From the press release I received:
Offered as a free e-book for one day only, February 1:
Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. “[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.”
—Publishers Weekly
Adobe DRM alert. For any linux users, or any one who doesn’t want to install the “Adobe Digital Eidtions” program in order to read a simple book, don’t bother giving U of Chicago your email, they are just going to offer you a file you can’t use.
What does it mean: “Free … One day only?”
If I download this ebook today, will it vanish from my hard drive tomorrow?
I guess the book will have been downloaded a good number of times, and from knowledgeable people who care about the piracy thing.
So I guess most of these people know that stripping the Drm from this book is as easy as running it through a python script. I’ve tried, it worked. I see no obvious traces of social Drm.
Yet it’s been a week and the book does not seem to have turned up in pirate sites, does it? It will, ultimately: it’s too good and relevant book not to.
But the point here is: most people downloading e-books won’t run to post them all over the net just because they can. People posting books over pirate sites are a small minority of e-books readers. Some of them probably does not post the (not Drmed) books they buy because of laziness, and because they don’t care either way; but I would guess many don’t post them because they think it’s wrong, or at least they don’t think it’s right.
Bye! Enrico