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.
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.
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.
I agree with #1
This looks like a scam to gather email addresses.
This looks like a scam to enslave us in the DRM system.
Yeah, maybe there’s more to this then y’all understand . . .
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!