free pdf ebook

[Rick DeNatale]

Oh well

*cough*
(points to topic of thread)

 

[Jerry Blanco]

My 2 cents:
I bought Agile Web Development, even though I could have downloaded it
for free.
Dave put a lot of hours writting that book and he deserves to be paid
for it. (BTW, great job, Dave!) Pragmatic Bookshelf guys put a lot of
hours publishing it and they deserve to be paid for it too. BTW, no,
I'm not related to PB or Dave in any way.

This whole conversation sounds a bit unrealistic to me. Forget the
whole 'is it theft', 'the law says blahblah', etc.
You go to a cab stop, and say 'I want you to take me to the airport,
but don't feel it's fair for you to charge me'. See what happens.
You go to a cafe and say 'I'll have a coffee but since coffee grows
from the Earth, and we ALL humans are entitled to a part of it, I
won't pay you.' See what happens.
You go to Barnes and Noble and say 'I'll take this book, but since the
ideas contained thereof are not truly ownable by anybody, I won't pay
for it.' See what happens.

How is Dave's book different? Please people, let's forget the 'is it
legal', 'is it moral'... is it logical to rationalize downloading
books and not paying for them? (Please don't answer me. I know where I
stand, I know where you stand, and don't want to be bothered arguing
about this)

If you don't want to pay for your own copy, get it from your library!
You already paid for it through your taxes!

JB.

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

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* Jerry Blanco, 23.03.2007 21:48:

Dave put a lot of hours writting that book and he deserves to be paid
for it. (BTW, great job, Dave!) Pragmatic Bookshelf guys put a lot of
hours publishing it and they deserve to be paid for it too.

I bought "Free as in Freedom"

You go to a cab stop, and say 'I want you to take me to the airport,
but don't feel it's fair for you to charge me'. See what happens.

Nothing sound I suppose.

You go to a cafe and say 'I'll have a coffee but since coffee grows
won't pay you.' See what happens.

Coffee is a good example to show that even people wo are nothing but
egoistic can have interest in paying a fair price. Of the money you
pay for the coffee little reaches the people that grow it and the
farmers can hardly survive with what they are paid. If you were one
of them what would you consider to do? Perhaps grow something that
pays a much better price? Especially if it is a plant that has always
been grown in the Region so that you already know how to grow it?
Good idea, isn't it?

Well, the plant I have in mind is Coca, the product that is sold
Cocain. Perhaps it is a good idea to pay the coffee farmers a fair
price than to pay even more than this amount of money for fighting
Coca plantations.

See? Paying a fair price can make sense even if only highly egoistic
interests are considered.

You go to Barnes and Noble and say 'I'll take this book, but since the
ideas contained thereof are not truly ownable by anybody, I won't pay
for it.' See what happens.

Hmm, the only case of a holder of IP where I consider it an ethical
duty not to buy products of is - believe it or not - Disney. Why
this? Disney has much of its production done in Korea. This were not
a problem if it weren't NORTH Korea. To my knowledge Disney is the
largest source of Dollars of the Juche regime. The the payment the
artists obtain is a mere joke. Since the day I know of this I have
not bought one single Disney item. Not even paper towel with Disney
motives on it (although it would have costed less than the paper
towel I bought instead). If I watch Disney movies (I like a number of
them) it is television broadcasts that are broadcast no matter if I
watch them or not. But even this does not necessarily imply to obtain
illegal copies of Disney movies.

In short my personal problem is usally that too little of the money
paid actually reaches the artists.

One side-remark: At least in Germany writing books is rather a hobby
than a job. It is very hard (almost impossible) to make one's living
only of writing books.

The subject is also a question of mentality. A german discounter has
invented the slogan "Geiz ist geil!" which may be translated as
Avarice is cool! but also as "Avarice is lecherous!" ("geil" comes in
both flavors the latter being the original one).

Many Germans seem to love this statement. If you say that avarice is
contemptible and one of the seven deadly sins people may even start
laughing at you.

Well, I also go to cheap discounters but usually not because of the
price. The products I usually buy aren't cheaper there but they are
usually fresher and often have a better quality. As it turned out
they are also less contaminated with pesticides than products sold
elsewhere and in the case of fresh products usually come from the
vincinity (which often is not true for products sold elsewhere).

