On the ethics of illegally downloading e-books; a Teleread essay full of interesting links about these modern e-reading times. Inspired in part by this New York Times Ethicist column, and brought to my attention by this ask.metafilter question.
posted by Greg Nog on Apr 7, 2010 - 159 comments

"This site contains more than 10,000 eBooks formatted for reading on your Palm, PocketPC, Zaurus, Rocketbook, eBookWise-1150, or Symbian cellphone." So if you have a PDA and especially if you're into the classics, you no longer have to settle for lame video games on your cell phone or inconvenient newspapers for your downtime entertainment.
posted by Doohickie on Dec 20, 2004 - 19 comments

A free, blogger-read version of Lawrence Lessig's new book, Free Culture is being produced. The book is released under a Creative Commons license which allows non-commercial derivative works to be created from it. (Some chapters are already available.) This is great - I think it would be a fine thing if more people produced audio versions of open-licensed or public domain works in this manner. (From boingboing)
posted by majcher on Mar 27, 2004 - 5 comments

BookShare is a napster-like service that relies on volunteers to share e-books with as many people as possible, and it's completely legal. The reason? Thanks to a special carve-out in copyright law which states "if such copies ... are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities."
posted by mathowie on Apr 23, 2003 - 15 comments

Stephen King's new serial is now online. The download is free, but he's asking people to pay; the next installment will be posted only if he receives payments for at least 75% of downloads.
posted by harmful on Jul 24, 2000 - 18 comments