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Well, you could've if he hadn't've died not too long ago. But anyone at Baen Books could tell you, since that's exactly what they're doing. They publish books in electronic form, with no DRM or other technical restrictions on them. HTML is one of the formats. Some of the e-books they give away, others they sell in both electronic and dead-tree format. And you know the odd thing? The books they give away actually sell more copies. Just look at what Eric Flint has to say on the front page of the Baen Free Library. People not only buy the e-book form of the very books they can get for free, they buy the dead-tree form too. And they buy other books by the authors who have their work up in the BFL. Enough so that those authors have actually seen their back-list sales increasing. That never happens, or at least never until the BFL appeared.

You want to know how to make money with freely-available content? Go ask the people who're doing it today.

Well, you could've if he hadn't've died not too long ago. But anyone at Baen Books could tell you, since that's exactly what they're doing. They publish books in electronic form, with no DRM or other technical restrictions on them. HTML is one of the formats. Some of the e-books they give away, others they sell in both electronic and dead-tree format. And you know the odd thing? The books they give away actually sell more copies. Just look at what Eric Flint has to say on the front page of the Baen Free Library. People not only buy the e-book form of the very books they can get for free, they buy the dead-tree form too. And they buy other books by the authors who have their work up in the BFL. Enough so that those authors have actually seen their back-list sales increasing. That never happens, or at least never until the BFL appeared.

You want to know how to make money with freely-available content? Go ask the people who're doing it today.

http://www.baen.com./

Scroll through the obit, then go to the Library (Free Samples) section, and see what author Eric Flint has to say. Or, just pick a book and read it!

Enormous, multi-year in some cases, initial creative effort? Check.
Profit? CHECK!

Baen gets it.

The wonderful thing about anything published by Baen is that free samples are almost always available. For example, the book you are talking about, you could have read the first 9 chapters of to see if you liked here. baen.com will give you links to their publishing sched, samples from almost all their books, and a number of free books curtesy of Baen's Library (tm)...

All these patent disputes remind me of the short story Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson.

http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___ 1.htm

You'd have to read Empire from the Ashes (or one of the component books, this is a trilogy-in-one) by David Weber.

It's a starship.

No, really. (Ignore the SQL error, click the art galleries.)

Wasn't this the plot of a sci-fi novel? (You can read the first book, in its entirety, free courtesy of the Baen free library)

This Wikipedia page has lots of Honorverse links within it.

David Weber (the author concerned) has plenty of well-matched technology in his books, several of which are available here, complete. You can also join Baen's Bar to ask questions and generally discuss the properties of not just the Honorverse, but basically any of the Baen-based universes.

Jim Baen, the book company's founder, recently and sadly died from a stroke but thoughtfully had already left plans in place for Baen Books to continue in his absence.

This Wikipedia page has lots of Honorverse links within it.

David Weber (the author concerned) has plenty of well-matched technology in his books, several of which are available here, complete. You can also join Baen's Bar to ask questions and generally discuss the properties of not just the Honorverse, but basically any of the Baen-based universes.

Jim Baen, the book company's founder, recently and sadly died from a stroke but thoughtfully had already left plans in place for Baen Books to continue in his absence.

This Wikipedia page has lots of Honorverse links within it.

David Weber (the author concerned) has plenty of well-matched technology in his books, several of which are available here, complete. You can also join Baen's Bar to ask questions and generally discuss the properties of not just the Honorverse, but basically any of the Baen-based universes.

Jim Baen, the book company's founder, recently and sadly died from a stroke but thoughtfully had already left plans in place for Baen Books to continue in his absence.

Peruse the Baen Free Library, where you can read books online, or download them in any of several formats for reading on your palmtop, 'puter, or even some dead trees. And, even better, ZERO CRM. That's right, a publisher who DOESN'T ASSUME THE CUSTOMERS ARE THIEVES. . . .

And, afterwards, pull up a chair at the Baen Bar, where we talk. . .

Methinks you'll be both welcomed AND feel at home. . . .

(Slashdotter since 1998, Barfly since 1999)

Peruse the Baen Free Library, where you can read books online, or download them in any of several formats for reading on your palmtop, 'puter, or even some dead trees. And, even better, ZERO CRM. That's right, a publisher who DOESN'T ASSUME THE CUSTOMERS ARE THIEVES. . . .

