Back to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom [COVER]. Well, not yet.
I want to convey to you the depth of the panic in my field over
ebook piracy, or "bookwarez" as it is known in book-ripper
circles. Writers were joining the discussion on
alt.binaries.ebooks using assumed names, claiming fear of
retaliation from scary hax0r kids who would presumably screw up
their credit-ratings in retaliation for being called thieves. My
editor, a blogger, hacker and
guy-in-charge-of-the-largest-sf-line-in-the-world named Patrick
Nielsen Hayden posted to one of the threads in the newsgroup,
saying, in part [SCREENGRAB]:

> Pirating copyrighted etext on Usenet and elsewhere is going to
> happen more and more, for the same reasons that everyday folks
> make audio cassettes from vinyl LPs and audio CDs, and
> videocassette copies of store-bought videotapes. Partly it's
> greed; partly it's annoyance over retail prices; partly it's the
> desire to Share Cool Stuff (a motivation usually underrated by
> the victims of this kind of small-time hand-level piracy).
> Instantly going to Defcon One over it and claiming it's morally
> tantamount to mugging little old ladies in the street will make
> it kind of difficult to move forward from that position when it
> doesn't work. In the 1970s, the record industry shrieked that
> "home taping is killing music." It's hard for ordinary folks to
> avoid noticing that music didn't die. But the record industry's
> credibility on the subject wasn't exactly enhanced.

Patrick and I have a long relationship, starting when I was 18
years old and he kicked in toward a scholarship fund to send me