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Humble Bundle Supports The EFF With A LEGO eBook Sale (humblebundle.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the building-block-book-bundles dept.

The EFF is describing it as "a break for your brain." An anonymous reader writes: Humble Bundle has announced a special "pay what you want" sale for four ebooks about LEGO from No Starch Press, with proceeds going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or to the charity of your choice. The ebooks include Beautiful LEGO (a compendium of creations by dozens of artists) and Medieval LEGO, which describes and recreates English history in the Middle Ages using LEGO blocks. Contributors who pay more than $8 also receive six more books, including "Forbidden LEGO" a more free-style building guide that one reviewer called "The Anarchist Cookbook of the nursery," as well as "The Cult of LEGO", a tour of the block-building community. And for a $15 donation, contributors receive six more ebooks -- bringing the total to 16 -- including The LEGO Christmas Ornaments Book and Steampunk LEGO.

17 comments

  1. Why LEGO? by XSportSeeker · · Score: 1

    I'm gonna guess because of oportunity, but the EFF should close deals with publishings regarding electronic law, rights and such for a Humble Bundle, if possible. Maybe security, privacy, hardware and software oriented towards those, stuff like that. LEGO is fine, but no connections there...

    1. Re:Why LEGO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Through the "Choose Your Own Charity!" link on the HumbleBundle site, you can always make the EFF, or any one of thousands of other charities, as your charity of choice.

      You can even customize how much of your purchase price goes to that charity.

    2. Re:Why LEGO? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      They should have gotten some games with source code, after all there have been several bundles in the last couple years that offered source and frankly would have been a better fit. eBooks on Lego? What does that have to do with freedom or the EFF?

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    3. Re: Why LEGO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They've done those bundles before. Pardon the rest of us for enjoying some variety.

    4. Re:Why LEGO? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      I doubt it's the charity which decide.
      Someone wanted to sell their content and Humble bundle was ok with it and maybe matched them with a charity or maybe the seller of the books made the choice of the charity.

      I doubt the charity choose the content providers.

      But I don't see why this is on Slashdot since I buy a lot of Humble bundles and there's always charities and sometimes EFF and those don't make it..

      Who cares really?

      Also some of these books has been before and I paid then so I won't buy it again.

    5. Re:Why LEGO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've got it backwards. Humble Bundle arranges the product, then when they publish it they apply it to a charity of the week/month/day/whatever. This isn't the EFF partnering with anyone, the EFF is the beneficiary of Humble's marketing.

    6. Re:Why LEGO? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      I doubt it's the charity which decide.
      Someone wanted to sell their content and Humble bundle was ok with it and maybe matched them with a charity or maybe the seller of the books made the choice of the charity.

      I doubt the charity choose the content providers.

      Exactly.

      Humble bundles work by having someone approach them wanting to do something. They offer up the goods, which can be software, books, movies, etc, at practically giveaway prices. Likewise, the content owner specifies the charities they want to support - and it can be any charity really. The EFF is featured a lot, but others like the ACLU, MSF, Red Cross, etc have been featured.

      Note that the buyer has the option to determine how the money is distributed - how much goes to the company and how much to each charity.

  2. 10 days late. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That bundle has been up for 10 days already.

  3. Not a charity by guises · · Score: 1

    A store which allows you to donate at checkout is not a charity. This bundle is no different from the standard ones that Humble offers: you can choose where your money goes, but by default 15% goes to the charity of the moment, 65% goes to the publisher, and Humble keeps the other 20%. That's more than what they used to keep.

    To their credit, allowing the customer to choose where the money goes is very progressive. But making a donation at checkout is something that many many stores do, my grocery store does that, and it's a pretty safe assumption that most people just go with the default distribution.

  4. Legos are for children, people by divide+overflow · · Score: 1

    LEGOs? Medieval LEGO...really? Are we really that feeble and pathetic? Idiocracy truly was prophetic.

    1. Re:Legos are for children, people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Hmm, my Lego mindstorms robot w/ grafted .457 has locked onto you face, and is currently enroute, Please have fresh batteries when it gets to your front door.

  5. The EFF can get fucked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The EFF is no longer interested in defending the internet, as shown by their refusal to comment on Gamergate or the Aaron Walker case. These were the two biggest internet freedom issues of the past few years, with people getting kicked offline for news reporting that powerful interests did not want heard.

  6. Why Freedom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Freedom to play. Freedom to be creative.

  7. Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was just looking for something to give to our kids that wouldn't involve buying any more lego than they already have.. thanks!
    Now if I could get a lego-usb stick with these books preloaded.. ;)

  8. The problem with HB ebooks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem with Humble Bundle E-books is that they keep selling me only half the book. I buy it, I read it, only to find out it stops in the middle and I need to buy the rest at inflated prices through some third party. It's happened again and again. Quite frankly I'm getting tired of paying money to these clowns for what amounts to a glorified advertisement.

    Then there's the software you buy only to find out, after you've paid, there's some overwhelming EULA license agreement that you have to agree to before you can use your purchase. That's after you've paid, no refunds, can't use what you've paid until you agree, and the EULA seems to involve something about the soul of my firstborn being sacrificed to Lucifer.

    Thanks, but I think I've been ripped off enough. I can donate to the EFF without being scammed, thank you very much. And take it as a tax writeoff to boot!