by Jessica Reed
Last saturday in a warm cosy pub in the heart of Brick Lane was held the first MiniBar event - otherwise known as a "tech mixer" (read: good spirited geeks exchanging geeky entrepreunarial ideas and gossip). The mots du jour were apparently all about p2p, Creative Commons, web applications and social networking.
The event was a success, probably thanks to free beer (as in Free) and the presence of John Buckman, CEO of Magnatune. John gave a 30 mn speech, in which he presented his new company BookMooch. As an avid novel reader I was beyond thrilled by its innovative concept: bookmooch is a community for exchanging used books, and it lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want. Think about is as an Ebay for books, with only the postal fees to pay. You can also install a "moochbar" which will tell you, when visiting sites like Amazon, if the book you are looking up is available -for free- on bookmooch.
"Erm", I hear you think, "but what about authors? Surely they are not too happy about it?". According to Buckman, they are better off than with a book club, and are overly "happy to see their books circulating more widely. They became authors to have their works read, and the worst thing that can happen to an author is for their books to go out of print and vanish".
Well okay, nothing to say about it, then.
If you are interested in free culture (as in Free), check out openDemocacy's "Remix World" coverage, as well as our "Do you remix?" forum thread.
