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Doctorow and Stross Release Latest Novels for Free

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the internet-books dept.

FleaPlus writes "Two prominent science fiction authors have recently released their newest novels as free downloads to coincide with their in-store releases. The first is Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, by Cory Doctorow. This is an unconventional story about an entrepreneur (who happens to be the child of a mountain and a washing machine) who gets involved in a scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless mesh network, among other things. The second is Accelerando, by Charles Stross, which tells the tale of three generations of the Macx family (beginning with perptually-slashdotted venture altruist Manfred Macx) in the years leading up to and beyond a technological singularity."

50 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good luck, suckers by kotku · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Personally I like sitting in a deck chair in the sun with a nice paper book. My puter is for work or baiting slashdot copyright whingers .....

    --
    The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
  2. DRM by md81544 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I love the section about DRM that Cory Doctorow has included in the preamble to the book:
    DRM

    The worst technology idea since the electrified nipple-clamp is "Digital Rights Management," a suite of voodoo products that are supposed to control what you do with information after you lawfully acquire it. When you buy a DVD abroad and can't watch it at home because it's from the wrong "region," that's DRM. When you buy a CD and it won't rip on your computer, that's DRM. When you buy an iTune and you can't loan it to a friend, that's DRM.

    DRM doesn't work. Every file ever released with DRM locks on it is currently available for free download on the Internet. You don't need any special skills to break DRM these days: you just have to know how to search Google for the name of the work you're seeking.

    No customer wants DRM. No one woke up this morning and said, "Damn, I wish there was a way to do less with my books, movies and music."

    DRM can't control copying, but it can control competition. Apple can threaten to sue Real for making Realmedia players for the iPod on the grounds that Real had to break Apple DRM to accomplish this. The cartel that runs licensing for DVDs can block every new feature in DVDs in order to preserve its cushy business model (why is it that all you can do with a DVD you bought ten years ago is watch it, exactly what you could do with it then -- when you can take a CD you bought a decade ago and turn it into a ringtone, an MP3, karaoke, a mashup, or a file that you send to a friend?).

    DRM is used to silence and even jail researchers who expose its flaws, thanks to laws like the US DMCA and Europe's EUCD.

    In case there's any doubt: I hate DRM. There is no DRM on this book. None of the books you get from this site have DRM on them. If you get a DRMed ebook, I urge you to break the locks off it and convert it to something sensible like a text file.

    If you want to read more about DRM, here's a talk I gave to Microsoft on the subject:
    http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
    and here's a paper I wrote for the International Telecommunications Union about DRM and the developing world:
    http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/itu_drm.php
    1. Re:DRM by kotku · · Score: 3, Insightful

      DRM doesn't work. Every file ever released with DRM locks on it is currently available for free download on the Internet. You don't need any special skills to break DRM these days: you just have to know how to search Google for the name of the work you're seeking.

      DRM does work. It doesn't have to work all the time. As long as it is still easier to purchased DRM'd stuff than search for cracked stuff on the internet there will still be sales of it and people will make money. People here kid themselves that if everything was available for free with no DRM at all content providers would still make some money. It's a war and nobody will ever trully win it. Content providers will come up with ingenious ways to protect thier new works which *will* work for a short while and then somebody will crack it. Content providers move to new tech. It doesn't have to work forever. Just enough time to cash in.

      --
      The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
    2. Re:DRM by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think what is meant is that DRM doesn't stop people who want to get the media illegally AT ALL, it only inconveniences their customers.

      You say a protection scheme works for a short while. With the latest protection schemes, they were hacked within a few days; most people wouldn't even have had the time to buy the player yet.

      So for the benefit of just a few days of additional income, DRM inconveniences all paying customers for the rest of the DRM's existence.

      DRM doesn't work since nobody who matters benefits, not the companies nor the paying customers.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    3. Re:DRM by AliasMoze · · Score: 2, Insightful

      On the other hand, Doctorow has had success in the past by making books available in print and via free download. His success flies in the face of the assumption that downloads kill sales. That's what much of the anti-downloading argument hinges on, isn't it, an assumption? What if that assumption is wrong?

