E-mail:
Jack Balkin: jackbalkin at yahoo.com
Bruce Ackerman bruce.ackerman at yale.edu
Ian Ayres ian.ayres at yale.edu
Corey Brettschneider corey_brettschneider at brown.edu
Mary Dudziak mary.l.dudziak at emory.edu
Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Abbe Gluck abbe.gluck at yale.edu
Mark Graber mgraber at law.umaryland.edu
Stephen Griffin sgriffin at tulane.edu
Jonathan Hafetz jonathan.hafetz at shu.edu
Jeremy Kessler jkessler at law.columbia.edu
Andrew Koppelman akoppelman at law.northwestern.edu
Marty Lederman msl46 at law.georgetown.edu
Sanford Levinson slevinson at law.utexas.edu
David Luban david.luban at gmail.com
Gerard Magliocca gmaglioc at iupui.edu
Jason Mazzone mazzonej at illinois.edu
Linda McClain lmcclain at bu.edu
John Mikhail mikhail at law.georgetown.edu
Frank Pasquale pasquale.frank at gmail.com
Nate Persily npersily at gmail.com
Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at yu.edu
Rick Pildes rick.pildes at nyu.edu
David Pozen dpozen at law.columbia.edu
Richard Primus raprimus at umich.edu
K. Sabeel Rahmansabeel.rahman at brooklaw.edu
Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
Neil Siegel siegel at law.duke.edu
David Super david.super at law.georgetown.edu
Brian Tamanaha btamanaha at wulaw.wustl.edu
Nelson Tebbe nelson.tebbe at brooklaw.edu
Mark Tushnet mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
Adam Winkler winkler at ucla.edu
The book was the first to show how to use the theory of memes in social and political theory. It argues that we can explain ideology as an effect of cultural evolution; instead of viewing ideologies as overarching worldviews, it argues that we can break them down into component parts and mechanisms.
Yale University Press has released the book as an experiment to see if their backlist of scholarly titles will sell more if more people could sample them for free. If the experiment works, they may consider releasing more of their backlist under a similar arrangement.
Since my book is about the spread of memes, it seemed symbolically the right way to kick off the experiment.
I've put up pdf files of the chapters here. I'm working on ways to upload a wordprocessing version with smaller file sizes and an HTML version in the future. In the meantime, the pdf's are free to download.
If you like it, let other people know. Let the memes spread!
Why NC-SA? If the purpose is to encourage sampling, why not, say, the Sampling or the Sampling Plus license? Similarly, ShareAlike, NonCommercial, or even just a plain Attribution license are plausible alternatives, too. I'm not saying that NC-SA is an inappropriate choice; I'm just curious about the reasoning behind it. It's an important and not well-understood issue how people perceive the license options and select among them.
James makes a good point. The answer is that Yale University Press and I agreed that we would use the same license they used with my colleague Yochai Benkler's new book, The Wealth of Networks. (Note that the wikinotes to Yochai's book are licensed as SA.). Since this was an experimental venture, they had a greater comfort level using a license they were already familiar with.
This is creative commons at its best: too many works are locked down even though they're on a publisher's "backlist" or out of print.
I was actually planning on buying this already, since I'm interested in free culture, memes, and ideology but really an expert on any of those subjects (and because I really like your writing). Books and PDFs both have advantages, so I'm not sure