Can I ask why this book is not provided for free, given that it is essentially promotional material for MIRI, commissioned by MIRI and published by MIRI?
EDIT:
It seems that it is released under a Creative Commons licence. So the price is just the cost of hosting it on Amazon?
Even if this qualifies as “promotional material”, it’s not exactly uncommon to charge money for promotional material. For example, politicians who are trying to get elected will charge money for their autobiographies.
Can I ask why this book is not provided for free, given that it is essentially promotional material for MIRI, commissioned by MIRI and published by MIRI?
EDIT:
It seems that it is released under a Creative Commons licence.
So the price is just the cost of hosting it on Amazon?
It is provided as “pay-what-you-want” package, and is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
Even if this qualifies as “promotional material”, it’s not exactly uncommon to charge money for promotional material. For example, politicians who are trying to get elected will charge money for their autobiographies.
I suppose that most people who buy an autobiography have already decided to vote for that politician.