Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Baen Free Library

Baen Free Library, free ebooks.
The philosophy behind it is very much like I myself have written about more than once.
"1. Online piracy — while it is definitely illegal and immoral — is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.
2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender."

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Here is another interesting site for free ebooks.
[Thanks to my old pal Frank for both links.]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree, it cant be prevented so pragmatically it has to be considered free advertising, and I would guess the people that are taking stuff wouldn't buy it anyway as they don't have the spare cash and those that can afford will buy for the convenience, so its not resulting in a lose of profit

Anonymous said...

I've read that the movie studios and music companies have been having some of their best years ever. Wouldn't it be hilarious if they won their cases and having stopped the free promotion they saw their sales and profit drop off tremendously. Would they then start to plea with the pirates to once again promote their works. Regardless of whether file sharing is decided illegal these companies make me laugh when they complain that they're losing money because of it.