Brad Delong, who has been served with a DMCA takedown notice for his, ahem, takedown of Superfreakonomics, has some ideas on how to deal with Publishers who don’t understand fair use:

Well, this is new. My first ever DMCA takedown notice–from HarperCollins, publisher of Levitt and Dubner’s Superfreakonomics. While other publishers these days are happy to have sample chapters of their authors’ works read and distributed on the internet, not so with HarperCollins.

One thing I can do in response is–tit-for-tat–to remove my praise of and link to E.M. Halliday’s Understanding Thomas Jefferson: there are other better (albeit longer) Jefferson biographies published by firms that have not sent me DMCA notices: read them instead.

I urge everybody–authors and readers alike–to just say no to HarperCollins in the future.

A second thing I can do is to link to Elizabeth Kolbert’s review of Superfreaknomics in the New Yorker…

I still haven’t heard from HarperCollins, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I do. I’m going to go ahead and pre-emptively link to Elizabeth Kolbert’s scathing review since HarperCollins obviously hates us for our freedom. So here, go read this review while you think about the long-term prospects for book publishers who hire lawyers to harass bloggers who criticize their books.