Buying the Cow, Though the Milk is Free

Publishing industry news site, The Book Standard has just published an article on piracy of electronic books, entitled Buying the Cow, Though the Milk is Free: Why Some Publishers are Digitizing Themselves. The article quotes folks like Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross, Jim Baen, and me talking about how free downloads can be good marketing, or in the worst cases a minor inconvenience, rather than the horror story that the copyright mafia makes them out to be. For my full thinking on this complex subject, I still stand by my 2002 essay, Piracy is Progressive Taxation.