examples of 'free' books

This page is for links and discussion related to licensing issues about books.

At the first irc meeting, BouD suggested that if the indybook people look for evidence on books that have already been physically published and distributed under free licences, they might have a better chance at persuading disinfo to change their requirements - or simply use one of the publishers who have already published and distributed a book (or books) under free licences:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons#Tools_for_discovering_CC-licensed_content
• http://www.theassayer.org/ - claims to be the web's largest catalog of free books

Many publishers have already done this, chances are that disinfo simply do not know that they can still make a profit while publishing under a free licence, so this sort of compromise might have a better chance of being accepted in the network.

The New York people felt that one of the problems had been than the way this was presented (or framed) previously was that: "the only option for having a cc liscense is to self-publish." Or, at least, it would be to go with a publishing sitution that would get the book less notice than it needs and deserves. That is not necessarily true, and if people can come up with third options, maybe after the irc meetings, or whatever, that would be helpful.

There are actually a number of examples of books that people have seen that have been printed AND distributed under some kind of creative commons license - "Free Culture," by Lawrence Lessig being an example that is available to read in hard copy:

• http://www.free-culture.cc/

• The books by the Critical Art Ensemble, published by Autonomedia, "may be freely pirated and quoted. The authors and publisher, however, would like to be so informed at the address below." ->http://www.critical-art.net/books/index.html

• (in general, Autonomedia is quite willing to use the above free license - at least the Hakim Bey titles and Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch are under the same license)

• as mentioned on the book project mailing list, Verso agreed to publish We Are Everywhere: The Irrestible Rise of Global Anticapitalism under a copyleft license.

• rebel press' edition of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (Ken Knabb translation) is published under as "No copyright, No rights reserved".

• The "handbook of communication guerilla" has been published as early as 1997 by a radical publisher with a copyleft licence (assoziation a). Large parts of the book have been put on the web (for expl in texzt.org) by various people. Nevertheless, the publisher could not complain about the sales - the book is now in its forth edition.

Other examples include:

• http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Books
• http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch

• It is a widespread practice amongst writers to pre-publish draft versions of their conference talks or to-be-published texts on mailing lists, forums or personal websites. The nettime mailing list is full of examples for this practice. People with too much time might choose to collect these links and thereby compile an online version of any collection of texts. Publishing drafts in mailing lists or such can't really be seen as a breach of licencing laws, at least it is regarded as a grey area. And it is something no radical publisher would care to control.

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-- AnNa - 15 Oct 2006 added critical art ensemble -- GarconDuMonde - 15 Oct 2006
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