    4. Re:DRM by kotku · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I think what is meant is that DRM doesn't stop people who want to get the media illegally AT ALL

      Maybe it doesn't stop a core of people who know how to apply the patches, upgrade thier firmware or browse warez sites but there are plenty of people who wouldn't have a clue. These are the people the content providers have to muddle to keep them in the shops and they are the majority. It doesn't have to be impossible just inconvienient.

      --
      The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
    5. Re:DRM by kotku · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd still pay for a paper book over a download just for the ability to sit in the sun on a deck chair with it. If E-book readers approach the quality, feel and experience of paper books I'm sure the assumption will hold just fine.

      --
      The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
    6. Re:DRM by Council · · Score: 4, Interesting
      As far as the young internet citizenry goes, I'm moderate to right-wing on DRM and data liberalization (I'm fairly left-wing in real life). This might not be the best label; what I mean is that while I like the ideas of free information, I think there's a lot of bias in the debate and blood in the water on both sides. I think there are decent points and stupiditiy on both sides, and I don't know that anyone really has a grasp on what this new world is going to look like. I'm in favor of not doing anything too rash and waiting to see how it plays out.

      A few points worth keeping in mind:

      There's a tendency around here to consider what can happen to the exclusion of what likely will happen. That is, just because there's a way to copy something doesn't mean enough people will go to the trouble to do so. There's no theoretical problem with copying paperbacks, but the average Joe doesn't have the time or the equipment, and most in the American system get their books from legal stores.

      However, as with most parts of the debate, this digital revolution introduces a new twist: once something is broken, it can spread quickly. You don't have to re-break it for each copy. So you have a legal network and an illegal network sitting next to each other, struggling for supremacy.

      I think what it comes down to is that people who want to control how easy it is to get to something can do so, but only by a matter of degree. It will always be possible to get an illegal copy of anything digital. But they can probably continue to make it difficult. This might be wrong, though; maybe there is no effective stranglehold that can be put on p2p traffic as bandwidth grows. Maybe file distribution systems will allow total anonymity for everyone in a more practical sense than Freenet. I'm not sure.

      Let's try to look at the possible futures:

      1. Total DRM failure:

      KaZaA networks get better and better, cleaner and cleaner. DRM is cracked constantly and repeatedly struck down in court.

      It seems that here there are still several possibilities.

      1a. First: Total artistic anarchy. No average consumer pays money for videos or music. No one is forced to watch commercials in breaks in the shows. No one buys CDs. No one pays for their movies.

      1a1. There are interesting lessons of history here that I don't know very much about and someone should go into in comments. We really might see a fading of big-budget media-creation enterprises. A lot of people don't think this would be so bad.

      1a2. We might also see alternative payment methods arise. There's the idea that the market can handle anything. People will pay for what they want, one way or another. Concerts or patronages become the way artists make money.

      1b. Second:

      Artistic anarchy augmented by voluntary payment. People buy from iTunes or donate because they honestly want -- or are convinced by PR campaigns -- to support the artists they like. I think this is sort of wishful thinking. It might go for a while. But people don't like to spend money. Maybe this will blend into the 'patron' model, with a few rich people doing basically this.

      1c. Third:

      A tax supporting art.

      This could happen.

      2. Partial DRM failure:

      What we have now. DRM and similar efforts makes it hard work to get stuff illegally, but easy enough. We continue with the current system, where there's a class of people who pays, for one reason or another (usually to avoid the difficulties and risks of illegal copying), and a large class that downloads whatever they want and pays for little. The system takes a hit but continues for quite some time. Then things get hazy.

      Meanwhile, DRM is making a lot of problems for people who are just trying to move things player-to-player. People lose their music and get upset.

