"Security Engineering" Is Now Online

An anonymous reader writes "Ross Anderson, author of 'Security Engineering', notifies in a message to comp.risks that he just got permission from Wiley to let anyone download the full content of his book for free. This is one of the best books on computer security and it is used as textbook in many University courses (I teach two of them)."

Comments

Backwards System

[eldavojohn]

The publishers thought for years that it was too risky to let authors put books online but they are gradually learning that this isn't so. Putting a book online often increases its sales; more people read it and those who find it useful often go buy a copy.

Funny how that works with media, isn't it? Newspapers are free to read on-line. Do they blame lack of income on that? Hell no, they probably make more money on ads that didn't cost ink and paper to print!

If we were concerned about artists, you'd put all their music online--eliminating album profits to them and labels--and pay to see the live shows. That's where they make all their money anyway.

Poor tech authors often sign anything that's in front of them to get their books out. Which means they don't make squat on the sales plus the publisher hikes the price up so that they turn a good profit. Ever bought Duda, Hart & Stork's Pattern Classification? Good luck, $100 for a six year old book!? Give me the black and white Asian release that's illegally sold on eBay for $10. Yet it remains a standard in the field.

You don't believe me that authors sign outrageous contracts? Well, this poor man had to beg to get his work online. Sounds like he didn't sign a contract that left him creative and absolute control over the distribution of this work.

Yet if they don't get it into print, it can't be used in a classroom setting. What a terrible system (hail capitalism). To all artists, authors and producers of media, please cut out the middle men that make it nearly impossible for me to afford your beautiful works and more or less cheat you out of money in a highway robbery-like scam.

Printed word was an amazing invention because it posed a method to mechanically copy texts and ideas and get them out to people. The internet allows you to do that for nearly free ... use it!

Re:Backwards System

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet if they don't get it into print, it can't be used in a classroom setting.

Fortunately, this isn't always true! While taking my advanced operating systems course, we used Linux Device Drivers which is available online for free. This is also the case with my Programming Languages class where we learned and wrote an interpreter for Scheme. Then, in my computers and society class we used ESR's writings and Stallman's biography.

Maybe more topics could be covered in free format... Seems to me like Google is making life easier for some English courses and MIT already has opencourseware up and running.

Guess I went off on a tangent over one little line... :)

Re:Backwards System

[spiffyman]

Your sentiment makes sense, but I have to agree with the GP. I think people miss some key points here:

1) The ethical (not legal - the contracts settle that) question up until this point has been whether the publishing company has a right to restrict distribution through other channels. It's not a hard case to make on the publishers' side: Until recently, there was little reason to expect that free distribution would make print sales go up, and the data on that remain unclear. So, as a publisher, why wouldn't you want to resist other distribution models?

2) If I read TFA properly, it appears that the text being distributed is the text that was edited, copy edited, etc. by Wiley. As far as I'm concerned, that gives Wiley just as much moral claim to the work as the author. People underestimate the amount of time and effort that goes into the editing process. Writers, by and large, are not good writers. So why should they always retain copyrights?

Disclaimer: I've edited for a newspaper in the past, and I'm currently an editor for an undergraduate journal, so I'm pretty obviously biased against authors-above-all types. Mod appropriately.