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Wikipedia's $100 Million Dream
An anonymous reader writes "Jimmy Wales recently asked the Wikipedia community to suggest useful, 'works that could in theory be purchased and freed' assuming a 'budget of $100 million to purchase
copyrights.' He went on to say that he has spoken with a person 'who is potentially in a position to make this happen.' Ideas are being collected at the meta-wiki. Some early suggestions include, satellite imagery, textbooks, scientific journals and photo archives." So how about it? What works would you like to see wikified?
I think that this would be a good target as far as literature is concerned. I know that this costs ~$8k on Amazon so the copyrights are probably worth a lot but I think that a lot of these titles are public domain. If they are, I think it would be worth making a proposition in the millions to Penguin for their editions to be made available on the Wiki. I'm a computer scientist so I don't know how realistic this would be. Of course, they could probably host Project Gutenberg for free if they wanted.
As far as educational works go, I'm all for the textbooks. Grade school & high school, of course. But what I'd really like to see is the "Canonical works" of each field. I'm talking about the standard books that are used to teach each major in the United States. They could do a survey of books and then attempt to contact the authors & publishers to work a deal. Some titles I've seen on everyone's shelves are, of course, the Donald Knuth series and this list has a lot of standards I recognize just by the covers.
The most important thing for them to do would to pay lawyers and literature experts to scan the internet for potential authors willing to put out books for free. I've seen some classic computer science books go up like this and I'm sure that if Wikipedia asked for permission to host, they would be able to with mild restrictions. Like the author having the final say on what is kept and removed from the Wiki page. I mean, look at O'Reilly's OpenBook Project, don't you think they would allow Wikipedia to host that for a tiny one time fee? I'd bet that sales would increase if they even put a link to buy the book. I've heard a lot of authors argue for their books to be put online so that people will feel compelled to buy a hardcopy. Wasn't that the point of Google's textbook preview search?
Other people they could target is an open invitation to any estates that own the rights of long dead authors to have their ancestor's works published. Dr. Suess, anyone? I mean, how do you license a loved one's works and continually soak up money for them? To me, the work of Disney in this respect is just plain rotten and ruined some good guidelines to release works to the public domain.
I don't know, I just think that they should spend money over a period of time searching for permission to host books for free or nearly free. I have hope that this is done very very well and augments the OLPC project nicely.
My work here is dung.
You could generate new works under creative commons licences or other. I would start with a textbook for every subject and then spend the rest on 1000 new novels from every part of the world.
My little Linux and tech blog
Open content GIS data from around the world. It would make developing the next generation of location aware devices/webpages a reality
If you are going to make a $100m philanthropic gesture, which I assume this is, then surely you would want to see the largest possible impact for your effort. Remove the copyrights from the books necessary to give the impoverised of the world free access to the materials required for a decent education and I'm sure that those with the necessary skills to translate those works into as many languages as required and teach it to those willing to listen will step forwards as well.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
One book per academic subject.
One for each kind of math.
One for each kind of music.
One for each kind of computer science.
One for masonry, or automotive, or other trades.
and so on...
So, someone can go to the "tutorial" section of wikipedia and learn how to do whatever they would normally need textbooks or college to learn.
Granted that you could likely only reach an ametuer level this way most of the time, it would be a great starting point for a lot of people into business and hobby.
I would enjoy having access to public domain GIS data. I currently have access to lots of it (generated by the gov't no less) under restrictive licenses through my uni, but I can't do anything public with it without licensing it for commercial use.
Think of all the nice free applications that could be built and integrated into wikipedia if we had public domain GIS data and sattelite imagery for the entire planet. I guess it will happen in my lifetime as copyrights and whatnot expire, but it would be nice if it was before my 80'th bd. (Fuck you Disney)
Entertainment: The classic "nerd" stuff- Hitchiker's Guide, Lord of the Rings, etc... All the classics, Shakespearean works, that sort of thing. Education is of course a key, and all the major scientific writings, from Newton's Optiks on should be free, but "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"- focusing entirely on Information while forgetting Entertainment will not be as good.
