PIRACY: A Free eBook (Today Only)

in e-books, Law | February 1st, 2010 6 Comments

A quick fyi on a free eBook from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. (It’s an offer that seems well timed, giv­en this week­end’s copy­right debate on OC.) Here are the details from UC:

Offered as a free e‑book for one day only, Feb­ru­ary 1: Pira­cy: The Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Wars from Guten­berg to Gates. “[Adri­an Johns] traces the ten­sions between autho­rized and unau­tho­rized pro­duc­ers and dis­trib­u­tors of books, music, and oth­er intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty in British and Amer­i­can cul­ture from the 17th cen­tu­ry to the present.… The shift­ing the­o­ret­i­cal argu­ments about copy­right and autho­r­i­al prop­er­ty are pre­sent­ed in a cogent and acces­si­ble man­ner. Johns’s research stands as an impor­tant reminder that today’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty crises are not unprece­dent­ed, and offers a sur­vey of poten­tial approach­es to a solu­tion.”

For more free eBooks, please vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.


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Comments (6)
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  • kuzzzma says:
    February 1, 2010 at 12:54 pm

    don’t you think it’s kind of strange:
    you write a book about mean­ing of intel­lec­tu­al pira­cy and it’s influ­ence.
    THEN you make it ONE DAY ONLY free e‑book.
    BUT to get it you MUST install Adobe Dig­i­tal Edi­tions, which REQUIRES you to have ver­sion 9.0 of Adobe Flash Play­er.
    Also even in Adobe Dig­i­tal Edi­tions you face anoth­er restric­tion:
    “Allow print­ing: 50 pages, on this com­put­er, at a max­i­mum res­o­lu­tion of 200 dpi” for a book that has 636 pages.

    it’s what’s called an EPIC FAIL on the inter­nets.

    i have an urge to STEAL IT on prin­ci­ple.

    Reply
  • Joe Crawford says:
    February 1, 2010 at 1:56 pm

    I did­n’t under­stand where the book was. The down­load page sim­ply told me to down­load and Adobe Dig­i­tal Edi­tions — I did­n’t see any kind of down­load link for any kind of eBook in case I already had that soft­ware. Mys­ti­fy­ing.

    Appar­ent­ly since 2008 Adobe Dig­i­tal Edi­tions has sucked in terms of user expe­ri­ence, and this has not changed.

    Say what you well about some of the ebooks that have DRM (EPUB files can include it, for exam­ple) but at least when you’re told you can down­load a free book, you can down­load it.

    Maybe there’s some­thing more to this than I under­stood.

    Also, the site made it sound like there would be free books every *month* — per­haps they’ll get a dif­fer­ent process and make it work.

    Reply
  • Stephen Lindsey says:
    February 2, 2010 at 1:10 am

    I agree with #1

    This looks like a scam to gath­er email address­es.

    Reply
  • Hello says:
    February 2, 2010 at 9:59 am

    This looks like a scam to enslave us in the DRM sys­tem.

    Reply
  • Iliad says:
    February 3, 2010 at 10:34 am

    Yeah, maybe there’s more to this then y’all under­stand …

    Reply
  • Autie Author says:
    January 25, 2012 at 7:53 am

    I use gutenberg.org and manybooks.net to down­load DRM-free epubs at no cost. The sec­ond site is real­ly bril­liant because it con­cen­trates more on CC licenced works, so has more up to the minute stuff than Guten­berg. Give them a try!

    Reply

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