The world is not at all black and white but full of different shades
of grey. Seems as I am not the first one to observe this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
--=20
Blog available at http://www.mynetcologne.de/~nc-schugtjo/blog/
PGP key with id 6CC6574F available at http://wwwkeys.de.pgp.net/


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[Alex Young]

My 2 cents:
I bought Agile Web Development, even though I could have downloaded it
for free.
Dave put a lot of hours writting that book and he deserves to be paid
for it. (BTW, great job, Dave!) Pragmatic Bookshelf guys put a lot of
hours publishing it and they deserve to be paid for it too. BTW, no,
I'm not related to PB or Dave in any way.

This whole conversation sounds a bit unrealistic to me. Forget the
whole 'is it theft', 'the law says blahblah', etc.
You go to a cab stop, and say 'I want you to take me to the airport,
but don't feel it's fair for you to charge me'. See what happens.
You go to a cafe and say 'I'll have a coffee but since coffee grows
from the Earth, and we ALL humans are entitled to a part of it, I
won't pay you.' See what happens.
You go to Barnes and Noble and say 'I'll take this book, but since the
ideas contained thereof are not truly ownable by anybody, I won't pay
for it.' See what happens.

How is Dave's book different? Please people, let's forget the 'is it
legal', 'is it moral'... is it logical to rationalize downloading
books and not paying for them? (Please don't answer me. I know where I
stand, I know where you stand, and don't want to be bothered arguing
about this)

Excuse me for answering, but I don't believe that you do know where I stand.

I don't think anybody is arguing your point - in fact, I think you're in
violent agreement with most here. Nobody is trying to rationalise
getting something for nothing - that is to entirely miss the point, at
least as I understand it.

While I've only been peripherally following this thread, and so may have
missed something along the way, the main point of those saying "is it
theft?" has been to emphasise the practical and moral difference between
depriving someone of a physical item which they then no longer have
access to, and obtaining without consent something for free which would
otherwise have to be paid for, *without* denying the original owner
access to it. Nobody (that I've seen, other than possibly the thread's
originator) is saying that either is right, or trying to rationalise
either. Conflating the two (as the big media owners like to do) is
overly simplistic and highly emotive for those who understand the
difference, because they understand what can be lost when that viewpoint
becomes entrenched.

My own personal feelings on the matter are that the situation would be
much simpler if copyright was not transferable, but that really *is* a
conversation for another day...

 

[Dave Thomas]

To try and get things back on topic for the group - one of the
things that made
me try out ruby was the availability of accessible material, such
as the
pragmatic programmers ruby book etc. I'd be quite willing to pay
for electronic
books like this one as long as I can then use it how I want -
often, this means
converting it into text or html so that I can access it from my
preferred
platform, Linux. The other good thing about getting into ruby is
that there is
a wealth of material out there from users, such as blogs, guides
and tutorials
that members of the ruby community have made available to anyone
who wants
them.

FWIW, our PDFs do not have DRM enabled. All they have is your name
stamped onto the bottom of each page.


Cheers


Dave

 

[Gary Wright]

Earlier, you said you were in favor of free markets. Most
economists believe that property rights is one of the key
underpinnings of such a system: if you have no property rights, you
can't transfer that capital, and you can't use it as collateral
when raising funds. de Soto has a great book on the subject,
explaining why weak property rights cause great inefficiencies in
developing economies.

I doesn't seem to me that Chad's comments are
in contradiction to your points on property rights.

I think he was just pointing out that 'theft' is
a term that has a well defined ethical and legal
meaning with respect to personal property but has
no well-defined ethical or legal meaning with
respect to copyright, trademarks, or patents. It
is true that many people use the term 'theft'
with respect to these concepts but Chad's point is
that it is a usage pattern that obfuscates rather
than clarifies the discussion. At least that is
the sense I got from his postings.

So you can be a strong property rights proponent
and simultaneously insist that copyright infringement
is not 'theft'.

Gary Wright

 

[johwait]

I doesn't seem to me that Chad's comments are
in contradiction to your points on property rights.

