Eric Flint on DRM and Copyright
As one of the loyal minions, it occurs to me that some of you may not be aware that Eric's semi-monthly editors column at Jim Baen's Universe is free and open to read without a subscription.
Therefore, I think it might be appropriate to post links to those essays here, since Eric "blogs" on Baen's Bar and in his Universe editorial column rather than on his web site, leaving most of the content here to his crew of minions. There are two sets of columns "Salvos Against Big Brother" - which is Eric's take on the long-running copyright and drm debate, and "The Editor's Page."
I'm including links to both below.
So, without further ado, the links to Eric's columns at JBU:
Salvos Against Big Brother
- A Matter of Principle From: Vol 1 Num 1: June 2006
- Copyright: What Are the Proper Terms for the Debate? From: Vol 1 Num 2: August 2006
- Copyright: How Long Should It Be? From: Vol 1 Num 3: October 2006
- What is Fair Use From: Vol 1 Num 4: Dec 2006
- Lies, and More Lies From: Vol 1 Num 5: Feb 2007
- There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch From: Vol 1 Num 6: April 2007
The Editor's Page. Eric Flint on the subject of Science Fiction
- June 2006 From: Vol 1 Num 1: June 2006 What is the role of short fiction in F & SF and why does it matter?
- August 2006 From: Vol 1 Num 2: August 2006 My original plans for this issue's "The Editor's Page" got swept aside last month by the death of Jim Baen, the man who launched the magazine and whose name is—and will remain—on the masthead.
- October 2006 From: Vol 1 Num 3: October 2006 Jim Baen, the founder of this magazine, died three months ago. Between that and the fact that we've now had enough initial experience with Universe to have a much better sense of the prospects for the magazine than we did when we launched it at the end of last year, I think it would be appropriate for me to use this issue's Editor's Page to let our readers know what our current plans are.
- December 2006 From: Vol 1 Num 4: Dec 2006 Since our third issue came out a few weeks ago, we've expanded our staff by adding two new people.
Mike Resnick took over "The Editor's Page" beginning with the February issue.
Listen to this post 
You might want to link to the new Grantville Gazette site. It is amazingly hard to find a link (there are none here, at Baen, or on Wikipedia). Just a helpful hint. I will get there eventually.
Comment by Kinney — April 28, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
“Lies and More Lies” is *not* available for free. I find it really weird that I’m the first person to point that out.
Comment by Marcel Popescu — August 18, 2007 @ 12:29 am
A perfect example of how smart companies do the “try before you buy” thing is GameStop. Now, admittedly, they don’t do it for new games, because they can’t repackage used games and resell them at the new price. But any used game they sell comes with a 7 day “no questions asked” return policy. Meaning someone can “buy” it, play it for several days, and then keep or return the game based on that experience.
A few days ago, I asked one of the employees there how often he’d seen a customer return a used copy of a game and then buy it again to take advantage of their policy. His response was that aside from people returning the _used_ copy to buy a _new_ copy, he’d never seen it. Now, I bet it occasionally happens sometimes, especially since GameStop is a national corporation, but I suspect that it’s few and far between.
It just goes to show that Eric Flint knows exactly what he’s talking about with his essays on copyright infringement. That in reality, it’s not going to be as big of a problem as the “solution” would cause.
Comment by Jeff Ehlers — April 20, 2008 @ 10:09 pm