Suw Charman, Something for Nothing: The Free Culture AudioBook Project, Chocolate and Vodka, May 24, 2004. Charman blogs a recap of Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow's experiences with releasing books as free downloads under Creative Commons licenses. The derivative audio versions of Lessig's Free Culture (in multiple languages and multiple file formats) are also discussed. Of this initiative's success, Charman writes: "Given the legal right to do so, people will build upon a work in unforeseen creative ways." As for the questions of copyright and potentially lost revenue, the blogger comments:
Digitalisation and free distribution of content is not an erosion of copyright either. It's an assertion of a different sort of copyright - the right to allow the public copy freely and legally that which the author and publisher releases for such copying. It is freedom for the author to renounce the extremes of 'all rights reserved' and 'no rights reserved' and tread instead the more beneficial middle path of 'some rights reserved'.
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.