And, afterwards, pull up a chair at the Baen Bar, where we talk. . .

Methinks you'll be both welcomed AND feel at home. . . .

(Slashdotter since 1998, Barfly since 1999)

Peruse the Baen Free Library, where you can read books online, or download them in any of several formats for reading on your palmtop, 'puter, or even some dead trees. And, even better, ZERO CRM. That's right, a publisher who DOESN'T ASSUME THE CUSTOMERS ARE THIEVES. . . .

And, afterwards, pull up a chair at the Baen Bar, where we talk. . .

Methinks you'll be both welcomed AND feel at home. . . .

(Slashdotter since 1998, Barfly since 1999)

Sounds like someone's sci-fi diet doesn't include enough Vitamin Baen.

And yes, you hold William Gibson (heck, while we're at it, grab Steve Gibson too) down, I'll go get the feathers to torture him with. His latest crop of books make me want to gouge my eyes.

Baen ( http://www.baen.com/ ) sell their ebooks without DRM. Plus their "library" has a lot of free samples to get your interest up. Big fan of these guys but their SF&F focus won't be everyone's cup of tea.

Have you tried their Free Library or one of their copyable book CDs yet?

HTML and a variety of other common document formats, and the right to copy sans only the right to sell your copies. Oh, yes, an addiction warning: great authors and many great stories are provided.

Greetings,

http://www.baen.com/ has been doing this for years. Additionally there are two government standards boards who have been doing it even longer than Baen Books. There are music companies doing this as well, most notably http://www.magnatune.com/.

Now, while I buy books from other publishers than Baen, I find that I buy 4x from Baen than I buy from any other publisher. To be honest, it was their free books that got me hooked. I was bored one night and looking for the next book to read, I tumbled across Baen's free library and picked an author at random. The author's name is David Weber and I enjoyed the book so much that I went out the following weekend and bought the entire series (8 books at the time). A couple weeks later, I went about the complete series again and sent it to a friend. And then about 6 months ago, I bought the entire series again (Up to 11 books now) and donated them a local library. All total that is roughly $300 that I have spent, and I have since found another 5 authors in their stables that I read almost religeously.

Magnatune is similar, I first heard about them when a friend handed me a CD (This is legal under Magnatune's rules) with about 200 MP3's of music from their stable. I found that I really liked 6 of the artists on there and have since bought every CD that each of those bands has. BTW, I have not bought music from any of the RIAA companies since I found Magnatune.

Baen Books sell DRM-free on-line books and other media.

Did something else important, too. Chose authors like David Weber, Eric Flint, Karen Koehler, Tim Zahn, David Drake, Piers Anthony, Jerry Pournelle, Mercedes Lackey, Larry Niven and other top writers (all interesting authors) to sell.

They also have a free library which you can read from in two clicks.

Baen Books sell DRM-free on-line books and other media.

Did something else important, too. Chose authors like David Weber, Eric Flint, Karen Koehler, Tim Zahn, David Drake, Piers Anthony, Jerry Pournelle, Mercedes Lackey, Larry Niven and other top writers (all interesting authors) to sell.

They also have a free library which you can read from in two clicks.

a good article is at http://www.baen.com/library/

you could read the rationale of the publisher and many of his autors who offer free e-book to boost the selling of other e-book/books of the same author.

trying to summarize: to them downloading a book when you are young and have few money could be the same that havig one from the local library, if you like the autor then, in the future when the money for some book will be a no-problem you will buy a lot.

[To reach those without the net,] Then, as now, you sell your disks from the stage.

I was going to make a comment about genres that aren't amenable to live performances. But now I realize that the genres don't overlap much, and touring might actually work to reach them.

You're mixing this argument up with digital distribution of other peoples music.

How can I tell whether a song that I have written is in fact "other peoples music"?

You're saying because it's easier for me to distribute music, it's easier for me to get in trouble distributing music.

That's one way of putting it. With electronic distribution, it's easier for a small-time recording artist to inadvertently get the attention of a representative of an overly litigious music publisher.

the majors must transform themselves into frivolous lawsuit machines (see: linux, software patents etc) we shall see.

