Legal Commentary

two wonderous freebies

By David A. Giacalone

free, rare & pretty darn cool!

It’s not just another internet rumor. At the popular Concurring Opinions weblog, Prof. Daniel J. Solove just proclaimed a phenomenon as rare and as welcome as a total lunar eclipse: His recently-published, timely and critically-acclaimed book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (2007) is now available for free download. (see our review from Nov. 8, 2007) They’ve even provided Questions for Discussion for academic classes or book-reading groups.

As Daniel explains:

Of course, I’d love it if you bought a copy, but if I can’t convince you to buy it, then I hope you’ll at least read it for free online.

I think that it is great that Yale University Press is allowing me to do this. I hope more publishers decide to let their authors do this in the future — especially academic presses, whose mission is not just to make a profit but to help spread ideas.

The book is licensed under a Creative Commons license — it can be used for non-commercial uses.

first glass of wine
Google keeps asking
?Did you mean . . . . ??

?????????????. by dagosan

We may have no control over celestial events, but the free-viewing of important academic books is within the control of publishers and authors, and I hope Solove’s example is widely-followed. Thanks to Dan Solove for choosing access over potential profits.

audaciously
he critiques
the eclipse

?????? by Kobayashi Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

[larger image, by Lloyd Overcash]   

Meanwhile, also at Concurring Opinions, Prof. Devan Desai reminds us today that there will be a total eclipse of the moon this evening — between 10 and 11 PM, EST.

See: NASA Eclipse Home Page for details about tonight and lunar eclipses in general. And check out Mr. Eclipse.com, for a guide to photographing eclipses by Fred Espenak.

lunar eclipse
i fall for
the hidden ball trick

…………………. by  ed markowski - tinywords (Aug. 29, 2007)

You may recall that the f/k/a Gang was inspired by the last full lunar eclipse, in October 2004, which coincided with the then-rare World Series appearance of the Boston Red Sox. We hope to practice taking some digital photos tonight — if the clouds and wind-chill cooperate. And might produce a new one-breath poem or two, under the influence of a breath-taking lunar event. Let us know your eclipse experiences tonight.

Blood Moon
so orange!
tawny, she corrects

…………………. by dagosan

Full post as published by f/k/a . . . on February 20, 2008 (boomark / email).