Care about privacy? Read this!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
I would suggest the money should be used instead to support a powerful well-funded lobbying effort for copyright reform, perhaps helping any number of the existing organisations such as Union for the Public Domain. There are many issues - the unnecessarily huge and increasing length of copyright terms, the inaccessibility of orphan works whose copyright owners cannot be traced, questions of balance between just rewards to creators and fair use/dealing for consumers, non-expiry of DRM even after nominal copyright expiration, etc. Spending USD 100m on a number of popular copyrights is very generous, but copyrights can be extremely expensive, and USD 100m is a tiny bit of the total value of all the still current copyrights. Reforming copyright, however, would change the future for all copyright works, something which could be of greater long-term value to society, commerce and industry including the copyright holders.
Scroogle
Our founding fathers never intended for copyrights to last FOREVER as the do now, but for "limited times.' I think a little peace of that 100 million should be used to get copyright abuser enablers out of office. For one, find a another republican (red state Utahns will never vote for a democrat on principle alone) to replace Orrin Hatch PLEASE.
He was a big sponser of the Copyright Term Extension Act, DMCA, the patriot act II on steroids, FBI carnivore, extended wiretapping, and his office wanted to get the Claritin patent extended because he was using their jet when running for president.
Anything to get this IP black hole out of office will reap a 10x benifit in the future, and not just for better copyright law.
Once that is done, get a repeal of the bastard CTEA law (it won't happen while he is in the senate). In fact, bet on a CTEA II to come down the pike to protect that nasty rodent
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Why should Wikimedia invest in extensions to iTunes to support free formats? Apple doesn't _like_ free formats. So what guarantee is there that such extensions would have a shelf life at all?
Media is a pain in the ass on every platform. Linux users cringe every time they see a Quicktime file, a Flash file, etc, etc, etc.
Given that state of affairs, it doesn't make sense for an organization that supports freeing information to invest in software from a company that's exacerbating the problem in the first place.
Think about this in conjunction with the one-laptop-per-child project: what if third world countries suddenly had access to Wikipedia? Where would you put your hundred million bucks to buy content that would make the human race better off simply by having access to this knowledge?
I understand why people are suggesting basic textbooks, but they're taking too much for granted.
Start by acquiring the best English skills courses so that these billions of third world kids will be able to understand first world content.
Giving a kid a laptop only gets them so far: they have to be able to understand what they're viewing. That's where the $100 mil could really leverage all of Wikipedia's existing content. Make it easy for these kids to learn English, no matter which language they're starting from.
What's your damage, Heather?
For sure there are plenty works still under copyrights that are almost monetarily worthless, yet have many years to go before falling into the public domain. They will remain where they are as there is no reason for the copyright holder to give them up.
However..... if a copyright holder is made an offer for a given piece ($1,000, $10,000, whatever) - a very straightfoward commercial decision can be made; One free of copyright religion and politics. "Is the future returns on the copyright of this piece worth less than the offer."
Someone who has a copyrighted item earning $12.50 per year might easily be swayed to release it into the public domain for $200. Almost *nothing* under copyright is actually earning any real money, and thefore may be liberated with a very modest purse.
Perhaps if there was a simple online process in place, individuals could seach for their items of choice, pay up and free them.
Most people that have the cash and some inclination simply don't have the time. If those who have the time could make this process trivial, everyone could win.
Now please excuse me - I have to RTFA
It really won't. Lobbyists and a propaganda machine for a couple years, or a popular tiny fraction of protected works, or whatever. It might make a few waves in the pond, but it's not going to change the water or the cretins lurking therin. You're gonna have to get closer to a billion to blow the current mess out of the water. Really.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
My core computer science texts date back more than ten years. They are still perfectly relevant today. Core subjects in computer science have not changed in ages. Data structures, operating systems, networking, relational databases all go back more than two decades. And they are just as, if not more, relevant today.
The key is to acquire texts on core concepts. These are things that should hold true forever. You would not want to waste money on Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days. For things like that, someone will write up a tutorial. Instead you would acquire works on the concepts of higher-level languages, virtual machines, design patterns, etc.
Could it be that the Wikipedia Foundation is considering to stop being a non-profit organisation and start placing advertising in its articles?
Nonprofit does not mean cannot be profitable. Nonprofit refers to how profits are dispersed, not necessarily how they are made. Ever see a museum without a gift shop? Wikipedia is not banned from placing advertising, they do not wish to. They are not free of advertising because they are nonprofit, it's the other way around, they are nonprofit so that they may solicit and take tax exempt donations in order to remain free of advertising.