      3. DRM general success:

      --
      xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
    7. Re:DRM by LonghornBevo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      QUOTE from Cory Doctorow's talk to Microsoft's Research group about DRM : Raise your hand if you're thinking something like, "But DRM doesn't have to be proof against smart attackers, only average individuals! It's like a speedbump!" Put your hand down. This is a fallacy for two reasons: one technical, and one social. They're both bad for society, though.
      Here's the technical reason: I don't need to be a cracker to break your DRM. I only need to know how to search Google, or Kazaa, or any of the other general-purpose search tools for the cleartext that someone smarter than me has extracted. ....
      Here's the social reason that DRM fails: keeping an honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall. DRM vendors tell us that their technology is meant to be proof against average users, not organized criminal gangs like the Ukranian pirates who stamp out millions of high-quality counterfeits. It's not meant to be proof against sophisticated college kids. It's not meant to be proof against anyone who knows how to edit her registry, or hold down the shift key at the right moment, or use a search engine. At the end of the day, the user DRM is meant to defend against is the most unsophisticated and least capable among us.
      Wonderful article! Full text can be found at : http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

    8. Re:DRM by radish · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's a problem with 1a. I don't HAVE to buy CDs anymore, I could download everything I want from p2p. But I don't, primarily because I want the physical disk and want the sound quality. As it turns out I buy probably 10 a month or so. Look even at Cory himself - all his books are available online for free, but guess what? He still sells plenty because people want a big papery thing they can read on the bus.

      The key here is to understand that while people might not pay directly for the work in question because they can download it for free, they will pay for a convenient, collectable, tactile container for that work.

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    9. Re:DRM by pythorlh · · Score: 2, Informative

      However, this is not necessarily true of the authors over at http://www.bean.com/library/. These authors release full books without any DRM, and most of them get boosts to their in-print book sales. Baen has even released several ISOs of CDs full of DRM-free versions of books Baen publishes. They put these CDs into some of their hard-cover books, and it helps sales. There is plenty of evidence that DRM free publishing creates wealth.

      --
      Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
    10. Re:DRM by braindead · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think we can look at computer games: they have been fighting DRM longer than music has. Initially, no game was protected. Now, some games can be copied trivially (i.e. no DRM), many are protected to the extreme (require the CD to start, or even require an internet connection to start(!)). And yet, hacked versions of the games are easily available. This is similar to your scenario no 2.

      And what happens? Most people buy games (possibly because we feel the makers of the game deserve our money), and the industry is still very alive and prosperous.

      So my prediction would be that music will go the way of the video games: lots of yucky DRM and there will still be freeloaders, but not enough to entirely trash the system.

      I can't say I'm happy with the current state of video games protection, because none of the non-independent games I bought will work once their CD gets scratched. I cannot make backup copies.

      Maybe we'll see more independent work? That's certainly happening these days with video games.

    11. Re:DRM by WNight · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree with the earlier poster who said that a DRM success wouldn't be any good for the consumers. We are living in a period of DRM success - just look at anyone who owns DVDs and doesn't use DVD Shrink.

      They are forced to watch trailers on many disks (Sixth Sense for one), can't screenshot or record a quick excerpt, and often can't play it to secondary video devices.

      This world of DRM Success shows that nobody in charge cares about the customer. Stores refuse to take back broken movies like Sixth Sense, or even ones that for a software glitch refuse to work in computer players (I have a few that won't play in PowerDVD or Xine). And then there's the fact that using non-authorized software is illegal. I'm not allowed to try to fix this.

      DRM is never going to not suck - there will always be reasons for wanting to prevent things that people are free to do with unprotected media like books (annotating, removing unwanted pages, skipping dull crap). Studios don't want you to do anything to their media, or watch it any way other than they intend. Allowances for consumer choice would be a hole their ideal total DRM, as such, they'll fight against you ever getting choice.

  3. Don't want to sound cynical but by kotku · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Being anti DRM is the flavor of the month with a certain demographic. This little rant above and the release of a non DRM'd book is great marketing. Look he got himself posted on slashdot!!!!

    It is a bit like Metallica in reverse. Hard angry men encouraging other young angry men to break societies rules but wait .... somebody is downloading our music for free, lets run to the establishment.

    Just as Metallica is hard and angry for *marketing* purposes when it suits them I can't quite believe this guy is anti DRM for any reasons other than it is good marketing for the moment.

    --
    The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
    1. Re:Don't want to sound cynical but by AliasMoze · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's a slight difference between what Doctorow's doing and what Metallica did. Metallica was trying to throw fans in jail. Doctorow is trying to give something away.

    2. Re:Don't want to sound cynical but by D'Sphitz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      uhhh, I don't think Metallica's stand was for marketing purposes, if anything it was the worst move of their careers, and they (Lars to be specific) have as admitted as much.

