This month’s free e-book from the University of Chicago Press is a replica of the very first, 1906 edition of the Chicago Manual of Style to commemorate the 16th edition of that work.
Of course, as with all University of Chicago Press free e-books, this book comes wrapped in Adobe Digital Editions DRM—even though, since it was originally published in 1906, this book is well within the public domain by now. (Oddly, I can’t seem to find any public domain version of it on-line, at least not in Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks, or Manybooks. There is a somewhat rough scan of a 1911 edition on Wikimedia Commons, however.)
It’s a pity that this press—an academic press, yet, and thus part of an organization supposedly dedicated to advancing the spread of knowledge—should choose to impose technological restrictions upon a document that should legally be free to all.
Update: A representative of the Chicago University Press has noted in a comment that they do actually offer a DRM-free download of this book as well. While it’s good that they have it available, I do still find it annoying that they went with a DRM-locked version for their publicized free giveaway. If they’re already giving it away free without DRM, what purpose is served by publicizing a restricted version of the same exact thing?
FYI: google books has both the 1911 and 1914 Chicago Manual of Style in downloadable PDF editions — the Wikimedia links to a djvu version.
—asotir
Does it? I searched in Google Books for it but was only able to find more modern editions.
Chicago has a DRM-free version of the first edition, but it’s a bit out of the way.
I have links to free copies of editions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 here. (Most of the links are to the Internet Archive.)
The offer of the 1906 edition is simply a promotional effort to highlight the publication of the 16th Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. We are not denying that the work is in the public domain and have long offered a DRM-free PDF of the facsimile at http://bit.ly/dChzhg
Ah, glad to hear it. I will update the article accordingly when I’m home this evening.