I think he was just pointing out that 'theft' is
a term that has a well defined ethical and legal
meaning with respect to personal property but has
no well-defined ethical or legal meaning with
respect to copyright, trademarks, or patents. It
is true that many people use the term 'theft'
with respect to these concepts but Chad's point is
that it is a usage pattern that obfuscates rather
than clarifies the discussion. At least that is
the sense I got from his postings.

So you can be a strong property rights proponent
and simultaneously insist that copyright infringement
is not 'theft'.

Gary Wright

As a follow up to several of the earlier postings, much has been
offered what US copyright is, and how it is observed ex-US. Some of it
was spot on, some of the comments were close but not entirely
accurate. Whether you agree with copyright law or not, here is the FAQ
on copyright from the US copyright office: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/
on how things actually work today.

Cheers,
John Wait

 

[Ilan Berci]

So far, I got cocaine, enterprise, theft, intellectual, and liquor, all
I need is camel and my bingo card will be complete!

ilan

 

[Chad Perrin]

Wow! So having professionl integrity trumps ethical questions? However
you want
to "name" the "act" it is wrong and shouldn't be condoned but
confronted.

No, professional integrity doesn't trump ethics. I recommend you take a
class in reading comprehension. I don't ignore ethics in favor of
professional integrity: I let professional integrity guide me when it
doesn't prompt me to do something unethical.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Before I begin . . .

I've been away from my keyboard for several days. I apologize for the
slow response.

I believe you are conflating two separate arguments to try to justify
your point.

No the author is not entitled to a sale.

However, the author _is_ entitled, if they so wish, to ask for
payment when someone takes possession of their book.

No, I'm not conflating two points. I am, instead, making one point and
avoiding another that would just drag the core discussion way off-topic.

The one point:
Copyright infringement is not theft. The author, whether or not he has
a "right" to control over the copying rights (thus the term "copyright")
of his work, is not "entitled" to a sale -- that would suggest that
people should be forced to buy copies of the work whether they want them
or not. If you're a proponent of strong copyright law, what you're
actually supporting is orthogonal to whether or not there's any "right"
to a sale -- it's a "right" to control over copying rights. In other
words, the holder of a copyright is supposedly entitled to prevent
anyone else from transferring his works, but not entitled to any sales
of copies of those works. It's a fine, but important, distinction in
attempting to draw the line between copyright infringement and theft.

Copyright is the basis of the open source movement: it is the claim
of copyright that allows the owner to insist on a particular license:
"I own the copyright, and I'll grant you a license under the
following terms."

Actually, copyright isn't the basis of "the open source movement". It's
the basis of the FSF/GPL style of open source licensing, but there are
several other approaches, some of which are effectively unrelated to
copyright law except that they must in some way be declared as exempt
from the standard applicability of copyright in some way, and some of
which rely on copyright law to create an even stronger exemption from
copyright law.

Examples:

Public domain (in US law) is something that must be declared for a new
work. Copyright law is essentially completely irrelevant to the model
of open source software development that involves declaring everything
public domain.

A license that has strong copyleft characteristics (inheritable by
derivative works, et cetera) but is otherwise about as unrestrictive as
public domain (no distribution requirements, no exerting copyright
privileges over the works except for the obvious persuant to the
license) basically uses copyright law to create a "protected public
domain" where works can enter the public domain but not be taken out
(aka, derivative works cannot be subject to normal copyright
restrictions).

Both of these would effectively be unchanged if copyright law were to
evaporate tomorrow, except that nothing in the former of the two
examples would ever be incorporated into proprietary works (because
"proprietary" would cease to have meaning in that sense).

Respect for copyright is an essential part of what we all do.

While I disagree with that, it's entirely orthogonal to the point I was
making. That is, I disagree ethically and in principle, though
obviously it is necessary to account for copyright in what I do because
it's *the law*.

Similarly, the copyright owner of a book has the right to set the
terms under which you use that work.

So, the correct phrasing of your initial sentence would be "I can't
be forced to buy something." But, if the author has made it a
condition that you _do_ buy it before using it, then you really
should buy it before using it.

If the author is *entitled* to a sale, then I absolutely can be forced
to buy something (ethically), because he's *entitled* to that sale.
Assuming the ethical validity of copyright law for argument's sake, I
absolutely should buy it before I use it if the creator so requires;
you're right about that. This doesn't mean he's entitled to a sale. I
believe you're using the word "entitled" entirely too loosely to be
strictly accurate.

