Yesterday, 3/25/13, Amazon advised me that my pre-ordered copy of The Tallinn Manual would be delayed, again. The new shipment date will be May 2013. Cambridge University Press’s site says: “Not yet published – available from April 2013.” Wasn’t the Manual originally promised for October 2012? I’m not sure how this plays with their “book launch events” (the phrase used on the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence website) on March 15, 2013, in London and on March 28, 2013, in Washington, D.C. Apparently, there won’t be any books available at the book launches.
Yes, I know that the Manual is available online. But, it can only be displayed on a screen. It is not downloadable. Even copy and paste is disabled. At least with my software, the print function generates a blank page. Screen-only viewing is really hard to work with and even harder to teach from.
While I’m being grumpy, why does a publication of NATO cost $58.99 (plus shipping) in paperback and $47.00 in Adobe eBook format? CCD COE says that: “The centre is not funded by NATO but by its Sponsoring Nations.” Your tax dollars at work, right? Yet, the online version of the Manual says that Cambridge University press holds the copyright. How did that happen? “NATO CCD COE is an international military organisation as defined in the Paris Protocol to the NATO Status of Forces Agreement of 1951,” and the Manual was “written at the invitation of the Centre by an independent ‘International Group of Experts’,” yet even the digital version (with a marginal cost of $0) will cost you $50 to a private copyright holder.
By the way, the Manual is will be cheaper at Amazon.com. There, the paperback can be preordered for $53.95 and the Kindle edition is just $37.60.
While waiting for the next postponement in the delivery date, you can watch the Manual’s editor, Professor Michael Schmitt, speak about the Manual at Duke University on March 1, 2013. Schmitt’s keynote about the Tallinn Manual starts at the 15:00 minute mark. (Since Schmitt is a public servant, presumably he isn’t getting any of that $47 per digital copy of the manual, either.)
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