Larry Lessig is giving his book away for free. Lessig, a Stanford Law professor, has an impressive legal, technological, and sociological history. He is mainly known for his legal copyright, internet-related work and for Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, which he founded.

Creative Commons, a project that Lessig started, has become an influential group of folks on the frontier of cyberspace. Creators can set their own parameters for what they’d like to license, to whom, and under what conditions. It’s the new Wild West, challenging people’s notions of what it means to create a work, how ownership and responsibility fit in and negotiate with things like greed and corporate seduction. But that’s a dramatization. Here’s a clip from the jacket:

For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs.  The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role.  What did he know that we’ve forgotten?

One other interesting note: You can report typos

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