We are making available here, in a single posting, all of Eric’s columns from Jim Baen’s Universe on copyright.

We hope you enjoy this collection of the

Salvos Against Big Brother:

A Matter of Principle

by Eric Flint

I’m going to be writing a regular column on the subject of electronic publishing, and the challenges it poses to modern society—as well as the opportunity it provides. This column will take up a number of related issues, including such matters as the proper length of copyright terms, the nature of Digital Rights Management and why we are opposed to it, and the largely mythical nature of so-called “online piracy.”

We decided to keep this column separate from my general editor’s preface for each issue—see “The Editor’s Page”—because we think the issue is important enough for a separate column of its own. Furthermore, there will usually be a number of specific matters relevant to each issue of the magazine that I will need to address in “The Editor’s Page” that would simply get in the way of this discussion.

We’re calling the column “Salvos Against Big Brother” because that captures the key aspect of the problem, so far as Jim Baen and I are concerned. Both the publisher of this magazine and its editor believe that so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM)—by which we mean the whole panoply of ever more restrictive laws concerning digital media, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—are the following:

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The next few books I have coming out, either as author or editor, are the following:

This month: Eric Flint, 1636: The Saxon Uprising just came out.

May 2011: Christopher Anvil, Rx For Chaos. This is a mass market paperback reissue.

June 2011: Eric Flint and Dave Freer, The Sorceress of Karres. This is a mass market paperback reissue.

July 2011: Eric Flint, Ring of Fire III. Virginia DeMarce’s 1635: The Tangled Web is being reissued this month in a mass market paperback edition.

October 2011: Eric Flint, Worlds. This collection of some of my short fiction is being reissued this month in a mass market paperback edition.

November 2011: Eric Flint, 1635: The Eastern Front. This is a mass market paperback reissue.

January 2012: Eric Flint, Grantville Gazette VI.

April 13, 2011: I just turned in the last manuscript items for the anthology Ring of Fire III, which is coming out in July. The next thing I’m working on is my short story for Grantville Gazette VI, which is being published in January, 2012.

— Edited 18 Feb 2007 –
Well, that was an interesting experiment, but we’ve switched back to internal WP comments. We did enable threading. Thanks for your patience with us.

– Loyal Minion
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We have moved the comments over to the cool, THREADED, comments system at INTENSE DEBATE, written by the same wonderful people who wrote wordpress, the platform this site runs on. 

You do not HAVE to create a new login in order to enter comments, but you get a bunch of neat features at ID if you do.  The new system includes open-id login, gravitars, threading, reply-by-email, rss feeds for individual posts, and a bunch more.  

We hope you enjoy it. 

-_ Loyal Minion

 Yes, I know that truely LOYAL minions would do this more than once every 18 months or so, but never-the-less, the bibliography page (linked from the home page in the right-hand-menu) is now current through November 2008, with dates for publications extending through Dec 2009. 

Appearances are current for everything I know about in 2009 as well. 

And if someone wants to fix the 2007 entries in the chronological bibliography, feel free to send it to me, and I’ll post it with credit!

While Eric's still in the South Pacific, we'll point out that his latest column in the just-relased first issue of Jim Baen's Universe second year is about the relationship between drm-free ebooks and the opacity of the book market. 

It starts: 

In my last essay, I approached the question of so-called online piracy from what I called a "negative" standpoint—by which I meant that I was content with knocking down the arguments advanced in favor of DRM. In this essay, I want to turn the problem around and approach it from a positive standpoint, by examining the many ways in which a non-DRM approach to electronic publishing can help the situation of authors and publishers."

 Read the rest of it (and the new issue of Universe) here.  http://baens-universe.com/articles/salvos7

 (The article is free, the rest of the magazine requires subscription to read more than the first half.  You know the principle,  "Hey Kid!  Come'ere!  Try this! The first-half's free!) 

–Loyal Minions 

Hi, all

I just thought I'd let everybody know that Baen Books will be picking up the American alternate history series I started at Del Rey, with 1812: THE RIVERS OF WAR and 1824: THE ARKANSAS WAR. I just signed a contract for two new books in the series.

Eric

 Loyal minion note:  We don't yet know anything about the status of the first two novels except that 1824: The Arkansas War is scheduled for paperback release by Del Rey.  The possibility of webscriptions availablity of TAW is open to discussion but unknown.  More when we hear it. 

–Loyal Minion 

While it will not be final until mid June, and not available on webscriptions until July, Grantville Gazette number 12 is now "up on the front page" at http://www.grantvillegazette.com  with a really cool cover image.

12 will eventually feature the start of a continuing serial story by Eric Flint, but we don't have that yet.

 Stil, there's a lot of cool stories and non-fiction.  Very tasty.  

-_ Loyal Minion 

The forthcoming page is somewhat out of date, but until we can get it fixed up, here's the master's schedule in his own words, quoting from a Baen's Bar post on Jan 17, 07

 – Loyal Minions

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Now that 1824: The Arkansas War is out, Del Rey has graciously allowed us to post the ENTIRE text of 1812: The Rivers of War on this site, Eric's blog, and the Baen Free Library. 

We have the production PDF, which is not the most convenient form to read. We strongly recommend that you download the file to your local computer to read. So, without further ado, here the pdf of 1812: The Rivers of War .

And in Further news….   Arnold Bailey, the Chief wizard of Webscriptions has _already_ got it up in the Baen Free Library.

Jump to there to see the other formats available at http://webscriptions.net/pc-588-1-1812-the-rivers-of-war.aspx
 

(Thanks Arnold!)