      Why can't you take a stance or even a stand without it being a marketing move? It's certainly issues they (Metallica and this author) would know about, it's not like their injecting their opinions into world politics or something.

    3. Re:Don't want to sound cynical but by charlie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Considering that Cory is employed as the tech evangelist for The EFF in Europe, and is currently leading their campaign to block the broadcast flag for DRM in hi-def TV, you might want to re-think your idea that he's anti-DRM purely for pose value.

    4. Re:Don't want to sound cynical but by kotku · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe I should explain again ....

      Metallica are *hard angry men* for marketting purposes.

      Docotwrolwow ( or whatever ) is *anti DRM* for marketing purposes.

      ----

      Metallica tells people to go out and break societies rules because that message matches thier audiences demographics.

      Doctorwatchimac tells people to go out and break DRM because that message matches his audiences demographics

      ----

      Metallica spat the dummy when people did just as they told them to and broke societies rules. It just happened that the rule they broke bit Metallica on the arse.

      So what will it take to piss off Doctorwathimecallit. For starters why don't you go and scan his non downloadable books and place them on the internet and watch for the reaction.

      --
      The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
    5. Re:Don't want to sound cynical but by mouthbeef · · Score: 4, Interesting
      "For starters why don't you go and scan his non downloadable books and place them on the internet and watch for the reaction."

      Well, the last time it happened, I scanned it back in and re-released it under a CC license.

    6. Re:Don't want to sound cynical but by mouthbeef · · Score: 4, Funny

      "But it is no secret that I have no love for Cory. I think his milatant attitude is not helping the cause for copyright reform and relastic DRM soltutions."

      It's news to me, anyway. Does that mean you don't want your birthday present? Crap. What am I going to do with this Speak and Spell I modded to include "soltutions" and "milatant"?

  4. Re:Good luck, suckers by KDan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just you wait till e-paper comes of age... then you'll sit in a deck chair in the sun with a nice sheet of e-paper that can display more books than you can shake a stick at.

    Daniel

    --
    Carpe Diem
  5. Re:Good luck, suckers by kotku · · Score: 3, Funny

    And that will be the same year I can run an AI on my computer posting witty comments to slashdot.

    --
    The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
  6. Stross totally rocks by billstewart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Lobsters is a really really strange short story, and you should go read it, ideally online while sitting in your favorite pub. Singularity Skyis a novel exploring a post-Singularity world, nanotech, clashes of cultures, reaction to post-scarcity economics and human (and post-human) creativity. It's deep stuff, and simultaneously a fun read, and he's an interesting guy to talk to if you're ever on the correct coast of the correct continent or island.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
    1. Re:Stross totally rocks by charlie · · Score: 4, Informative

      Just in case you were wanting to read the first chapter of "Accelerando" without downloading the entire novel, I'd like to point out that Lobsters (as mentioned in the preceding post) is effectively the first draft of Chapter One.

  7. favorite doctorow pieces by lennarth · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let's spread the link-love!

    0wnz0red is my favorite of Doctorow's. Some of his other short stories published on salon.com are Truncat, Anda's Game and Liberation Spectrum.

    Also, slashdot has previously covered Cory in an O'Reilly interview and his take on DRM. There is, of course, more.

  8. Stross is not no-name, troll by billstewart · · Score: 2, Informative
    Not sure whether to feed the trolls here, or what. Stross has had a bunch of short stories and a few novels published, and many of them have been shortlisted for Hugo or Sturgeon awards, but if you don't read British Scifi or his technical books or well-known scifi magazines, you may not have seen them. He's writing them for the purpose of writing them, though he may be releasing them this way to make a point (or to avoid dealing with traditional editors.)

    Cory gets published a lot in his sets of circles, and while I find "sez" annoying, there's a lot of worse stylistication around.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  9. I smell new business opportunities by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is great! People publishing things outside the established copyright monopolies can only be a Good Thing. Now everyone can get the material in the format they want: electronic for the "paper is dead trees" crowd, and nicely bound for the "I prefer to sit outside and read a book" crowd.