Earlier, you said you were in favor of free markets. Most economists
believe that property rights is one of the key underpinnings of such
a system: if you have no property rights, you can't transfer that
capital, and you can't use it as collateral when raising funds. de
Soto has a great book on the subject, explaining why weak property
rights cause great inefficiencies in developing economies.

I believe that property rights are among the key underpinnings of free
markets. I just don't believe that thoughts (even if you have them
because you encountered a physical representation thereof) qualify or,
if they do qualify, they belong to whomever currently has them in his or
her head -- period. Again, that's kind of orthogonal to my point,
though.

I'm perfectly willing to discuss the value of copyright and patent law,
as long as you are willing to avoid conflating them with (tangible)
property rights -- at least until you actually provide a convincing
argument that copyright and patent law are, in fact, forms of property
protection equivalent to tangible property rights. Keep in mind that
"convincing" implies that I'm convinced. I'm perfectly willing to be
convinced, but I'm also not a pushover on this subject since I haven't
arrived at my current convictions by chance.

Using copyrighted works and ignoring the terms of use is probably not
theft. But that doesn't make it morally right.

Agreed. By the same token, your statement doesn't make it "morally"
wrong.

There's a matter of conflating morality with ethicality, as well, but
that's kind of irrelevant to the meat of the discussion at this point.
Again, my point was simply that violation of copyright and patent law is
not "theft", that nobody is ever "entitled" to a sale of anything
(before a contract is signed at least), and that one should be careful
in how one characterizes copyright violation in discussion.

 

[Chad Perrin]

Hey, we BSDers also exist. Our "giving away as far as we are able"
variant works quite well. Public domain - which is what happens when
there is no copyright - also seems to work quite well.

Yes, there is a whole host of people that participate in open source
under a "I'll live in fear of being exploited"-mindset, and we would
lose those - at least until they see that things work well anyway.
Still, copyright is not needed for what we do day to day, and there
are many projects that get by well more or less without it (and would
do perfectly without it if there wasn't jurisdictions willing to go
overboard with implied warranties for public domain work.)

It should probably be pretty obvious by now that I basically agree with
every word of that -- but I figured I'd make it obvious and explicit.

 

[Chad Perrin]

I doesn't seem to me that Chad's comments are
in contradiction to your points on property rights.

That's correct. In fact, I agree with Dave's paragraph in full, with
the exception of the implication that I don't agree with it. The only
problem that arises is that I'm inclined to differentiate between actual
property rights and "intellectual property rights", which are a market
externality imposed with the justification of encouraging innovation (no
comment at this exact moment on the worth of that justification).

I think he was just pointing out that 'theft' is
a term that has a well defined ethical and legal
meaning with respect to personal property but has
no well-defined ethical or legal meaning with
respect to copyright, trademarks, or patents. It
is true that many people use the term 'theft'
with respect to these concepts but Chad's point is
that it is a usage pattern that obfuscates rather
than clarifies the discussion. At least that is
the sense I got from his postings.

So you can be a strong property rights proponent
and simultaneously insist that copyright infringement
is not 'theft'.

Precisely -- and thank you for that excellent clarification.

 

[Chad Perrin]

So far, I got cocaine, enterprise, theft, intellectual, and liquor, all
I need is camel and my bingo card will be complete!

Umm . . . an example of an open source license that does not create a
development and distribution system that relies on copyright is Perl's
Artistic License. It's interesting to note that Perl's mascot is the
single-humped dromedary camel. This seems at odds with the Perl
approach to licensing, which is to dual-license under GPL and Artistic
License, probably to provide a BSD-like ecosystem while still leveraging
the mindshare of the GPL for popularity, since the dual-license model
creates sort of a "two-humped" reserve of distribution capability like
the bactrian camel.

There. Camels. Bingo?

 

[Chad Perrin]

While I've only been peripherally following this thread, and so may have
missed something along the way, the main point of those saying "is it
theft?" has been to emphasise the practical and moral difference between
depriving someone of a physical item which they then no longer have
access to, and obtaining without consent something for free which would
otherwise have to be paid for, *without* denying the original owner
access to it. Nobody (that I've seen, other than possibly the thread's
originator) is saying that either is right, or trying to rationalise
either. Conflating the two (as the big media owners like to do) is
overly simplistic and highly emotive for those who understand the
difference, because they understand what can be lost when that viewpoint
becomes entrenched.

