majority of authors who decided to participate and give thier works away tended to see a segnificant improvement of sales of thier books.

Read the rest on the site for more information.

The Baen Free library has been giving away free copies of the first books in series, and it seems to work

Because the ability to electroicaly distribute the books is one of the big advantages of E-books. And there are E-books available without DRM. In fact, the ones without DRM seem to sell better than the ones with it. Shameless plug for a publisher I like. Take a look at Baen They determined that contrary to popularly held opinion that not treating your customers like criminals increases sales of both electronic and print books. They even give away several of their books, since they found that amazingly, people buy books they have already read.

I read most of my fiction as e-books. On the other hand, most of the fiction I read is military science fiction and one publisher puts all of it's new books in e-format. Unrestricted even, so you can give them to a buddy, read them on as many devices as you want, even edit them if you really feel like it. They determined not having DRM helped with their sales of e-books, and the paper versions of the same books. And the books are rather cheap, since Baen sees them primarily as a way to sell more books.

There are a few publishers that get the potential of online books. See, for example Baen Publishing. They have quite a few of their books available at the Baen Free Library. Amazingly, the publisher has found, that by making the books freely available to anyone who wants them in formats convienient to the reader, that sales of those books and authors have increased substantially. Jim Baen, God rest his soul, was a visionary. When I go to a bookstore, I always look for new Baen titles, because I really like doing business with folks that don't think I'm a criminal.

There are a few publishers that get the potential of online books. See, for example Baen Publishing. They have quite a few of their books available at the Baen Free Library. Amazingly, the publisher has found, that by making the books freely available to anyone who wants them in formats convienient to the reader, that sales of those books and authors have increased substantially. Jim Baen, God rest his soul, was a visionary. When I go to a bookstore, I always look for new Baen titles, because I really like doing business with folks that don't think I'm a criminal.

The question is whether or not the additional income from increased ticket sales at live shows and merchandise sold (even additional recordings) to people who otherwise wouldn't have heard of the band more than compensates for the potential income lost from sales of DRM-protected recordings to people who have already heard of the band. My own personal belief is that those people who have tried it (like Janis Ian) have found that it does. In any case, as Cory Doctorow put it in a speech to Microsoft:

No Sony customer woke up one morning and said, "Damn, I wish Sony would devote some expensive engineering effort in order that I may do less with my music."

If you like Sci-Fi/Fantasy at all you should check out Baen.

While many publishers are overcharging for e-books, Baen books http://baen.com/ sell electronic versions in multiple formats for very reasonable prices. I can buy six or seven Baen novels in a package for $US 15.00 without any DRM http://www.webscription.net/.

Individual books are between $4 and $6.

Baen also has more than eighty novels available for free (again no DRM) here http://www.baen.com/library/

For several years I've been reading e-books on my palm pilot (currently a Tungsten T5) with plucker . I need the PDA for work anyway and it allows me to carry several novels with me everywhere I go.

Delayed at the doctor's office for 30 minutes? It's an opportunity for me to enjoy a chapter or two from David Weber's latest :)

If you like Sci-Fi/Fantasy at all you should check out Baen.

While many publishers are overcharging for e-books, Baen books http://baen.com/ sell electronic versions in multiple formats for very reasonable prices. I can buy six or seven Baen novels in a package for $US 15.00 without any DRM http://www.webscription.net/.

Individual books are between $4 and $6.

Baen also has more than eighty novels available for free (again no DRM) here http://www.baen.com/library/

For several years I've been reading e-books on my palm pilot (currently a Tungsten T5) with plucker . I need the PDA for work anyway and it allows me to carry several novels with me everywhere I go.

Delayed at the doctor's office for 30 minutes? It's an opportunity for me to enjoy a chapter or two from David Weber's latest :)

What that means is I read a large amount of ebooks. Baen books, http:/// www.baen.com , was started by the dearly departed Jim Baen who saw the internet as a way to hook readers. They created http://www.webscription.net/ which has most of their library for sale. Books which aren't even in hardback and are 2+ months from publication are $15. Books in hardback are around 6. Older books are even cheaper, some less than $4.

