It seems that Amazon.com has begun selling law review articles and some folks aren’t too happy about it. From a post at TaxProfBlog:
As one who fights with law reviews to retain the right to post my articles on SSRN so they can be downloaded for free, I am worried that the new amazon venture will give law reviews yet another reason to try to restrict the ability of authors to post their work on SSRN. As many readers know, Lawrence Lessig recently publicly pledged that he will no longer publish law review articles until the reviews stop insisting on the exclusive right to authorize the publication, reproduction, and distribution of articles, which they in turn sell to Lexis and Westlaw. I do not know the business deal Amazon has worked out for the sale of articles, but the system is seriously broken when professors are denied the right to make their scholarship freely available and everyone else in the distribution chain is making a buck off of their intellectual property.
Source: Law-Lib