Author Encourages Users to Pirate His Book

[kennyc]

Ran across this on slashdot:

(Bad link. sorry)

"What I’ve Earned (And Learned) From Writing “Beginning Ruby”

....

"My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: I’m good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I can’t actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, it’s around on plenty of “free e-book” sites and on RapidShare."

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Ran across this on slashdot:

http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/

"What I’ve Earned (And Learned) From Writing “Beginning Ruby”

....

"My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: I’m good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I can’t actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, it’s around on plenty of “free e-book” sites and on RapidShare."

Your link is cut off. Please change that or remove the link. Thank you!

[kennyc]

No I think there may be something wrong with the site. Here's a link to the Slashdot story and it is doing the same thing:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10...irate-His-Book

[Superlucky]

I think it's a good idea. I will confess that in the past I have read ebooks that were "shared" by people on the internet. The ones I liked resulted in subsequent purchases of the authors' works.

[AnemicOak]

Kenny's link was fine earlier.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Superlucky

I think it's a good idea. I will confess that in the past I have read ebooks that were "shared" by people on the internet. The ones I liked resulted in subsequent purchases of the authors' works.

I've not done that with ebooks, but definitely have bought music CD's or MP3s from "samples" etc.

[columbus]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Ran across this on slashdot:

--- link removed ---

"What I’ve Earned (And Learned) From Writing “Beginning Ruby”

....

"My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: I’m good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I can’t actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, it’s around on plenty of “free e-book” sites and on RapidShare."

This link is redirecting to a page calling itself *the American cancer society* asking for donations!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by columbus

This link is redirecting to a page calling itself *the American cancer society* asking for donations!

See above, it was working when I posted it...

I've removed it for now.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by kennyc

See above, it was working when I posted it...

I've removed it for now.

according to this comment by Peter Cooper on the /. page, he modified the link himself :

A bad summary makes bad responses

I wrote the piece linked here and the summary on Slashdot is laughably wrong. All the cool Hacker News and Reddit people who read the story.. you're awesome and you really added to the discussion and didn't come out with nonsense saying I'm actively encouraging people to break the law (which, if whoever wrote the summary could comprehend English, is not what I said - I raised a potential method of circumvention as a thought experiment.. "I suspect" does not mean "I think you must").

So if Slashdotters want to be the first to spout nonsense and misquotes on the same day my first kid was born (I'm just getting a few hours sleep after being up a gazillion hours ;-)) then congratulations - some of you succeeded admirably. All the traffic to the site is going to somewhere you can donate to a good cause and earn some actual karma.

(emphasis mine).