International Law

Academics try the Radiohead model

Michael Madison describes an interesting new form of legal publishing:

Profs. Lydia Loren and Joe Miller (Lewis & Clark) have launched Semaphore Press, which intends to release downloadable law school casebooks on a ?Radiohead? model:  students should pay what they feel is appropriate, and please don?t share the file with others. The first release is a book for the Intellectual Property survey course, written by the founders. Other ?digital casebooks? are available and have been for some time. The pricing model is new, though, as is the premise that they want to ?publish? additional titles. No indication in the website regarding how their royalty structure works. I suspect that most prospective authors don?t care much. A more important question is this: How do digital downloads fit into tenure and promotion processes? And a still more important question is this: Can the books be re-mixed?

Interesting times.

Check out Semaphore Press here.  Stay tuned to see whether this form of legal publishing takes off.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on November 01, 2008 (boomark / email).