To be fair, although they are both way, way behind, Elsevier and Springer both have a surprising amount of material available for free online. (I don't say this with any relevant examples to hand, but rather as a mathematician who is often surprised that I don't need to use my university proxy to access an article.)
I also think that Springer deserves serious credit for their commitment to reasonable e-book publication: once you have access, you download the PDF and you have it; no DRM, no special reader software. So many other e-publishing sites want to make sure that I can't actually read their files that this straightforward approach is a relief.
With that said, I am bummed that I missed this apparent window of opportunity!
I got a book about Ted Nelson out of it and I don't feel like a pirate :) Wished it had lasted a little longer though, I had an hour and a half conference call and I figured I was going to spend some time tonight looking over the computer section to get some 'light reading' for the new year. Springer has a hard time competing on price with the amount of free stuff that is floating around on the net, but the quality of their bookshelf is very high and this was the closest we ever got to having an actual library online, even if only for 2 hours. It'd be interesting to see which books were downloaded by the whole community.
I also think that Springer deserves serious credit for their commitment to reasonable e-book publication: once you have access, you download the PDF and you have it; no DRM, no special reader software. So many other e-publishing sites want to make sure that I can't actually read their files that this straightforward approach is a relief.
With that said, I am bummed that I missed this apparent window of opportunity!