Thus they can accept $100M from someone who only "spends" $50M, or less, to give it to them.
KFG
Consider the economics of it:
3,860,567 = Number of 20 year olds (2000 census rough estimate based on 1/5th of 20-24 year olds)
27% = Percent of population over 25 with a bachelor's degree (2000 census)
25% = Percent of students taking the most popular/useful classes (estimate)
50% = Percent of these students using the most popular textbook (estimate)
5 = Years a textbook edition remains in print (estimate)
6% = Risk free rate of return (estimate)
$100 = Average textbook price (estimate)
20% = McGraw hill net margin (per www.fool.com)
The textbook company would sell 131,259 textbooks per year, for a net profit of $2,625,186 annually. Given the 5 year life span and 6% risk free rate, the textbook company would be willing to sell a textbook with the above expected sales for no less than $11 million. This means we could purchase roughly 9 of the most popular textbooks for $100 million. May be off by a fair margin, but it's clearly not going to be near 100 textbooks. Seems like there are much better uses of the money.
I second that. I'm tired of buying Chilton books every time I want to work on a car. Open source the combustible engine now! ;)
On my EE degree program, a couple of our professors handed out full photocopied sections of the pages we needed to save us from having to buy the books. Since they owned the copyright, they figured it was theirs to do with as they pleased. (Of course those were generally not the same professors that drove sports cars)
I wouldn't be surprised if you could find academically minded authors who'd take a relatively small payoff and the feeling that they'd done good for the world.
I kinda doubt Disney would part with that particular work for any finite amount of money.
I actually wouldn't want it public.
Same with MLK's speech.
As both are copywritten they would be a good test of civil disobedience.
What would people think if you sung a "obviously" public song and got fined or jailed.
Maybe then people would want more public and less greed.
Or at least stuff in which the author has passed away, both true I believe, is public.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Yes, $100 Million is a vast amount of wealth, which can be made more powerful if spent over time, as I assume any donor would require. I assume we are not looking for a one-time binge of purchases. The idea of spreading out acquisitions over time would prevent "bidding up the market". Philanthropic gestures can be very shrewd. "Free" money needn't be "easy-come-easy-go". If this idea catches on, a popular trust can attract more donations (so don't rule out spending a little on "marketing", in addition to acquisitions. [I am not in the marketing field.])
I am sure that is why the "wisdom of crowds" has been brought to bear on this opportunity. However, if it were known that there were a "run" on, say mid-twentieth century SF novel copyrights, the price might go up more than if there were a slow paced purchase of the same titles, over time. After all, that particular category, while near and dear to many a Slashdotter, is, in the end, a luxury and not an essential work of knowledge.
Money is easy to make, but "real money" is hard to accumulate. Once it is dispersed it is gone. Over time, you fight inflation, but in this case, it is somewhat balanced by the diminishing value of the copyrights it seeks to purchase.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Reasoning that:
a) It's better to buy newer copyrights, because 'nearly expired' copyrights will run out soon, and taking an optimistic stance that common sense will prevail over the Disneys of the world and reduce the length of copyrights in future.
b) It's going to be cheaper to buy things before they are successful rather than after
and
c) Authors of copyrighted works will object to thier income supply being turned off
I suggest investing in new talent.
Offer musicians the following deal:
1) We'll press your music onto CDs, and sell them to anyone in the world for $10 each. You get 80% of any profits.
2) We'll sell mp3s, and lossless files at $0.99 a track and give you 80% of the profits
3) 5 years from the day we make it available, it goes into the public domain.
4) Here's a community of freelance record producers, cd-inlay designers, marketing organisations, tour managers etc. who are willing work for a percentage if they like your music. Do anything you like with them, but we get the rights, and it all goes into the public domain after 5 years.
5) We pay an advance or do marketing based on peer-review of your work, if your music is really good, you'll get a big advance against future earnings from our $100m.
6) We charge $0 per play for radio and TV performances.
