Personally, I bought the hard copy (I like bound books more than stacks of copy paper), but kudos go out to Jon Zittrain for putting his brand new hot-off-the-press book on SSRN. I’ve made the point before that many authors like reaching the public as much as making money– and often these aren’t mutually exclusive propositions, but, to take Jon’s own idiosyncratic way of characterizing the information sharing trend, there is some kind of H.R. Pufnstuf vibe (again-that’s him, not me) about this trend toward book + free. In the future — scratch that — in the present, we’re able to build a pretty darn good library of books by just hitting the download button.
Maybe copyright law should adapt a bit?
Sigh. As if.
That makes me wonder how many other current works (not relased into the public domain) are free for download. Especially in law and tech. I know Solove put his book up, but who else? Does Tim Wu?
As a poor graduate student, I sure appreciate it!
AFAIK, Tim Wu’s book isn’t up. Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler both have their books available. (I’m not sure if all 3 of Lessig’s books are up on his site, but I know Code is.)
Yale Press, thankfully, groks this — Benkler, Solove, and Zittrain all published with YUP. I’m planning to put my forthcoming YUP book up for free, and they’re fine with it. (But free new cyberlaw books will probably be old hat at that point!)
Why do you distance yourself from Pufnstuf, Greg?
I could handle the Muppets. I was into Speed Racer & Underdog. But Pufnstuff, the Bugaloos, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters — they all freaked me out as a kid. They still do.
Putting together a purely online infolaw reader would probably be an interesting little project for someone. A chapter of Fisher’s book is available (sadly not the whole thing); ditto Litman’s Digital Copyright. There must be others available either completely or partially, but I’m blanking offhand.
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