walk the walk

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cd46a446-4edf-11db-b600
-0000779e2340.html

James Boyle, professor of law at Duke Law School and
co-founder of  
the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, writes of his
 
experience selling pro-public-domain books over Amazon:

"Our centre sells books through Amazon... As a vendor I
entered into  
a shadowy different universe. Where Amazon’s normal customer
service  
seems to be run by suspiciously cheerful MBAs from Stanford,
who  
break off from counting their stock options to write
apologies and  
deliver refunds, “Amazon Advantage”, the ironically named
system for  
selling wares, is clearly based on the last days of the
Soviet system...

"As an academic, I have railed against 'business method
patents'  
which are now being filed in stunning numbers by online
retailers and  
financial services companies. There are patents over
auctions,  
selling with one click, even over what appears to be pretty
basic  
arithmetic. Will this undermine the competitive forces the
web was  
supposed to unleash"

If Prof. Boyle released his pro-public-domain books into the
public  
domain, he could avoid a lot of this frustration.

Charles Evans
Executive Director, Free Curricula Center
cevansfreecurricula.org


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