Speaking solely for myself here, you're on the money (so to speak).
While I have some issues with the ethicality of copyright law, I would
still love to pay for a copy of one of the excellent books from the Prag
Progs (and, in fact, have already done so in the case of three or four
books bearing that imprimatur, and will surely continue to do in the
future). Such payment need not take the form of filthy lucre, but if
that's the preference of an author such as Dave Thomas, I'm happy to
reward his work in that manner -- the parenthetically alluded books I've
acquired have been worth a fair bit more to me than the money I've paid
for them, which makes them all an excellent deal for me.

That in no way changes how I feel about copyright law, or the simple
fact that copyright infringement is not theft, which seems to be the
point at which you were stabbing. So yes, as I said, you're on the
money at least as far as I'm concerned.

My own personal feelings on the matter are that the situation would be
much simpler if copyright was not transferable, but that really *is* a
conversation for another day...

I agree, and I once held the opinion that this was probably the best way
to fix an increasingly broken body of copyright law in the US. I don't
think the idea is any less an improvement over the current system, now,
than I did when it first occurred to me -- but I'm now of the opinion
that other (less popular) solutions are even better.

 

[Chad Perrin]

FWIW, our PDFs do not have DRM enabled. All they have is your name
stamped onto the bottom of each page.

Excellent! I haven't yet ordered a PragProg PDF (despite owning several
hardcopy PragProg books), but as long as this policy of avoiding DRM
remains effective I'll most likely end up buying a few in time.

For what it's worth, I think the loyalty, respect, and good will of the
Ruby community in particular and even programmers in general will ensure
that you'll continue to profit from your generosity and quality work for
some time to come, without need of any attempts to use technical
enforcement of copyright. I, for one, am more inclined to pay money for
these books the more generous and trusting you are.

I'm just a drop in the bucket, though. I make no claims at this time
about the attitudes of others toward your largesse.

 

[Chad Perrin]

I run ruby-doc.org. To the best of my knowledge, everything hosted on
that site is there with the permission of the owners.

. . and, to the best of my knowledge as someone who doesn't even know
anything about you and is in no way connected with ruby-doc.org, the
website is excellent and trustworthy.

 

[Brian Tol]

I run ruby-doc.org. To the best of my knowledge, everything hosted on

that site is there with the permission of the owners.

As a Ruby newbie, and just out of curiosity, how is ruby documentation
treated in the Ruby community? In Perl land, tools like Cpan and
search.cpan.org republish everything verbatium (or at least it seems
that way). Rubyforge, RAA, and Ruby-doc.org are great resources, but
there doesn't seem to be anything as comprehensive as search.cpan.org.
Is there anything out there like that for Ruby? I.e., a search engine
for ruby itself, gems, etc. with Rdocs and source code?

-Brian

 

[Alex Young]

As a Ruby newbie, and just out of curiosity, how is ruby documentation
treated in the Ruby community? In Perl land, tools like Cpan and
search.cpan.org republish everything verbatium (or at least it seems
that way). Rubyforge, RAA, and Ruby-doc.org are great resources, but
there doesn't seem to be anything as comprehensive as search.cpan.org.
Is there anything out there like that for Ruby? I.e., a search engine
for ruby itself, gems, etc. with Rdocs and source code?

There's a search box at http://ruby-doc.org which does that. I'm not
sure exactly what's searched by it, though.

 

[Harold Hausman]

Rubyforge, RAA, and Ruby-doc.org are great resources, but

there doesn't seem to be anything as comprehensive as search.cpan.org.
Is there anything out there like that for Ruby? I.e., a search engine
for ruby itself, gems, etc. with Rdocs and source code?

I've been using http://rubykitchensink.ca/ recently. I don't know
anything about how sweet perl is, but I've been unearthing good stuff
quickly using the kitchen sink.

hth,
-Harold

 

[Chad Perrin]

Sorry to spam the list, but I seem to be having trouble getting emails
through. I'm testing to see whether I can reply.

I've already tried the help address, so don't bother telling me I should
have emailed that address for "help". It isn't working for me either.