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.