Thomas D. Sullivan, Practicing the Liberty He Preaches, New York Times, April 29, 2004. (Requires free registration.) Another angle and an update on Lawrence Lessig's and Penguin's experience making the professor's Free Culture available as a free download. Sullivan reports "21 editions of the free digital version have been created." Some other numbers are cited:
Penguin said the book sold out its first printing, but the company would not disclose specific numbers....Online, meanwhile, Mr. Lessig said yesterday that he could account for around 65,000 downloads from www .free-culture.org and related sites, and 1,700 from www.legaltorrents .com, a site dedicated to free downloading. "But of course, that's an underestimate,'' he said, "as the text is echoed in other places." Penguin said the book had been downloaded 100,000 times by April 19 at Amazon .com; Amazon would not disclose sales or downloading figures.
Posted by
Garrett at 4/29/2004 04:55:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
