Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Tuesday, August 03, 2004

More on Lessig's Free Culture

Give It Away and They'll Buy It, Stanford Magazine, July/August 2004. On Lawrence Lessig's new book, Free Culture, which is available in both open-access and priced/printed editions. Excerpt: "You can pay $25 for Lawrence Lessig's new book. Or you can download it for free. What's the catch? None, according to Lessig, a law professor who specializes in intellectual property and is the author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. A memo Lessig wrote to his publisher convinced Penguin Books that releasing Free Culture online actually would increase sales of hardcove copies. Which may be true: there have been more than 180,000 downloads --and Penguin is on its third printing."