Thread: Developers of the MP3 Have Officially Killed It
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Old 05-23-2017, 06:09 PM   #68
Rev. Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shane R View Post
[puts on pedant hat]

No, you don't. You can't buy something that's free.

[/pedant hat]
Sure you can... because there are different ways of (legitimately) acquiring free content, and some are better than others.

On Amazon, for instance, if an ebook has a purchase link and is currently free, clicking that link is a purchase in every way that matters. It goes into my collection, and if the author updates it later (say, to fix typos), I can download that new version anytime I want. That remains true even if the book was only free for a day and became non-free later.

On Smashwords, use of a 100% discount coupon works the same way as above. However, if the book is simply free, you can download it right away, but there's no mechanism to permanently acquire it - in that respect, Smashwords agrees with your philosophy. Thus, if I get it while it's free, and it gets updated when it's not free, I have no access to the revised edition. Sucks to be me. OTOH, if I bought it at zero cost because I had a coupon code, I can get the update.

As a third example, there's a series of books in this year's Hugo packet that's free to Hugo voters, but only for the duration of the voting period. After that time passes, the DRM locks you out of the omnibus. (See also library ebooks.)

So, yeah - lots of types of free out there, and there are good reasons to go with the model where you buy the book for zero dollars. Backups matter.
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