That's a whole load better than any RIAA company will do, any major artist at the end of a contract would jump at it, and radio/TV stations will love it too.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
For a small issue, all of them. But copyright is special. The people pushing for stronger copyrights are the media. The media have something which, to a congress-person, is worth more than money. They control the spin on every news story the congress-person is mentioned in. You will have to do a lot more than donate $100 million dollars if you want congress to vote against the media.
Text books, for instance. Where countries have radically different curriculum at different years, and text books do change from year to year, and from location to location (economics, accounting, history, politics, botany, language, English, geography, medicine, pharmaceuticals, law, for example) ALL vary from year to year and from country to country.
Reminds me of the story of the very eminent economist who went back to his alma mater for a visit, and saw the current examination papers.
"Why, these are the self same questions I had to answer when I was here!" he exclaimed.
"Yes", replied the Dean, "But the answers are completely different!"
Repair manuals is another area where geographic and periodic differences would render anything of this nature very transient.
What is the average life of a model of car, or a model of washing machine, for instance. Not very long, if the marketers have any say about it. And not very geographically wide spread, either. In America, do you know what a 2006 Monaro, or Statesman, or even Falcon even look like? No, most of you, except for the car freaks probably say "No", and I'd say the same about your makes and models, too, of course.
Gutenberg, atlases, ancient literature and history, and just aboiut any material that doesn't impact on our daily lives, with multiple interpretations would be fine for this, but manuals, text books, histories - only if you want to kill Wikpaedia off as an internationally reputable repository of information.
Will those of you who think that you know what you are doing, get out of the way of those of us who know what we are doi
Strike 1. You don't understand how the refereed astronomical journals work. I pay THEM $110 per page so that they will publish my paper; they do not pay me.
Strike 2. RIT has a long history of teaching and has only recently -- in the past 5 or 7 years -- started heading in the direction of research. The school has a very detailed breakdown of income from tuition and expenses on items such as faculty salaries. Most of the money spent on my salary comes from tuition.
Would you care to try for a third statement illustrating your ignorance of this topic?
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Correct. The parent poster claimed that "the public" should have free access to all scientific research, the copyrights to which are largely owned by a few journals. I was trying to say that if "the public" wants to own the copyright to this material, then "the public" ought to pay for all the expenses involved in refereeing, editing, typesetting, publishing, and distributing the journals.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Where can I find Song of the South in pristine digital restoration? And even for movies that have been published on VHS/DVD, what about the decade while the movie remains in the "vault" (a periodic sales moratorium to reduce the number of SKUs Disney sells at once)?
These are really only temporary shortages. Annoying to you or me, certainly, but from the very long view -- and that's the one I think we need to be taking -- very little information is at stake of being lost forever as a result of Disney's market-manipulation. (Unless some political-correctness Nazi goes after the Song of the South masters, but I doubt this.) There is a big difference between something that's inaccessible but preserved, and something that's inaccessible because it has been permanently lost. It's the difference between imprisonment and execution; one is temporary, the other is forever.
Before we start in on the Songs of the South and others of their ilk -- tucked safely away, but held back from distribution by someone's conscious desire -- we need to acquire and copy all the content that's not being preserved. There is a TON of primary-source material from some of the most significant events in the 20th century -- some which unquestionably have significance to all of humanity -- which is not being preserved due to copyright problems, or simple mismanagement. (And this is only going to get worse in the future, as more of our history is recorded in mediums that aren't traditionally archived, unless we make an effort to do something. Read the Ars article about the problems one guy had just trying to get video clips from a few years ago.)
Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit may be locked away in the Disney Vault, but their situation is significantly less dire than that of the thousands of hours of other material which is not being looked after by billionaire benefactors.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Instead of buying out individual copyrights, why not invest the $100 million in lobbyists to go head to head with Disney and fix the infinite copyright problem?
Call up novell and buy Unix and open source it all.
Not only is that not "obvious", it's incredibly dumb. We already have the source to a variety of Unix versions, one of them called Linux. You might have heard of it. Having access to another source as well might be interesting for a few people, but when you factor in what it would cost (I really have no idea, but all the rights might well be in the vicinity of $100 mil), and compare it to the number of copyrighted books you could buy at the same cost -- books teaching entire basic education and university curriculas, you know, the ones you want as well, just twice the amount -- it starts to look like the ramblings of a typical Slashdotter completely out of touch with the world and people's actual needs.