Agreed. Anyone who prefers to buy it can do it via e.g. Amazon:

4th ed: http://amzn.com/0123744938

5th ed: http://amzn.com/0124077269

I wonder how many NH readers would benefit from reading in that book (a lot I guess) and also how many have no immediate access or consider the asked price unreasonable (probably fewer, but still many).

I would benefit from many things for which I consider the asked price to be unreasonable. I still do not expect to get them for free.

And yet, how many of those things have a fixed monopoly prices, disconnected from marginal costs, that has been set to fit a market with consumers with a completely different median income than yours? Are you in a third world country eg.?

What happened to the Hacker Ethic? "Access to computers--and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works--should be unlimited and total." and "All information should be free."

Nothing "happened". Using "hacker ethic" as an excuse for piratism has always been stupid. That is why Stallman began writing GNU instead distributing illegitimate copies of UNIX.

You make a good point. I was just hoping to lower the boundary between people thinking about reading more, and actually going to read more.