Technology Liberation Front - Latest Comments in Book Review: Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis

Re: Book Review: Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis

Harry Lewis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:27:02 -0000

Turns out I'd forgotten what the contract actually said. It was to go to CC in six months, not one year, and that coincided with yesterday's celebration of Creative Commons. So the entire book is now up on bitsbook.com for free download.

Re: Book Review: Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis

Adam_Thierer — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:50:55 -0000

Tim... It's a fair point. All I'm saying is that if one is going to play up the benefits of unrestricted file sharing and repeatedly hammer on copyright protections without offering any indications of how enforcement should work going forward, then, yes, I would think it would only make sense to practice what you preach and put the complete text online for all to download free-of-charge. However, as I mentioned in my review, the authors don't really make it clear in the text how far they want to go, so my quip may have been somewhat unfair.

Regardless, Harry Lewis has just notified me that the book goes to Creative Commons one year from original pub date (sometime in mid-2009). So it will (presumably) all be online eventually.

Re: Book Review: Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis

binarybits — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:46:41 -0000

The authors have a strongly-worded chapter on copyright that generally argues for relaxing copyright protections. Interestingly, however, (unless I am missing something) I notice they don’t offer their book for free download on their site. I’m always intrigued by copyright critics who refuse to put their own content online. Apparently, it’s another case of ‘copying is good for me, but not for thee.’

Adam, this criticism doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Aside from Boldrin and Levin, hardly anyone advocates the abolition of copyright. What a lot of people are opposed to (i haven't read the book but I suspect this describes them) is the ever-more-draconian penalties for consumers and ever-broader scope of copyright protection. There's nothing remotely inconsistent about advocating that copyright be kept within its traditional limits while take advantage of copyright to protect one's own works.

Now, it might be inconsistent if the authors encouraged their publishers to start suing people who shared copies of their books on BitTorrent. But as far as I know they haven't done that.

Re: Book Review: Blown to Bits by Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis

Rationalitate — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:44:37 -0000

Though I'm a big believer in freeing IP from the shackles of IP law, I do recognize the value in trade secrets, DRM, and passive protection (i.e., just not putting your book free online). Creators of their works should have the right to make it more difficult to get their works through means other than the ones they'd want, but then again they also shouldn't have the courts backing them in that right. If a company can pull off DRM, or if a book's author can get away with not having their book scanned in and put online, then great, more power to them – that's perfectly within their rights.

That having been said, I'm not convinced that this is what would happen. While books (especially monographs) may take a bit longer to come online, eventually the authors will have to start competing with pirates.