Doctorow and Stross Release Latest Novels for Free

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."

Comments

DRM

[md81544]

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

Re:DRM

[mwvdlee]

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.

favorite doctorow pieces

[lennarth]

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.

Re:Don't want to sound cynical but

[charlie]

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.

Re:What about printing?

[mouthbeef]

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.