Assume that a recording artist claims in good faith to have written a song, and then the artist self-publishes a recording of that song. If there's nothing to prevent music publishers from going lawsuit-happy, riding high on the precedent set in Bright Tunes and in Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton, then how can the artist cover his proverbial backside so that he doesn't end up bankrupt and listed on Wikipedia as notable for being an artist who got made an example of?

When you submit a screenplay to an agency in the film biz you sign a piece of paper saying: Even if we steal this you can't sue. To protect them from IP problems.

This is intended to avoid the "access" element of infringement. But unfortunately, a small-time recording artist can't take advantage of this because the publishers are likely to make a good circumstantial case that the artist had ample opportunity to access a copyrighted musical work that was put into rotation on commercial FM radio. Such a line of reasoning demolishes the independent creation defense, in effect transforming a copyright into a patent on a given melody. See "Three Chords and the Truth Part II" and "Melancholy Elephants".

As for which is most useful for me, it's a tossup between the ability to stick an entire library in my pocket and the ability to take notes that not only do I not have to decipher afterwards, but sync them straight into my Linux box. Unfortunately, Informit hasn't published my how-to article yet, all I can say is to check the site every few days, it should be out Real Soon Now.

Plus, of course, if it is one of those middle-of-the-night inspirations, I don't have to turn on a light and look for a pen and paper, just grab the PDA and start writing on the display with my fingernail. Try and do that with a 'smart' cellphone.

Depends; did the "smart" hacker get caught flagrantly violating federal law? Perhaps doing something mindbogglingly stupid, like trying to social engineer his way into the FBI's systems? Then I'll take the nice one, because the "smart" one is nowhere near as smart as he thinks, and probably not as smart as he claims. Personally, when I need to dig through dirt, I find a shovel is more effective than a worm, and additionally lets you keep the crap at arms length.

"There is an unwritten rule among us, Richars; if you attempt any ploy on the far side of ethical, you'd damned well better be good enough at your game not to get caught. You're not good enough." — Count Falco Vorpatril in Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign.

he referred in that book to a world that was suffering from an ice age, but that was not the issue, and it was not solved it in the text...

Acutally, the book was Fallen Angels by Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn, and it went a little further than that. The ice age had been held off by pollution-related greenhouse warming. It was only after the world cleaned up its act that the ice age came on.

It's a great book. The heroes were SF fans.

They know that just because anyone can "create content" and distribute it easily doesn't mean that it's worth anything, even if it is given away. Sturgeon's Law, right?

And the sad truth is: Even as the Internet has created a new distribution medium that is increasingly accessible, much of what is distributed through it *is* crap. Look at all the blogs, discussion sites and so forth, and tell me I'm wrong.

Like most of the so-called music that populates the charts these days ;-)

For an example of good free content, consider the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm
A collection of older SciFi novels that are given away as marketing(?) freebies by the Baen publishing house. And it works BTW:
Most of the books I buy for entertainment these days are from Baen.

Rats, Bats, and Vats

And just in case you were still wondering:

Subject: Re: Slashdot on Ebooks:
Author: Jim Baen
Date: 11 Mar 2006 11:32 AM
Originally Posted: 11 Mar 2006 12:49 PM

There were no limitations beyond those stated. Copy freely and share with
whomever you like. You have the Boy Scouts mailing list? Share with the Boy
Scouts.

Example: if every person in the world downloaded a copy of David Weber's
latest, and just loved it to pieces, how would that affect David's career?
Absolute worldwide frenzy for his next, I'd say. How would that be bad for
David? I bet there would be an incredible black market for snippets of his
partially written next one. (Hah! Maybe this is my secret plan!)

I sure am glad I'm smarter than every other publisher, or maybe just not so
susceptible to hypnosis. Hey whatever happened to Gutenberg? Did they burn
him at the stake, or did he just live the quiet life of a German burgher?
Lot's of others got burned, but that was for Bible stuff.

I think I might be starting to need the protection of a couple of German
Princes. Hey, I've _got_ the preliminary tentative protection of a couple
of German princes! :) :) :)

It's quite in keeping with the spirit of the license. Read some of the "Prime Palaver" articles in their free library (http://www.baen.com/library). Jim Baen distributes free ebooks like crack. "The first hit is free, little one...". And he is aware of the CD ISO images being distributed, and has no objections. IIRC a couple of the people hosting them even asked for permission to be certain.

