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Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

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Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#161

Post by johnloeber »

bluenose69 wrote: post #139

Access seems to have been cut off about 2 hours ago. Presumably this was a mistake, but new-year optimists might hope that Springer did this on purpose, to gauge the market at low cost. As someone with a full-time job, I'd be happy to pay $10 to $20 to download an old book that might come in handy, but with conventional download costs being half the paper cost, I balk and just walk over to the university library so I…

I reached out to the folks at Springer and asked them whether the availability of 57,000 titles for free download had been some kind of accident. Here's the response I got:

> Thank you for reaching out to us. From time to time our titles may become available to the public for legal download. There is no guarantee that titles available will remain available permanently. The only titles that will remain available are titles marked as Open Access.

Thus, it sounds like what happened was an accident or publicity stunt. I expect access to remain cut off.

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#162

Post by dchest »

dchest wrote: post #53
calvins wrote: post #45

My favorite find so far is "Advances in Crypto" conference proceedings going back to the early eighties: - http://link.springer.com/search?query=%22advances+in+cryptol...

Crypto thread is here! - The Design of Rijndael http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-04722-4

The book is still available for free from the authors:

http://jda.noekeon.org/#RijndaelBook

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#163

Post by mindcrime »

petke wrote: post #158
datihein wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those links are to "Open Access" books and have always, I believe, been free (as in beer). The content identified by the original post were not open access; they were paid access (typically quite expensive) and published in 2004 or before. I hope the zero cost downloads was not a glitch but a policy, and that Springer will make those older texts freely available again.

I hope nobody gets fired for this. Probably a lots of these leaked books will be up on torrent sites.

* Probably a lots of these leaked books will be up on torrent sites.*

If I had to guess, I'd say a pretty good chunk of them already were on torrent sites or LibGen.

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#164

Post by CamperBob2 »

johnloeber wrote: post #161
bluenose69 wrote: post #139

Access seems to have been cut off about 2 hours ago. Presumably this was a mistake, but new-year optimists might hope that Springer did this on purpose, to gauge the market at low cost. As someone with a full-time job, I'd be happy to pay $10 to $20 to download an old book that might come in handy, but with conventional download costs being half the paper cost, I balk and just walk over to the university library so I…

I reached out to the folks at Springer and asked them whether the availability of 57,000 titles for free download had been some kind of accident. Here's the response I got: > Thank you for reaching out to us. From time to time our titles may become available to the public for legal download. There is no guarantee that titles available will remain available permanently. The only titles that will remain available are t…

I don't understand this at all. Does their contract language with authors allows them to give books away at random times...?

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#165

Post by rswier »

Once again the internet has demonstrated it's ability to (semi-)autonomously heal damage and mis-configuration by replicating data from the faulty nodes. I trust the keepers of this valuable data will occasionally admire and validate these backups, replicate sparingly, and never profit except to enrich their knowledge. Guilty twinges may be eased by giving back to the nearest struggling technical book store in your area :)

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#166

Post by webnrrd2k »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #164
johnloeber wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reached out to the folks at Springer and asked them whether the availability of 57,000 titles for free download had been some kind of accident. Here's the response I got: > Thank you for reaching out to us. From time to time our titles may become available to the public for legal download. There is no guarantee that titles available will remain available permanently. The only titles that will remain available are t…

I don't understand this at all. Does their contract language with authors allows them to give books away at random times...?

I'd guess that they can do it under some sort of promotional clause in the contract, something stating that the publisher doesn't need to pay royalties for promotional copies of any book.

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#167

Post by zaf »

zaf wrote: post #56

This is simply fantastic. I'm sure all publishers will follow. +1 to Springer. Here is my current read: Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-05642-4

Well it's understandable.

While most of us are in the middle of holidays theres some poor soul beavering away trying to implement some feature before the "end of the year" deadline and tapped the wrong combination of keys and bam! the bank account graph starts dipping and crap hits the fan.

Hey, why don't you read some of the theoretical security / programming books that your company publishes?

-11 to Springer.

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#168

Post by my_username_is_ »

impendia wrote: post #149
bluenose69 wrote: post #139

Access seems to have been cut off about 2 hours ago. Presumably this was a mistake, but new-year optimists might hope that Springer did this on purpose, to gauge the market at low cost. As someone with a full-time job, I'd be happy to pay $10 to $20 to download an old book that might come in handy, but with conventional download costs being half the paper cost, I balk and just walk over to the university library so I…

I am not an expert on copyright law -- do you (or anyone) know to what extent I am legally allowed to share the books I downloaded from Springer's website while I could? In particular, I am teaching a course this spring based on two Springer books that I was able to download yesterday. If I e-mail PDFs to all of my students, am I legally in the clear?

Unfortunately, I do not think that you may legally share the works. Their terms of service currently say:

1.2 You may solely for private, educational, personal, scientific, or research purposes access, browse, view, display, search, download and print the Content.

1.3 You may not: [...] re-distribute, reproduce, or transmit the Content by any means including electronic (e. g., via e-mail) nor post it on their personal or public websites or on public networks...

So while you may have the copy of the book legally, it seems unlikely that you can give it to your students. There's always a chance that what they're saying isn't legally enforceable (see non compete agreements), but I don't think that's the case here. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say for sure.

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#169

Post by jcl »

zappo2938 wrote: post #74
msie wrote: post #27

Sooo many good books! I'm exhausted! Here are some good ones: MPEG Video Compression Standard: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b115884 Chaos and Fractals: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b97624 Proofs from THE BOOK: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-05412-3 Joel on Software: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4302-0753-5 Programming Challenges: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/…

The Things You Should Never Do, Part One by Joel Spolsky should be mandatory reading for every tech executive.[1] Springer might add more value to the texts by enabling Medium style side comments on an HTML version for readers to either ask for help or for experts to clarify and extend. Use the job posting business model to post jobs in the comments in specific disciplines of the texts to create revenue. [1] http://l…

Here's the original blog post, for anyone who was interested in reading it after Springer decided to reinstate its $30-per-chapter charge:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

(While I know they charge like this for most of their e-books, this particular example is embarrassing.)

Re: Springer Textbooks More Than 10 Years Old Available for Free Legal Download

#170

Post by grkvlt »

bluenose69 wrote: post #139

Access seems to have been cut off about 2 hours ago. Presumably this was a mistake, but new-year optimists might hope that Springer did this on purpose, to gauge the market at low cost. As someone with a full-time job, I'd be happy to pay $10 to $20 to download an old book that might come in handy, but with conventional download costs being half the paper cost, I balk and just walk over to the university library so I…

I have access to SpringerLink as an Edinburgh University alumnus, through their contract with the university library. This means I can download a large number of their titles (not just the OpenAccess ones) apart from some restricted content (referred to as Preview Only Content when searching.) This includes many recent books and journals, all downloadable as PDF or EPUB format. For example the 'Praxis' series on spaceflight is excellent, including a book on SpaceX [1] among many others. The other cool thing this offers me is the ability to buy a thing called a MyCopy Softcover Edition version of these books for only GBP/EUR/USD 24.99 rather than the usual GBP 100 price for the hardback, which is pretty awesome if you like having actual, physical books to read...

So, I suggest you have a look into this and see if you can also get access via the academic login page and Shibboleth or Athens. Or, if not available to you personally, you may be able to just go to your nearest university library and get access to the books that way, too...

[1] http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-5514-1

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