    Who's going to bind them? Well, that's where the new business opportunities come in. Small-scale production of books is wholly different from the large scale printing that is the norm nowadays. And as we lower the threshold to getting one's work published, I think we're in for seeing more and more interesting works appear. Printed GNU/Linux manuals, perhaps?

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  10. E-books in the bathtub? No thanks.... by billstewart · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I probably won't dig up a hard copy of the short story Lobsters, and I'll probably buy Iron Sunrise on dead trees before getting around to reading Accelerando online or in print. But Stross is a good writer, and book formats work better for longer works than e-books usually do, though back when I was commuting by train there were a number of books I read on my palm-pilot.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  11. Offspring from washing machines-- B-O-R-I-N-G by scovetta · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...This is an unconventional story about an entrepreneur (who happens to be the child of a mountain and a washing machine)...

    Dammit, we already have an overabundance of stories about children bred from washing machines. Can't these people come up with something original???

    --
    Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
  12. Re:Can I redistribute them? by charlie · · Score: 4, Informative

    The "fine print" in each book is a standard creative commons license.

    In the case of my own, I've picked no-derivs no-commercial; as long as you're not redistributing the book for profit or creating new works derived from it, I don't mind what you do.

  13. Let's play Cory Doctorow Bingo by acb · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is an unconventional story about an entrepreneur (who happens to be the child of a mountain and a washing machine) who gets involved in a scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless mesh network ...using transceivers shaped like Disney tiki-kitsch objects, whilst being pursued by a cartel of DRM monopolists.

  14. Re:Beyond? by vidarh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You miss the crucial difference between fiction and non-fiction. Of course we can imagine what it would be like after the singularity - it is our ability to give meaningful predictions of the future that is reduced. That doesn't mean we can't try. We just have to accept that the odds of being correct will be tremendously low, but in this case being right isn't the point. Being interesting and thought provoking is.

  15. New Things? by Matrix2110 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am sorry people, but the likes of Cory Doctorow are beyond even the collective mind of /.

    You academic types rave over Neil Stephenson while the people like Cory are doing far, far more to bring understanding to the common folk.

    Cory is well grounded and hangs out with the like of Lawrence Lessing and that tart Xeni (NSFW) plus the other crew over at Boing-Boing.net

    Good Stuff, fellow /.'ers .

    My sig sucks, but it plays over a modem to this day.

  16. Re:Good luck, suckers by ceeam · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why wait? A $200 PDA will probably pay off for itself before you need battery replacement on eBooks alone. Also it is a nice pocket DB, notepad, reference tool (PDA dictionaries are a blessing if you learn foreign language(s)) and a game console.

    Hints: you need a good (around $10) antiglare "screen-protector" and a book-reader with "RTA-like" scrolling. For PalmOS I may recommend this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/palmfiction/

  17. Baen Free Library by Bigman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you want DRM free sci-fi to read and or download, then try Baen Free Library. I've passed many a happy hour reading some excellent books there.
    Eric Flint, an author and acting librarian for the above library, points out that sales of the in-print versions of some of his books actually went up after posting them for free in the online library. I read some of David Webers books there, and went out and bought them; despite the fact that the genre (space-opera) was not one I would usually go for. Eric points out in one of his articles on the site (Prime Palaver #1) that the biggest obstacle facing little known authors (and thats the vast majority of them) is their obscurity. Publish free on the internet, and people will read your books, tell their friends, and go on to buy the books you subsequently write. Perhaps that explains why sales go up when you give stuff away for free; I can't see how the same logic wouldn't apply to music.

    --
    *--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
    1. Re:Baen Free Library by TopShelf · · Score: 2, Funny

      I thought the idea was that they give each copy away free, but make that up on volume...

      --
      Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
  18. Let it be said by braindead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't see it in the comments yet, so I'll say it myself: thank you Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross!

  19. Re:What about printing? by charlie · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yup, you can print the book out. It'll cost you as much as buying the hardcover and the result will be less pleasant to read, but you can do it.

    You can give copies to other folks. The hitch is: you aren't allowed to sell it. Neither can the people you give it to. If you violate that part of the license, publishers' lawyers will come after you.