186,000 mi/sec: not just a good idea, it's the LAW!

I get mine from Baen Books, and usually "carry" four or five books loaded on my Palm VX. They're great, when waiting for appointments or buses.

Baen does not use DRM. They're good folks. They even have a bunch of free books, to get you hooked on their authors.

Exactly. Incentive to buy the hardbacks. Baen's a rather canny fellow, as he knows what the posts to this article have demonstrated: while there are some people who enjoy reading ebooks, the vast majority of people don't--but they may, out of curiosity, poke around and read a chapter or two on the screen, just enough to decide that they want to buy the print version. To Baen's mind, the more people who are exposed, the more people will buy the books. I don't have any links I can point to for specific proof that this is what he intends for the CDs rather than just the Free Library--the original Baen's Bar posts have long since expired--but that is his intention.

It will be interesting to see if Baen's philosophy changes any in the future when ebook readers pass the usability hurdles and come into more common use as direct substitutes for paper versions.

Baen rock. Their Webscriptions service is a great way to get books online--they've taken a fair chunk of my spare change that way. And the Baen Free Library is what introduced me to the works of Lois McMaster Bujold.

Baen rock. Their Webscriptions service is a great way to get books online--they've taken a fair chunk of my spare change that way. And the Baen Free Library is what introduced me to the works of Lois McMaster Bujold.

Baen rock. Their Webscriptions service is a great way to get books online--they've taken a fair chunk of my spare change that way. And the Baen Free Library is what introduced me to the works of Lois McMaster Bujold.

I'd like to ask what keeps you personally from reading e-books?

Lack of content and overreaching DRM. The selection of devices doesn't help either.

I'm a big fan of Baen's online books. They're quick to purchase, and simple to download to a Palm Pilot. And should you need to file again, you can easily redownload it from your "personal library" feature on Baen's site. Not to mention that they give away free books to get you hooked on new series.

Downloading to my Sony Clie was the perfect way to read eBooks, too. The backlight was pure white, the fonts were crisp, and the scroll-wheel on the side meant that I could hold the device in a pistol-grip in my palm rather than balancing it between my thumb and finger-tips so that I can thumb the up/down buttons on the front. (Sony screwed this up in later models, BTW. They replace the up/down buttons with a wheel, and eliminate the wheel on the side.)

The Clie wasn't so good for technical books (the layout is screwed), but for fiction it was great! I could stand on the bus and read without the difficulties of trying to turn the page on a paperback with one hand. Plus, the Clie fit in my pocket much easier than a paperback, and wouldn't lose its place when I needed to stash it away quick so that I don't miss my stop.

The only real problem I had was that I ran out of content. Baen has some great books, but they're no Simon & Schuster. I looked into other sites, but it was just too much pain and anguish for me to want to bother with. Most sites had a poor selection (though I have noted that selection has been improving lately), limited you to DRM formats (most of which don't work on a Palm Pilot), overcharged for their titles, and just generally hassled the consumer as if he was a theif who should feel honored to have limited access to stuff he paid for.

Thanks, but no thanks.

More publishers should pay attention to Jim Baen. Not only does he release titles you buy in open formats; not only does he give away free books; but he bundles CDs with many hardcover books that are chock-full of eBooks (such as the entire Honor Harrington series). In addition, the license on the CDs state that you can make copies and give them away to friends and family. No restrictions, as long as you're not making a profit.

Now THAT, is how you grow a business. Not by treating the customers like criminals, but by treating them like valued friends. =)

I'd like to ask what keeps you personally from reading e-books?

Lack of content and overreaching DRM. The selection of devices doesn't help either.

I'm a big fan of Baen's online books. They're quick to purchase, and simple to download to a Palm Pilot. And should you need to file again, you can easily redownload it from your "personal library" feature on Baen's site. Not to mention that they give away free books to get you hooked on new series.

Downloading to my Sony Clie was the perfect way to read eBooks, too. The backlight was pure white, the fonts were crisp, and the scroll-wheel on the side meant that I could hold the device in a pistol-grip in my palm rather than balancing it between my thumb and finger-tips so that I can thumb the up/down buttons on the front. (Sony screwed this up in later models, BTW. They replace the up/down buttons with a wheel, and eliminate the wheel on the side.)

