Memo to MIT Press: Get an e-book version of your Turing novel out, so pirates don’t preempt you
Turing (A Novel about Computation) should be an obvious candidate for an e-book—and not just because of the topic.
After all, the publisher is none other than The MIT Press. No such luck for honest e-bookers, though. I can’t even find a Kindle edition. And here the book has been out for five years.
Meanwhile a pirate site is merrily promoting the novel, by Christos H. Papadimitriou, as a free e-book. The site even slapped its name on a modified cover.
When, oh when, will legit publishers learn? Meanwhile I’ve e-mailed The MIT Press and Prof. Papadimitriou for comment.
The DRM angle: As long as a paper version was available for scanning, even the best "protection" in the world couldn’t have kept the Turing book off the pirate site.
An aside: What’s the University of Phoenix doing with an advertisement on the sleazy pirate site, in between sex ads? Perhaps an agency lined up the ad, and the University doesn’t know what’s going on.
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