1:40 AM
A couple of Cory Doctorow-centric links: first, to his website for his new novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Cory has taken the amazingly bold step of offering the entirety of his novel for free download (in a dizzying array of formats) under a Creative Commons license, simultaneously with its print release. I downloaded and read the novel in PDF form last week, and it's fantastic--tomorrow I'm setting off on a trek across the Net to find some of the interesting conversations I'm certain that the novel's concept of "Whuffie" has sparked. Apparently the promotional part of the online release has worked--I went to two major chain booksellers in the Madison area tonight in search of the dead-tree edition of the book, and both were sold out.* (If Down and Out isn't enough Doctorow fiction for you--and it shouldn't be--he's got a story appearing in Salon this week as well.)

Cory is also part of the always terrific boingboing, and for the last 24 hours the boing has been my launchpad to coverage of fallout of the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision, from the opinions of the Supreme Court Justices to an online copy of Spider Robinson's story "Melancholy Elephants".

More good coverage of the entire trial on the blog of Eldred attorney Lawrence Lessig. I'm sure he'll have some good things to say in the coming days as well.

* UPDATE: Apparently the book may not have been sold out, despite what I was told by wandering clerks--it just may not have arrived yet. Moral of story: don't trust what clerks in major chain bookstores are saying unless they (and you) have looked directly at their computers and the shelves.