The Clie wasn't so good for technical books (the layout is screwed), but for fiction it was great! I could stand on the bus and read without the difficulties of trying to turn the page on a paperback with one hand. Plus, the Clie fit in my pocket much easier than a paperback, and wouldn't lose its place when I needed to stash it away quick so that I don't miss my stop.

The only real problem I had was that I ran out of content. Baen has some great books, but they're no Simon & Schuster. I looked into other sites, but it was just too much pain and anguish for me to want to bother with. Most sites had a poor selection (though I have noted that selection has been improving lately), limited you to DRM formats (most of which don't work on a Palm Pilot), overcharged for their titles, and just generally hassled the consumer as if he was a theif who should feel honored to have limited access to stuff he paid for.

Thanks, but no thanks.

More publishers should pay attention to Jim Baen. Not only does he release titles you buy in open formats; not only does he give away free books; but he bundles CDs with many hardcover books that are chock-full of eBooks (such as the entire Honor Harrington series). In addition, the license on the CDs state that you can make copies and give them away to friends and family. No restrictions, as long as you're not making a profit.

Now THAT, is how you grow a business. Not by treating the customers like criminals, but by treating them like valued friends. =)

I'd like to ask what keeps you personally from reading e-books?

Lack of content and overreaching DRM. The selection of devices doesn't help either.

I'm a big fan of Baen's online books. They're quick to purchase, and simple to download to a Palm Pilot. And should you need to file again, you can easily redownload it from your "personal library" feature on Baen's site. Not to mention that they give away free books to get you hooked on new series.

Downloading to my Sony Clie was the perfect way to read eBooks, too. The backlight was pure white, the fonts were crisp, and the scroll-wheel on the side meant that I could hold the device in a pistol-grip in my palm rather than balancing it between my thumb and finger-tips so that I can thumb the up/down buttons on the front. (Sony screwed this up in later models, BTW. They replace the up/down buttons with a wheel, and eliminate the wheel on the side.)

The Clie wasn't so good for technical books (the layout is screwed), but for fiction it was great! I could stand on the bus and read without the difficulties of trying to turn the page on a paperback with one hand. Plus, the Clie fit in my pocket much easier than a paperback, and wouldn't lose its place when I needed to stash it away quick so that I don't miss my stop.

The only real problem I had was that I ran out of content. Baen has some great books, but they're no Simon & Schuster. I looked into other sites, but it was just too much pain and anguish for me to want to bother with. Most sites had a poor selection (though I have noted that selection has been improving lately), limited you to DRM formats (most of which don't work on a Palm Pilot), overcharged for their titles, and just generally hassled the consumer as if he was a theif who should feel honored to have limited access to stuff he paid for.

Thanks, but no thanks.

More publishers should pay attention to Jim Baen. Not only does he release titles you buy in open formats; not only does he give away free books; but he bundles CDs with many hardcover books that are chock-full of eBooks (such as the entire Honor Harrington series). In addition, the license on the CDs state that you can make copies and give them away to friends and family. No restrictions, as long as you're not making a profit.

Now THAT, is how you grow a business. Not by treating the customers like criminals, but by treating them like valued friends. =)

I don't believe ideas are quite as infinite as some would have you believe. At some point, we'll be up against a wall, and the excessive burden of today's copyright terms just might extinguish entertainment as we know it.

Damn right. "Melancholy Elephants", a short story by Spider Robinson, expresses this sentiment. Unfortunately, the wall of accidental similarity may have already appeared in songwriting: see "Three Chords and the Truth" by Peter C. Lemire and someone's probability analysis.

And I still think that piracy helps (as advertising) far more than any of the **AA's want to admit. I keep coming back to the bands (some major) who wanted to release some/all tracks of an album online before release (Offspring IIRC, did Arctic Monkeys do this also?).

I also keep remembering this post: http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm

Now, all of this is anectadotal of course, but I wish more artists/authors (not industry reps, as we really can't believe them) would release some information - especially the non label artists/authors.

I love thinking about how technology from different eras could interact. That's why I love books like Eric Flint's 1632 (available for free) in which a modern town from West Virgina is suddenly transported to the middle of Germany during the Thirty Years war. You might like it too.