    Again: you're only granted these rights for the book, as a book. You can't edit or remix it, or make a movie based on it, without asking me for permission. (Clue: I'm not hard to get in touch with.)

    If you strip the internet out of the equation, basically you've got roughly equivalent rights to my book that you'd have to a book you borrowed from the public library -- except nobody's going to fine you if you're late returning it. Which is the whole idea of the exercise.

  20. Re:What about printing? by mouthbeef · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've laid out Someone Comes to Town in two PDFs (one in A4 and one in Letter) that are optimized for very low-paper-consumption printing; if you have a duplexing printer, you can get my whole 300+ page novel onto fewer than 70 sheets and then side-staple them.

    Many publishers are distributing advanced reading copies to blurbers, chain-buyers and reviewers in this format. I find it very convenient since it let me carry around a dozen copies of the book in the months before it was coming out to give to reviewers and blurbers I met in my travels.

    By contrast, the traditional system for ARCs (still in use in the majority of cases) is to print and bind a softcover facilime of the edition for advance distribution to the trade. These "proofs" or "bound galleys" cost more than the hardcover to print (on a per-unit basis) and are in perpetually short supply -- it's heartbreaking to get an inquiry from a major newspaper or magazine for a review copy of your book before it's printed and to find out that all the ARCs have been distributed and there's no budget to print more. The low cost and nonexistent setup charges for printing galleys laid out like the PDFs I'm distributing means that your editor's assistant can just print off and staple together another galley whenever there's a demand.

  21. Technological singularity by TuringTest · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's a SF world called Orion's Arm based on a post-singularity scenario.

    It's collaboratively created and published with a Creative Commons license.

    --
    Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
  22. Re:Good luck, suckers by FlopEJoe · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I agree a paper book is better.

    But I also like to have over a hundred fiction and reference books, TV/Movie transcripts, opinion columns, and all my project's documentation on my Palm. I can grep for anything and annotate anywhere without writing (ruining) paper. I can read it anywhere and choose from any title in real time. On the bus, business trip, airport terminal, or waiting in line. No need to decide what books to take on a trip with limited luggage space. I don't know how many times in the Pre-Palm days when I chose the wrong books to take.

    But that's just me.

  23. Not a good long term strategy by samuel4242 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think giving away a book at publication gets plenty of attention today, but I wonder whether it will help much when it's not news any longer. When hundreds of authors follow his lead, as they will, it won't be Slashdot-grade news. Does anyone believe that they'll all sell tens of thousands of books just because it's free? Oh, I'm sure it will lure some people in. Perhaps the sales lost to the free loaders will always be cheaper than paying for ads. Lord knows that good advertising isn't cheap. So maybe it's still a viable strategy. But the 104th person to do this won't have the same success as the first.

  24. Re:Okay, so dRM's bad, right... by jurt1235 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I interviewed some of my friends who love to download, and I asked them when the price was low enough to start paying for pirated content: 0

    Apparently some people will never be willing to pay for certain content. For myself I like it when I can decide if I like music enough to pay for it before buying. My reason to buy is, that I will listen more often to the CD and not just once. So what he does with the book is handy. Else I would have to read it in the store for a part (up to 5%, did that a lot with books, love Borders cafe), and then decide to buy it or not.

    So there will be people who appreciate the other persons creativity and decide that they are willing to pay for it, others will borrow it at a library for stuff which they do not want to own (like listen once, read once (Ok, read most books only once anyway)), others decide that they do not want to pay for anything at all.
    In the last category you also find the "crazy" collectors: They own thousands of songs & movies (and sometimes share those again), do not listen to all of them even once to check for quality, burn cd/dvd from it and just do not use it.

    When I download something, I do not take care of it if it is not interesting, it will just get lost on my harddisk, gets erased at a reinstall, and I do not miss it. When I like it, I buy it, and store it nicely on a CD so I can use it again later.

    --

    My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
  25. Just finished Someone Comes to Town by DoorFrame · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just finished reading Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town last night. (Good timing, eh?) Not only that, but I read the whole thing on a palm pilot for free with permission, which made me feel better than all the books I've read on the thing without permission. Anyway, it's pretty good, but I'd say Doctorow earlier works were stronger. The "unconventionalness" was sort of it never really seemed to get explained or justified. I guess that was probably the point, but I got to the end and felt like there was still more story that I missed out on. I guess I felt something similar at the ends of his previous novels as well, but they just seemed more self contained.

