On This Internet Freedom Day, Download A Free Book: On Internet Freedom
from the enjoy dept
Lawyer Marvin Ammori has had an uncanny knack for being deeply involved in a few key battles for internet freedom over the years, including the SOPA fight last year. As today is the one year anniversary of the big January 18th blackout that effectively killed SOPA/PIPA -- a day many are calling "Internet Freedom Day" -- Ammori has put together a fantastic Kindle Single (i.e., short ebook) entitled On Internet Freedom. Just for Internet Freedom Day, the book is available free. If you don't have a Kindle device, but do have a smartphone/tablet, you can still download it today for free and then read it whenever you get around to it. Ammori shared a draft copy with me, and it's a very worthwhile read. Not only does it discuss a variety of battles concerning internet freedom, it pulls them all together to look at why these battles are happening... and why they're going to continue. As such, it's an important book for people to read to understand some of the larger issues at play, and why we need to continue to be vigilant in making sure the internet remains free and open. If you don't pick up your free copy today -- or if you just want to support some good causes -- after today the ebook will still be available for $4.99, with all of the profits being donated to Demand Progress and Fight for the Future, two of the leading activist groups fighting on these issues.
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Filed Under: internet freedom, marvin ammori, net neutrality, pipa, sopa, threats
Reader Comments
The First Word
“There is no DRM on the file
Hi--I think I screwed up.What I read about e-publishing made me think the Kindle and Kindle app would be convenient for most people.
And the Kindle program that allows you to make it free for a promotional day (5) also makes it available for free in the Lending Library. So I thought it would increase availability. The only downside: exclusivity in the Kindle Store. Didn't seem like a big deal if the Kindle App was free.
But I see other people prefer other formats. If the file is DRM free, can people just download it and convert the text of book (all text) to whatever format they prefer?
Again, sorry for the inconvenience.
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Job done in 2 mins.
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it says something like 'upload to kindle cloud storage or other reader format' or something like that, but then the ONLY choice under the dropdown is 'upload to kindle cloud'...
did it anyway, but have no idea what it takes to 'hey, you get off of my cloud...'
(don't have a kindle, wife has a color nook that i set up to dual boot to jellybean, and i have a nexus 7... guess i can get a kindle app for the nexus, but still not sure it will allow me into kindleland to download/copy...)
gee, ain't a million walled gardens great ! ! !
we're building the tower of babel all over again, only this time, its digital ! ! !
(i've got a digit for the PTB who ruin all this shit for us...)
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Not if you consider that Ammori is Google's boy in Washington
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All I remember from last year was how Mike went on a hate-fueled rampage, spreading lies and manipulating his readers while refusing to have a productive, substantive discussion with anyone who didn't share his extremist views.
Need someone to rally the masses with lies? Mike's your man. He proved that for sure.
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And really, that's the only thing you remember? Thousands of sites protesting does ring any bells? (Although that's not surprising...)
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Only later did everyone realize that they had been lied to and used.
Never again.
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Are you telling me Hollywood doesn't employ the same tactics?
It's hard to feel bad for them when they can't even show themselves to be better than the big evil tech companies.
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Yeah, must be both.
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Now go troll somewhere else.
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The protest started with very critical academia and human rights groups, followed by coverage in less objective media (techdirt included) and spread to more mainstream media. Reddit/Wikipedia and the rest of the FOSS-gang took the torch on "doing something". That the event got some parts of Google and several others on their side is more of a scoop than anything else.
If you research the events and the data on what happened, you will see that Google was very cautious and didn't participate fully 'till the very end.
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Oh please. Ammori personally wrote almost every last one of the 75 amendments offered at the SOPA markup. He was on Google's payroll well before the markup.
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Remind me again of why it's so bad that a website dedicated to infringement, i.e., a site with the primary purpose of intentionally violating other people's rights, should have its advertising revenue cut off and its listing in search engines removed.
To me, freedom on the internet means the freedom to not have people's rights violated on a massive scale.
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http://torrentfreak.com/music-sales-are-just-6-of-average-musicians-income-130114/
Looks artists make better income without the labels running interference.
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If record labels are so evil, why do the vast majority of musicians, both successful and unknown, seek them out and wish to work with them, hmm?
You people aren't fooling anyone with your silly piracy rationalization nonsense.
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No duh, but then you must be familiar with royalty rates, right?
