[TriLUG] Linux Format free to download for 24 hours only

[Kevin Hunter]

At 12:35am -0500 on Wed, 04 Mar 2009, Maxwell Spangler wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 21:44 -0500, Andy Random wrote:
>> A popular UK Linux magazine (Linux Format) is offering a free download of 
>> their current issue [...]
>> [notice and link]
> 
> Thanks for the heads-up

Indeed, much appreciated.  Now, if only I could find an audio version of
the *nix mags for the road and bike trips ...

> Took me all of 4 minutes to download this on the torrent.. So I wonder,
> if it's on the torrent, how can they stop it from downloading after 24
> hours?  It's just.. out there now?

I don't think they're really that worried about it.  Speaking cynically,
or perhaps just saying it as it is, they get good publicity out of it.
Roughly speaking, any new subscriptions from this stunt = increased
revenue readership and revenue.

More directly, the 4th comment from the link addresses it.  Note the
"... I doubt we'd be particularly upset!" remark.

--------
Re: Catch or no catch?
TuxRadar - March 3, 2009 @ 6:56pm

There will be no DRM on it, meaning that you can run it on any device
you want and it won't "time out" or something horrible like that. It's
yours. We're giving you a personal copy for free. We're not giving away
the copyright to the article, if that's what you're asking - that means
you can't redistribute the PDFs freely. This isn't a "catch", this is
just standard copyright law.

However clearly without any DRM there's nothing stopping you from giving
them to everyone, torrenting them, printing them, selling them,
whatever. We'd rather everyone obtained the PDFs directly from us, but
we can't stop you redistributing them for eternity. If someone does
decide to put the whole thing on The Pirate Bay in 48 hours, I doubt
we'd be particularly upset! ;)

This is something that Magnatune pioneered and we're happy to follow
their lead.
--------

Kevin