[Fsf-friends] Books and Ethics

[Imran William Smith]

Of Lessig's 3 major books, 1 *is* available under an open content
license.

http://www.lessig.org/
http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/

The license used for this is creative commons,
attribution, noncommercial, and this is mentioned clearly.

It's not surpising that he chooses creative commons - he is chair
of the board of directors, as well as the founder.

http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people

I don't think we should be too critical of people who don't open
content *everything* they do.  Lessig has done more for open
content than almost anybody else on earth.

Imran



Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh wrote:
> Friends,
> I have long had this question in mind. Please help me out.
> 
> Lawrence Lessig is a well known supporter of the free software movement. After all, he has joined the Board of Directors of  the FSF. In the spirit of information sharing, shouldn't his books "CODE" and "the future of ideas" be free(as in freedom)? 
> 
> This happens with other people as well. For example Jessica Litman the author of the book "Digital Copyright", has not made the book free.
> 
> I understand that, they have not published electronic versions of their book. But they do have excerpts for one or two chapters. I am not sure what kind of license they use for the book. I don't think the license is mentioned on the website.(Please correct me if I am wrong.)
> 
> RMS, has always been very strict in this regard. All his essays, books, audio recordings and video clips - he has always made sure that they are made freely available.
> 
> What I would like to know is, "Is it not ethically wrong, if an online version of a book is not made available?"(Especially when all books are typeset using computers, and all one has to do is upload the electronic version of the book to his website.)
> 
> Vijay
> 
> 
> 
>