All of them DRM free.

Jim Baen has been a very passionate voice in the publishing industry against the concept of DRM because it assumes the customer is a Crook. He, and some writers (multiple NY times bestselling writers) decided that it was best to not DRM and to not charge an arm and a leg. Ebooks have low costs, and once the hardware is paid off the only costs are maintenance. They went a step further with a free library of Ebooks, mostly slightly older works and the starts of popular series.

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

Eric Flint has a nice editorial about the system. The idea is if the books are good, and people share them, Bully! Sharing books gets more people to read them. You might not buy the paperback, but 5 people you share your ebook with might. Or they might buy the hardcover of the sequel. The authors who are in the library have all had greatly enhanced sales.

One step further are their cds. Many hardcovers have a cd in the back with ebook collections related to that book. They even post them online for free, with the only stipulation is you don't profit off their ebooks. http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

Probably the pain in the ass factor.

If I rip a track off one of my own CDs, the MP3 can be played anywhere. DRM-crapified files can only be played back on special computer players or hardware players with DRM implemented.

Music isn't the only place where DRM has been tried. The publishing industry has been trying DRM-contaminated e-books for years. Nobody seems to want them. If I can only read a book on my computer, I tend not to bother buying it.

The only mass-market publisher who is making money on e-books that I know of is the SF publisherBaen Books. Their e-books are DRM free and available in multiple formats (RTF, html, pdb, etc.) , which saves me the trouble of converting for my Palm PDA where I do most of my offline reading these days.

They even give away free content at the Baen Free Library, large chunks of their backlist from name SF authors. If one reads 6 books of a series, it's hard to justify not buying the 7th book in a series.

It's convenient. Pay online and immediately download, unzip, and if one is reading on a PDA, upload to it. (you could even print from OpenOffice, though at that point, it's cheaper to order from Amazon) They even make advance copies of some books available for people who don't want to wait for the release versions.

They've got me buying books again, I spent over $100 with them last year.

Perhaps the record industry could learn from their example, if they were capable of learning.

Reminds me of the boot Thrice Upon a Time by James P. Hogan where one of the scenarios is the world is destroyed by a CERN fusion generators that uses inertial confinement and ends up producing mini black holes as a byproduct.

I am not vision impared, but I have also run across several other sites with thousands of free online classic stories. They were most likely not set up specifically for vision impared people. These are the websites that I have run across:

• Project Gutenberg
• Arthurs Classic Novels
• University of Virginia Library's Etext Center
• Baen Free Library
• Planet PDF Free PDF eBooks Archive

I hadn't heard of fictionwise, but I had heard of their competitor, http://www.baen.com./ They were the first company to give books away for free, and I suspect they did drm-free before fictionwise, too. I have read at least half of their free books, and they are pretty darned good. I've also bought quite a few from them now, as they were sequels to the ones I read for free.

I could simply have stolen them from usenet. Instead, I paid for them because I like the company, I like their products, and it was the right thing to do.

I will -never- buy DRM protected books. I will use the -shudder- library first.

On the same note... http://www.allofmp3.com/ sells drm-free music. We ALL know how easy it is to steal music, and yet they manage to sell it. Price and convenience, plus the fact that nobody really -wants- to steal. (Well, except mentally-deficient people.) A combination of pressures (monetary, etc) forces them to. I won't even go into that. Everyone has their reasons and very few 'just felt like it.'

DRM-free content CAN WORK. It just has to be the right price with the right customer service, convenience, etc.

Yes, and Flint has even more to say on DRM, free books and the future of publishing.

It's evil I tell you. EEeeeevil! I happened upon the free library, and now Baen has my soul and my wallet. Be forewarned.

Regrettably , to ask Jim Baen is no longer possible, as he passed away this June, following a massive stroke http://www.baen.com/.

It will be interesting to see if Mr Baen's forward-thinking approach to publishing is continued by the company. According to the above-linked obit, they do intend to maintain current policies.

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