Makers
Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com
186,000 words
Tor Books: 978-0765312792
HarperCollins UK/Voyager: 978-0007325221
Last modified 12 Dec 2009
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About this download
There's a dangerous group of anti-copyright activists out there who pose a clear and present danger to the future of authors and publishing. They have no respect for property or laws. What's more, they're powerful and organized, and have the ears of lawmakers and the press.
I'm speaking, of course, of the legal departments at ebook publishers.
These people don't believe in copyright law. Copyright law says that when you buy a book, you own it. You can give it away, you can lend it, you can pass it on to your descendants or donate it to the local homeless shelter. Owning books has been around for longer than publishing books has. Copyright law has *always* recognized your right to own your books. When copyright laws are made -- by elected officials, acting for the public good -- they always safeguard this right.
But ebook publishers don't respect copyright law, and they don't believe in your right to own property. Instead, they say that when you "buy" an ebook, you're really only *licensing* that book, and that copyright law is superseded by the thousands of farcical, abusive words in the license agreement you click through on the way to sealing the deal. (Of course, the button on their website says, "Buy this book" and they talk about "Ebook sales" at conferences -- no one says, "License this book for your Kindle" or "Total licenses of ebooks are up from 0.00001% of all publishing to 0.0001% of all publishing, a 100-fold increase!")
I say to hell with them. You bought it, you own it. I believe in copyright law's guarantee of ownership in your books.
So you own this ebook. The license agreement (see below), is from Creative Commons and it gives you even *more* rights than you get to a regular book. Every word of it is a gift, not a confiscation. Enjoy.
What do I want from you in return? Read the book. Tell your friends. Review it on Amazon or at your local bookseller. Bring it to your bookclub. Assign it to your students (older students, please -- that sex scene is a scorcher) (*now* I've got your attention, don't I?). As Woody Guthrie wrote:
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
Oh yeah. Also: if you like it, buy it
http://craphound.com/makers/buy
or donate a copy to a worthy, cash-strapped institution.
http://craphound.com/makers/donate
Why am I doing this? Because my problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks, @timoreilly for this awesome aphorism). Because free ebooks sell print books. Because I copied my ass off when I was 17 and grew up to spend practically every discretionary cent I have on books when I became an adult. Because I can't stop you from sharing it (zeroes and ones aren't ever going to get harder to copy); and because readers have shared the books they loved forever; so I might as well enlist you to the cause.
I have always dreamt of writing sf novels, since I was six years old. Now I do it. It is a goddamned dream come true, like growing up to be a cowboy or an astronaut, except that you don't get oppressed by ranchers or stuck on the launchpad in an adult diaper for 28 hours at a stretch. The idea that I'd get dyspeptic over people -- *readers* celebrating what I write is goddamned *bizarre*