    Anyway, check out Eastern Standard Tribe and his first novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Both of these are also available for free download from the above linked sites.

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    RumorsDaily
  26. Not just the famous authors by jockm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Unknown authors also release their novels free on the net. Then they use venues like Slashdot to help get the word out. For example, I am doing that just now. Oh wait, I've said too much...



    OK that was shameless self promotion, and I'll not repent. But it is great that more established authors are out there doing this. It adds an air of legitimacy to all of us who are trying to use alternative means of publishing or promoting our works.

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    What do you know I wrote a novel
  27. Re:Good luck, suckers by drsquare · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wouldn't want to take $200 worth of fragile electronics to places where I read. Like at work, or in the garden, or wherever. Things like that get stolen, I can leave a book outside whilst I go inside to get something and if it's robbed (which it won't because people don't steal books, at least the ones I read), then it's only a few quid to replace it.

    And it only takes one scratch or spillage or dropping to ruin that $200. A book can take all sorts of abuse, like months in the bottom of my bag. Yeah it'll be ragged but the writing will still be there, in nice high-dpi text, rather than jagged letters on a shitty LCD screen.

    Books are much easier to read, in far more conditions, than even the best e-book reader. Also you're in complete control of the pages, rather than just pressing buttons, which psychologically is an important factor.

    I for one don't trust computers, they're unreliable, bulky, expensive and over-engineered.

  28. Thanks for posting that. by PotatoHead · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Your actions, in that case, caused me to think a little deeper about this issue.

    I've always been in your camp where DRM is concerned. However, I understand some subtle thing I'm not sure I did before.

    Let me know if I have this right, because it's important:

    In a world of interconnected people and computers, information flows more or less freely. It has to if the whole thing is going to actually be able to do anything of value to us.

    I've got a work in the hopper right now. I think I'm going to do what you are doing, if I am lucky enough to see publication. I'm going to do it, not only because its the right thing to do, but its also the thing that makes the most sense.

    In that world, you don't mind if your works are read by people you don't know because through them they can come to know you. For an author, that's a good thing all around. (As a budding author, I hope I can see similar success someday.) However, what you don't want is others making money from your work without your due compensation. Nobody works for free.

    Your act was interesting in that the motivation for it is not obvious, I believe, to ordinary people at first glance. (I'm a geek, but I think I am ordinary for the most part.)

    The media companies want to protect their ability to make money. They do this by using rule of law to deny others the ability to profit from their "works". However their actions come at a significant negative cost both financially and socially. This is why they have a dim view of "pirates" because they represent not only lost oppertunity costs but real expense costs as well.

    However, you showed that you can still deny others the right to profit from your works while at the same time gain where they currently lose.

    If the scanned text is officially available, why bother to get it from somewhere else? That's a very subtle way to compete with free and I am almost completely sure the big corps just don't get that. (Perhaps they will someday before we all lose our ability to compute freely.)

    Not only is it good competition, but it's a bonus in that you have a chance to advocate your beliefs to them and suggest other works and express yourself personally all while denying the freeloaders their means to profit.

    That's a world I can live in far easier than a one filled with draconian laws that make me feel dirty and used.

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    Blogging because I can...
  29. Nipple by furrywithwings · · Score: 4, Funny

    Speaking as one of the pro-Nipple clamp crowd, please compare your awful DRM to something that's really repugnant like, smelly fish, or bad houseguests. Some of use LIKE our nipple clamps, electrified.

  30. really retarded DRM... by advocate_one · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here... a classic example... upgrade acrobat and you find yourself locked out of those items that you've purchased...

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    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  31. New Business Model by Vagary · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There was a major change in the business model for games just as bandwidth was approaching the size required to make pirating them trivial. That same bandwidth that was about to destroy them allowed many of the most popular titles to be online multiplayer. Online servers make for very reliable DRM, and users support it because circumventing it would also allow cheaters.

    This suggests a very reasonable business model for musicians if no other IP authors. Hmm...