Oh -- they hate DRM and only distribute standard unencumbered formats. They have this quaint notion that if they treat their customers well, their customers will respect their copyrights.

One of the many huge power-supply caps has enough juice to keep my laptop running for about fifteen minutes.

My own home "network" consists of a do-everything Linux server (2.4GHz Duron, 2G RAM, 160GB IDE HDD, Mandriva 2006.0) which doubles as a workstation, another (Dual PentiumPro 200, 196MB RAM, 40GB IDE HDD, Mandriva 2005LE) which is effectively a CD burning jukebox (mostly Linux distributions, TheOpenCD and a couple of the free Baen's Books CDs), a NetGear DG-834G wireless ADSL router/switch, a Kingston 8-port 10/100 switch, a Duron 800, 256MB, 80GB for the kids' games (wireless, Mandriva 2005LE) two wireless laptops (one old AOpen 2.4GHz Pentium-M, 512MB, 40GB, Mandriva 2006.0, one new Durabook R15D 2.6GHz Centrino, 1GB, 60GB, Mandriva 2006.0/WinXP dual boot, which I keep dual mainly for customer support and for editing on long trips -- the ACPI is completely broken, and TwinHead've only patched it for XP), one customer server (Athlon64-3GHz, 1GB, 2x200GB, Mandriva 2006.0), one "thrash box" (Athlon 1800, 512MB, 80GB, Ubuntu 5.10) and occasionally other stuff.

I'd like to say that it's neatly arranged in a rack and so forth but that would be a blatant lie, there's stuff scattered all over the place, basically wherever it will fit within reach of the appropriate cables.

The main workstation is about to lose its 19" CRT in favour of two 17" flatscreens. I'd actually spring for 2x19" flatscreens if resolution higher than 1280x1024 was available without the loss of an arm or leg.

http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___ 1.htm

• In 1946!

• In 1946!

• In 1946!

i'm as pedantic as the next guy (well, maybe not on /....), but i'm not talking about the legal aspects of copyright. in fact, i think the current copyright system is pretty shoddy (actually, i've done some interesting reading on the subject, and your points are well taken). and please note that i'm not a lawyer--though i have considered the career. i'm not talking about the legalities of petty larceny vs. grand larceny vs. copyright violations. i'm not sure any legal system is equipped to deal with the nature of incorporeal property, which is where we're at. i'm talking about the fundamental fact that if you copy a creation of someone else's without that person's consent, you are depriving them of something--whether it be money that they could've made from the copy or merely the right to determine what is done with their creation. i may be wrong, but i find it hard to belive that anyone would argue that people creating things shouldn't have any say in what is done with them. copyright may be a bad way to enforce that say, and allow for the creation of culture, but again, that's not what we're talking about. we're talking about ethics, here, and what is fundamentally going on (which, let's face it, often has little to no bearing on legality). as i said, i see the taking of a physical product as rather different than a copy, but let's be clear..."it's not theft" is more of a rationalization than a legitimate excuse.

Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson

It presents an interesting argument about copyrights.

Today slashdotters were shocked when another tech writer repeated the idea that software patents are bad in yet another way. I think most people here, and throughout the industry, already know the multitude of problems with software patents. I don't think the problem is convincing people on the working side of the industry that they are bad. The problem is convincing the people profiting from software patents that they are bad. I would be interested in seeing industry leaders that can actually influence the decisions, or some politician types with the power speak out against software patents, but seeing yet another tech person do it is just getting redundant. You have to convince people that really like their money, why they shouldn't make money the way they are now. Until things get so bad that the top starts feeling the pain I don't things are going to get much better. Melancholy Elephants is an excellent short story by Spider Robinson about the end game of this situation we have these days. (It isn't terribly long, and it really is a good read) Enjoy!

How many of your books have been read by three or more other people? Probably none, right?

Well, this isn't the case for me or most of my friends. A LOT of my books--especially the really good ones-- have been passed around my group of friends, until it's been read by most of them. Same with a lot of my friends' books. I mean, I think my copy of Hitchhiker's Guide has had some 2 dozen readers, over the years.

The caveat to this is that when my friends or I like a book enough, we buy it. That's how this sort of thing works. Hell, it's the premise behind the Baen Free Library. Not all publishers are stupid. One reason that I like Baen right about now.