2600 Magazine as DRM-free Kindle, PDF ebooks

2600 Magazine‘s Emmanuel Goldstein writes,

We thought long and hard over the best way to jump into the whole digital publishing realm after releasing our first issue on the Kindle and Nook last month. We decided to stand up to the DRM proponents and create something that has no restrictions whatsoever – and see if we could sustain that solely through the support of people who are into the material. This is contrary to what everyone else in the publishing industry is telling us to do – so we figured it had to work.We’ve created a 300 page book comprised of the most recent full year of 2600. We’re calling it The Hacker Digest, Volume 26. The Kindle version has all of the articles, columns, letters, etc. while the PDF version has all that plus some extra features, such as enhanced covers, full page payphone photos, and the like. This was no easy cut and paste job – we pretty much had a staff of people working day and night on these new versions for over a month, putting together a whole new layout and design. It’s the most complete and recent journal of hacking in existence – and not a single tree was harmed in its making.

But now we find out if our idealism is enough to send a message to an industry that still doesn’t seem to get it and wants to keep running things the old way. We maintain and hope that it’s time for a change and that this is what people want and will ultimately support – if given the chance.

Kindle US edition

Kindle UK edition

PDF edition