9% from mechanical royalties. Originally this was justified because of the overhead, which is nearly non-existent with digital files since they cost nothing to reproduce or ship, so they must be making bank off of those sales considering that Spotify and Itunes are the top revenue providers for the record labels.
Also, with this in mind and your mentality that the record labels are so good to the artists, why would James Taylor and several other artists be suing them for unfair royalty rates? (http://www.examiner.com/article/james-taylor-sues-warner-bros)
"And musicians no longer make as much from record sales BECAUSE YOU'RE RIPPING THEM OFF, BONEHEAD."
Ripping them off? Actually, sales have gone down because I no longer have to pay for a 12 track CD with only one song I want from it. On top of that, if you're not familiar with the times most new music is crap nowadays anyway. So now I have the alternative to listen to Spotify and avoid wasting my money on a song I'll listen to one or two times.
"If record labels are so evil, why do the vast majority of musicians, both successful and unknown, seek them out and wish to work with them, hmm?"
HAHAHAHAHAHA...oh the naivety is so sweet.
It's easier to go through a label than do it on your own because you have someone managing everything for you. It's like having your parents pay your way, except in this case you end up owing so much back to them you end up barely being able to turn a profit.
"You people aren't fooling anyone with your silly piracy rationalization nonsense."
And this is the worst. You're so dumb you can't even see that the majority of people here DO NOT support piracy.
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Big shock, if I were to type 'free Led Zeppelin downloads' it will bring up websites offering free Led Zeppelin downloads.
If I type in 'buy Led Zeppelin songs' (as I just did) the first result is Amazon.
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Maybe if the SOPA/PIPA hadn't had a massive amount of overreach, it wouldn't have been such an issue.
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I completely agree with you. I'd love it if governments respected the internet and respected everyone's right to copy, instead of violating that right on a massive scale.
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If you'll remember, the primary objection over these efforts was not that they'd impact pirate sites. It's that they'd impact non-pirate websites and non-web services.
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Unless you're speaking of a prosecution I haven't heard about, you missed out the word allegedly. You know? That pesky thing that's supposed to be the basis of most western law called "innocent until proven guilty"?
I don't have any problem with infringing websites being taken down, and judging by the way he writes neither does Mike, but I do have a problem with a business being destroyed on an accusation.
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lol?
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/easy to strip the DRM anyway
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That would be a little like best buy refusing to sell you blurays or DVDs until they confirmed you had a registered best buy brand player.
I've clicked "buy", and you're guaranteed to get paid amazon, just give me the file.
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Where exactly? I don't have Kindle and would prefer some sane format like ePUB, PDF and etc.
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Well, OK, made up some phony address in Canada... "Please provide a valid Province/State" OK, did that... "Your ZIP code does not match your Province" OK, looked it up. "This book is not available for your region. Go to YOUR Kindle store to shop" Click the link, came to the Canadian site. Searched for the book - there it is, but now for Canadian $0.00; one-click to purchase - SUCCESS!
And there was almost no headaches...
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:(
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There is no DRM on the file
What I read about e-publishing made me think the Kindle and Kindle app would be convenient for most people.
And the Kindle program that allows you to make it free for a promotional day (5) also makes it available for free in the Lending Library. So I thought it would increase availability. The only downside: exclusivity in the Kindle Store. Didn't seem like a big deal if the Kindle App was free.
But I see other people prefer other formats. If the file is DRM free, can people just download it and convert the text of book (all text) to whatever format they prefer?
Again, sorry for the inconvenience.
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Re: There is no DRM on the file
Apology accepted though.
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Re: There is no DRM on the file - Calibre
Download to the Kindle PC app. Use Calibre to add it to your library, removing the DRM. About 2 minutes.
I highly recommend Calibre.
To quote Dr. Pournelle - You'd have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Dave
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...*AND* he's being unbelievably human *AND* admitting a mistake ? ? ?
norman, this does not compute, please explain...
seriously, MUCHO macho props to you for both doing what you did, and realizing a better distribution might have been called for, AND apologizing...
you, sir, have just made yourself a sale...
will actually buy it, if i can get it onto my 'droid without jumping through too many hoops... (yes, i've read the advice above amazon->pc->calibre->epub/whatever, but can't look into it until tonight)
(guess it isn't on google play ? still have some credit there i could use up...)
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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It's simple even on an Android
format with the extension .mobi. Not to worry, I'll just upload the book to www.online-convert.com and change it to .epub so I can read it in Cool Reader. At least I would if fucking Amazon didn't require you to have a credit or debit card to do anything on their website! *facepalm*
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