We’ll have our discussion with Rebecca MacKinnon about her book soon, but as we’ve now hit April, I wanted to get people started on the second book we’ll be discussing as a part of the Techdirt book club. This time it’s Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law by law professor Jason Mazzone. This is a really fantastic book that came out last year, detailing how the overclaiming of rights is a huge problem these days. “Copyfraud” is a term that Mazzone came up with, but which has really caught on as a way to describe those who claim IP rights that simply don’t exist.

As part of this, we’re posting one of the chapters from the book (in two parts, starting with this post).

You can, of course, find the book at Amazon in hardcover or ebook form (those are both affiliate links, so we get a tiny cut if you buy via them) or get it from lots of other sources. It’s also available to check out from many libraries. Stanford University Press also has some ebook rental options.

Since this came up with the last book, I’ll address this head on: the ebook pricing on this book is kind of ridiculous. The Kindle offering is $15. The “rental” option from SUP is $7, but you only get to have the book for two weeks. I realize that these prices are not what most people here consider reasonable for an ebook (and I recognize that the idea of renting an ebook for two weeks at $7 will seem crazy to most folks). I spent some time discussing this with SUP, and they said that Amazon will not allow them to create a temporary discount via the Kindle store for just this group (though they tried), and said that they’re a small, non-profit publisher, so purchasing the book would be about supporting their mission — and they do publish some great books. I recognize where they’re coming from, and also recognize that this will not satisfy many of you. For those who still want to participate in the discussion, there will still be this chapter that we’re publishing, as well as Jason’s original paper on Copyfraud. He was also recently on the Surprisingly Free podcast discussing the book.

For future books, we are looking for publishers and authors who actually understand why pricing ebooks at insane levels does them more harm than good, but that’s a very small group of publishers, massively limiting our choices, and forcing us to avoid certain books that I believe are well worth reading. If people have suggestions for future books, we’re more than happy to look them over.

In the meantime, read on for the first excerpt from Chapter 3 of Jason’s book. Chapter 3 is all about Samples and Mashups, which is definitely relevant to what we usually talk about here.

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