Chris Anderson's "Free" costs $29.99......by their deeds shall ye know them

I recall Guy Kawasaki interviewing Chris Anderson at SXSW and asking how come a book extolling the virtues of selling things Free was not itself going to be free (see here for some squirming moments). Now it appears that the book has also used that other great foundation of the Free movement, Copying - ie grabbing other people's stuff without necessarily paying for it (or in this case, it would appear, acknowledging Wikipedia CC). The Virginia Quarterly Review:

In the course of reading Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion, $26.99), for a review in an upcoming issue of VQR, we have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. These instances were identified after a cursory investigation, after I checked by hand several dozen suspect passages in the whole of the 274-page book. This was not an exhaustive search, since I don’t have access to an electronic version of the book. Most of the passages, but not all, come from Wikipedia. Anderson is the author of the best-selling 2006 book The Long Tail and is the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. The official publication date for Free is July 7.

The article goes on to show a whole lot of sectons of text. There is nothing new here of course - for your enjoyment I have put up the Tom Lehrer song "Lobachevsky" which tells you the secret of success in (academic) mathematics:

"Plagiarise, Plagiarise, Plagiarise - only always to call it please Research"

There is an apology of sorts from Mr Anderson of the "publishing software ate my links" variety at the end of the article. The comments to the post make interesting reading by the way.

Do as I say, not as I do - by their deeds shall ye know them. I wonder who will be first to digitise the book and put it online for free*, in this best of all possible worlds

* Young @badgergravling tells me 'tis Chris Anderson himself who will do this, see here. Guy extracted a promise from him to do somesuch at SXSW, and to Chris's credit he has.