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Ayn rand ebooks?

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AulusAemilius

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Amazon shows that Anthem is available in ebook format for the Kindle. I'm assuming it is also elsewhere on the 'net in other formats. I've not seen any other Ayn Rand ebooks out there.

I am glad I got the Objectivism CD while it was available though.

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From a quick search, electronic copies of most of her major works (fountainhead, atlas shrugged, Virtue of Selfishness etc) exist although I dont know where you could purchase them legally.

Maybe try and pick up a 2nd hand copy of the CD somewhere? Or just ask someone who has it to make a copy and post you it, and then donate $50 or whatever to the ARI.

edit: er, why do you think that the CD has been discontinued? The Ayn Rand Bookstore seem to be selling it: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AR66M

Edited by eriatarka
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edit: er, why do you think that the CD has been discontinued? The Ayn Rand Bookstore seem to be selling it: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AR66M

The magic words "Out of stock", plus "The Objectivism Research CD-ROM has been discontinued." Production stopped early this year. There was a forum thread somewhere about it. There were evidently some copyright issues that were troublesome for the producer. He had full rights to produce it while he did, but wasn't interested in the negotiations involved in renewing the right to produce.

It's a real shame for those of us (like myself) who came into Objectivism a little too late for the CD. But from what I hear, it was highly non-trivial to obtain the right to distribute, and the producer certainly has the right to make his own rational time-versus-benefit analysis!

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  • 3 months later...
If you do a simple google search for the titles plus "pdf", there are a few results. I use them in case I want to find a quote, so I can search through Galt's speech or whatever without having to read the skim the whole thing.

By doing this, rather than buying the searchable CD, you encourage exactly what I was talking about in the "Being consistent" thread. You should never trade principles for convenience. It is exactly in the name of such "convenience" that others wish that your property be taken and used to fulfill their desires. (I am of course talking about the use of taxation to quickly amass funds for public services.)

Edited by brian0918
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By doing this, rather than buying the searchable CD, you encourage exactly what I was talking about in the "Being consistent" thread. You should never trade principles for convenience. It is exactly in the name of such "convenience" that others wish that your property be taken and used to fulfill their desires. (I am of course talking about the use of taxation to quickly amass funds for public services.)

Well, I bought a brand new copy of Atlas Shrugged. I could sit there and type the entirety of Galt's speech manually by hand to keep for my own reference, but it's easier to search in a PDF file that already exists. Is there a contradiction there?

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Well, I bought a brand new copy of Atlas Shrugged. I could sit there and type the entirety of Galt's speech manually by hand to keep for my own reference, but it's easier to search in a PDF file that already exists. Is there a contradiction there?

What's right is not determined by what's easy.

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What's right is not determined by what's easy.

That's certainly true, but what I was getting at was that there would be no difference between my using a pdf found on the internet or hand-typing the entire speech to search through if I needed it. In both instances, I have the original text for my use.

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That's certainly true, but what I was getting at was that there would be no difference between my using a pdf found on the internet or hand-typing the entire speech to search through if I needed it. In both instances, I have the original text for my use.

The fact that the end result is the same does not mean that they are ethically synonymous.

Edited by brian0918
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That's certainly true, but what I was getting at was that there would be no difference between my using a pdf found on the internet or hand-typing the entire speech to search through if I needed it. In both instances, I have the original text for my use.
There is a huge difference. You acquired a legally-created single physical copy of a book, which is now yours. The PDF copy that you acquired was not created and distributed legally, and downloading that copy is theft of intellectual property.
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Since the British version of Anthem is out of copyright (at least, I was told that was the reason) it is available on Gutenberg, and in audio on Librivox.

Anthem's US Copyright protection lapsed in 1966 because it was not renewed before the expiration of the 28 years then afforded by the Copyright Act. At least, this is the best I've been able to determine without visiting the Copyright Records Public Reading Room and doing a manual search. As for copyright protection in other countries, I am unsure.

It would be very easy for the ARI to add electronic formats to their store...

Very little of Rand's work has been recently typeset. I think even the anniversary editions were photographic reprints of earlier editions. They simply don't exist, officially, in electronic form. The publisher would need to digitally reset the works -- an expensive process which would only be undertaken if there were a lucrative electronic market to exploit or if publishing reprints from the existing plates becomes impossible.

I'd love to have electronic copies of Rand's work to put on my Sony Reader. The best way I can think of to obtain said copies would be to write to the publisher asking for permission to produce them for myself. Maybe I will try that and see what happens. This strategy worked well when I tried it with my law school textbooks.

~Q

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Very little of Rand's work has been recently typeset. I think even the anniversary editions were photographic reprints of earlier editions. They simply don't exist, officially, in electronic form. The publisher would need to digitally reset the works -- an expensive process which would only be undertaken if there were a lucrative electronic market to exploit or if publishing reprints from the existing plates becomes impossible.

I don't understand; can't a satisfactory electronic copy be made using an OCR program to convert the prints to text, then running the text through a typesetter (such as LaTeX)?

I would be more interested in downloads of the lectures; these they could provide very easily in an electronic form. I'm thinking of writing to them asking why they don't have this as an option in their store. They do have some fiction available this way, but no lectures.

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[C]an't a satisfactory electronic copy be made using an OCR program to convert the prints to text, then running the text through a typesetter (such as LaTeX)?

It isn't quite that simple. The plates could be digitized, then interpreted using OCR, but the result would be far less than satisfactory. Even sophisticated OCR from pristine source material cannot reliably distinguish between, e.g., left- and right-handed quotes. Ligatures will create additional OCR problems. An OCR parse would require extensive cleaning in order to produce a text clear enough for publication. The cleaning process is very time and labor intensive. Based on my own experience cleaning up OCR, a cleanup of AS would take a professional several weeks to complete. And that's just to get the text. Then, publication in various e-book formats requires separate typesetting for each different format.

Of course, you could always write to the publisher to request permission to do it for yourself. My experience with this approach has been very positive in the past, so long as the publisher does not already sell an electronic version of the book you want to scan.

~Q

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