Open Media Review

Links and status

Hello faithful readers!

We here at the Open Media Review want to let you know that we are discussing many things behind the scenes (and some of us are even going to get together IN PERSON soon to talk), and we’re focusing on the purpose behind this site, where we want it to go, and how we’re going to get it there. So hopefully soon we’ll be back on a more regular schedule with more regular postings - because there’s lots of cool stuff going on! Thanks for your patience.

In the meantime:

• An update to Thomas’ Little Brother post - the audiobook is also available at eMusic, which has DRM-free music and audiobooks (you need the subscription option that gives you two book credits per month, not one). You can also get excerpts in a handful of podcasts including I Should Be Writing (and The Command Line soon, too, right?).
• From Natalie Metzger: From the Read, Write, Web Blog. They discuss the recent decision by Del Ray to release Star Wars “Legacy of the Force” Book 1, Betrayal as a free download in conjunction with the May 13 release of the final book in the series. In addition to it being freely  apparently they are encouraging users to share this freebie with others. RWW goes on to discuss how this move is an emulation of the recent free releases from popular music artists. Interestingly enough, there is no mention in the post about how this move might be following suit with recent free book releases from other book publishers. Here’s the link. Thanks, Natalie!
• From Kevin Crosby: came across a podcast in my feeds today that I thought would interest you for the Open Media Review.  It’s not completely on point, but I found some of the comments interesting.  The podcast deals with efforts to collect free and open legal case law on the web instead of leaving it almost completely in the corporate hands of Thomson-West and Lexis-Nexis.  Basically those two companies have had a lock on access to legal research ever since they first started to collect and publish court decisions.  While the actual court decisions are public domain, the companies (particularly West) own the volume and page numbering system that is the backbone of legal research and citation. The podcast is Lawyer 2 Lawyer which is part of Law.com’s LegalTalk Network and the episode is called Free Case Law.