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Old 08-07-2008, 12:10 PM   #143
cstross
Cynic
cstross will become famous soon enoughcstross will become famous soon enoughcstross will become famous soon enoughcstross will become famous soon enoughcstross will become famous soon enoughcstross will become famous soon enough
 
Posts: 86
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Device: Lots, started with a Psion 3 circa 1998
Incidentally, I'm going to drop out of this discussion soon -- I'm at worldcon, and I can't spend all my time in front of a hot keyboard

As for darknet copies, and use thereof: my publishers officially disapprove, but my personal opinion is: if you don't like the DRM'd copies of my books that they publish, I have no problem whatsoever with readers downloading a darknet copy if they also buy a paperback -- either file it or give it to a friend or something, I don't care, as long as one way or the other they've paid for it. My take on that kind of use is that it's equivalent to buying a CD and ripping it to your iPod; it's functionally equivalent to format shifting, and there's a whole body of case law to the effect that format shifting is legal.

Ideally I'd like to see publishers print some sort of one-time download code in the back of my books so that purchasers can download an e-copy, but the chances of getting them to start doing that any time this century are slim ...
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