They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. That’s not always true. Maybe someone who wants to salve their conscience for past misdeeds might treat someone else to a free meal. But one thing I’m fairly sure about is that there are no legitimate free copies of Scottish Military Disasters available for download. SMD was recently launched in e-book format and there are now sites out there offering it as a “free” download. That’s very generous of them if they plan to pay me the royalties I’m entitled to. But somehow I don’t think I’ll hold my breadth waiting to the postie to deliver the cheque. There are some advocates of copyright piracy who will use some twisted logic which claims that I’m secretly delighted by this development. I’m not. And maybe I should take the attitude that hell-mend anyone who downloads the book for “free” from one of these sites and what may happen next serves them right. The sites I’ve come across make an administrative or subscription charge. The charge is impossibly low if royalty payments to the hundreds of thousands of writers and musicians whose work is available for download are to paid. But suppose the token charge is a way to get your credit card number or some other financial details. I for one wouldn’t trust information like that to people who appear to have the technical know-how to disable anti-piracy safeguards. Also, when I looked into this I found out that many of these so called free downloads include a hefty dose of malware, including spyware. That’s providing there is a download available in the first place and you’re not just providing your credit card number and only getting a major financial or computer headache in return. I haven’t been able to find someone daft enough to test that very suspect site out.
If you are interested in a legitimate e-book version -  http://www.nwp.co.uk/9781906476588