Binney and Merrifield likely receive no royalties from a 1998 textbook now (the publisher does). But the real cost is to the academic ecosystem. If everyone uses pirated PDFs, publishers stop printing advanced monographs. Galactic Astronomy is already hard to find in print; low sales discourage a second edition.
If you buy the DRM-protected e-book, you may legally remove DRM in some jurisdictions for personal use (e.g., using Calibre + DeDRM plugin on an EPUB, then convert to PDF). That is a gray area, but not distribution. binney merrifield galactic astronomy pdf patched
Steps to create your own high-quality patched PDF: Binney and Merrifield likely receive no royalties from
Result: A personal, legally owned, “patched” PDF better than any pirate copy. If you buy the DRM-protected e-book, you may
Some argue that out-of-print status justifies patching. But Galactic Astronomy is still in print (both paperback and ebook). Princeton University Press maintains it actively. If a book were truly orphaned, libraries provide digitization on demand.
Others claim they need “searchable” text. Official PDFs from PUP are already OCR’d and fully searchable. A patched version only degrades quality.