A large chunk of "ebook piracy" (downloading unauthorized ebooks from
the net) is undertaken by people in the developing world, where the
per-capita GDP can be less than a dollar a day. These people don't
represent any kind of commercial market for my books. No one in Burundi
is going to pay a month's wages for a copy of this book. A Ukrainian
film of this book isn't going to compete with box-office receipts in the
Ukraine for a Hollywood version, if one emerges. No one imports
commercial editions of my books into most developing nations, and if
they did. they'd be priced out of the local market.
So I've applied a new, and very cool kind of Creative Commons license to
this book: the _Creative Commons Developing Nations License_
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/devnations/2.0/). What that means
is that if you live in a country that's not on the World Bank's list of
High-Income Countries
(http://rru.worldbank.org/DoingBusiness/ExploreEconomies/EconomyCharacteristics.aspx)
, you get to do practically anything you want with this book.
While residents of the rich world are limited to making noncommercial
copies of this book, residents of the developing world can do much
more. Want to make a commercial edition of this book? Be my guest. A
film? Sure thing. A translation into the local language? But of course.
The sole restriction is that you *may not export your work with my book
beyond the developing world*. Your Ukrainian film, Guyanese print
edition, or Ghanian translation can be freely exported within the
developing world, but can't be sent back to the rich world, where my
paying customers are.
It's an honor to have the opportunity to help people who are living
under circumstances that make mine seem like the lap of luxury. I'm
especially hopeful that this will, in some small way, help developing
nations bootstrap themselves into a better economic situation.
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