I gave my final talk of the year, today, at the University of Leeds, on open access in the humanities disciplines. Perhaps predictably, all of the Q&A centred on open licensing and the concerns from humanists around the misuse of their work. My basic line on all this has shifted over time, but I am more cautious now than I used to be and feel better about somewhat more restrictive CC licenses.

I am absolutely delighted to announce that, today, the 15th December 2021 marks the publication of my eighth academic book: [_Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy_](https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy/). The book will be available to buy in print, but it's already available, open access, to [download from the OAPEN library](https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/52029). Here's

Some things we do in life happen once; the first time will be the only and last time. Our births and deaths, of course, are the two key ones. CONTENT WARNING: this post discusses suicide, death, and dying. I am a member of the Swiss organization, Dignitas, which is most well known for its assisted suicide clinic.

I mustn't say too much in public about this, for fear of being unprofessional. However, I wanted to jot down a few notes about "being a PhD supervisor" and what it means and what it's like. I am always terrified when my students come up for viva.

One of the basic tenets of digital philosophy is that downloads are non-rivalrous. When I download something it remains accessible to other users to download. But what if this isn't actually true and what if there is a strong disutility premise at work? Bitcoin has not done much for the world, but it does provide a useful reference point for thinking about this.

2021 was another pretty bad pandemic year, in many ways. For those of us with immune system compromise it was alarming to see a near-wholesale return to "normality" among the general population when our lives remained under extreme threat.

In the world of OA publishing, there have been further (not-so)shock waves reverberating this week as Knowledge Unlatched was sold to Wiley.

Today marks a significant milestone for me. All ten of my academic monographs are now – or will be when published – openly accessible and free to download. The books that are not yet out have advance contracts that stipulate open access.

By necessity, the bibliography to [my book on Warez](https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy/) must cite a number of unconventional works that are not covered by standard style manuals. In particular, I need to make reference to NFO files that contain ASCII art and other iNFOrmation about the Warez Scene.

tl;dr: use the node.js module [html-pdf-chrome](https://www.npmjs.com/package/html-pdf-chrome) to print programmatically, not Chrome's built-in virtual-time-budget. See my [print.js file](https://github.com/MartinPaulEve/eprintsToCV/blob/master/print.js) for an example. [My CV](https://eve.gd/c-v/Eve-CV.pdf) is generated automatically from Birkbeck's online repository.

We are at an exciting moment for open-access books. UKRI has announced a forthcoming funding mandate, kicking off in 2024. Plan S funders are deciding what to do about books. And much (if not all) of the dissent around the idea of OA monographs has gone quieter. It seems, at least to me, that more and more people are persuaded that OA books are a good concept… so long as the route by which we get there is equitable.