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New Bill Proposes Open Source Requirement for Publicly Funded Books
fsufitch writes "On September 30th, the 'Open College Textbook Act of 2009' was introduced to the Senate and referred to committee. The bill proposes that all educational materials published or produced using federal funds need to be published under open licenses. The reasoning behind it takes into account the changing way information is distributed because of the Internet, the high price of college and textbooks, and the dangerously low college graduation rates in the US. Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?"
If the public pays for the research and creation they should have access to the intellectual product for no additional fee. It's silly that it isn't this way now. Of course we can all thank our corrupt congress critters for that.
Yep. That's why it'll never pass - expect large amounts of money to flow into key campaign coffers to put an end to this nonsense before it gets started. At some point we need to have congressmen who aren't bought and paid for by special interests.
By the way - for those of you who say "yeah, but this open source stuff is a special interest, too", no, it isn't. It's a *general interest*. It benefits everybody but a select few, rather than benefiting a select few at the expense of everybody else.
Do you have ESP?
Basic K-12 and Undergrad materials and course work do not change that much. Why shouldn't there be open source materials available? If they are publicly funded in any way, it should have been a requirement long ago. I for one used to refuse to sell my books back to the store for pennies on the dollar. It was always better to keep them or give to another student. With open source, more people could afford to go to university.
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?
If you accept public money, you have to accept public obligations. I'd have no sympathy for a publisher that received federal funding but disliked the conditions put on it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?
Don't think so since the scope of what is covered, educational materials published or produced using federal funds, is fairly narrow.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?"
I certainly hope so! The kid just started college and the whole textbook scam came back to me when we priced books!!!
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?
And if it does, then what?
It's not the government's job to protect particular business models or industries from technological innovation. It's also not particularly the government's job, in my opinion, to go out of its way to give money to private companies without a compelling public interest. Even before open source licenses were commonplace, I would have argued that any intellectual property generated with public funds should automatically be put into the public domain. Making it open source is a possible alternative, but if materials are generated with my tax dollars, I shouldn't generally have to pay again to use them.
The reasoning behind it takes into account the changing way information is distributed because of the Internet, the high price of college and textbooks, and the dangerously low college graduation rates in the US
The fraction of the population that has gone to college had been steadily increasing over the last 50 years. One major result of that is that what constitutes a college education has in many ways been reduced. There are good and bad arguments about what has happened with college education over the last few years but there's no plausible way to describe the college graduation rate as dangerously low unless one thinks that a priori everyone should graduate college like everyone should graduate high school. That's not an easy case to make.
Either is fine by me. If the public opts for the discount by paying up-front, they shouldn't be forced to also pay via the instalment plan.
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?
We can only hope it will kill the publishers, the way they've been killing US college kids for years. Do you think college kids would eat such a steady diet of ramen noodles if they weren't spending all their money on textbooks? Have you ever compared the cost of textbooks in the US to the SAME books overseas? Take a look at amazon.co.uk sometime and compare a textbook there to the same book in the US. The only difference is likely that one says "international version" on the cover. Oh, and it'll be less than half the price.
No, a bill such as this won't endanger publishing companies... publishing companies have endangered themselves by pissing off their customers with insanely high pricing. Maybe something like this would finally bring competition to the textbook industry and help make school a little more affordable.
Seems to me that anything - books, medical procedures and devices, pharmaceuticals, etc. - belong to the public and we should not have to pay for them...
I doubt this will pass, though. High chance it'll be shot down, and then a new bill will slip through that strengthens the stranglehold publishers have on education.
I'm a little unclear what qualifies textbooks this would actually impact. I can't think of any books that would be "educational materials produced using federal funds". The textbooks I had in university didn't contain any research material that would have been federally funded--how much new stuff is in a first year physics or calculus book? For that matter, even my senior E&M textbook didn't have anything particularly new. Does the government actually provide grants specifically targeted to providing educational materials? For my money, the big issue is access to *research* publications that were supported by federal tax dollars. Otherwise, I just can't find a good example where this would have a meaningful impact.
The car "endagered" the horse industry the same way the book publishing industry is endangered by the internet. And to be fair, book publishers and newspapers endangered the bards and town criers! There comes a time for older techs to be displaced by newer, more appropriate tech.
It's sad that book makers would be relegated to the competitive manufacture and distribution of printed materials and will no longer be able to rake in enormous monopolistic profits from controlling copyrights... really sad. But the copyright business needs to always keep in mind that their "copyright" is an intellectual property granted to them NOT by natural law, but by the law of the state and by the will of the people. When it no longer suits the will of the people, the copyright "business" is subject to changes in the business. For too long, the copyright industry has been abusing the people and paying legislators for laws that grant them even more control and advantage. Showing the industry that things can be taken away will not only serve the interests of the people, but will remind the industry that they are INDEED operating at the will of the people and when the ire of the people is eventually raised, their entire busines model may come crumbling down.
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Yes, if publicly funded books have open source requirements, it'll be the same as Communism. Or Socialism. Or whatever it is Fox News tells you to be scared of.
"Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?" God I hope so. I remember being in classes where we had to buy brand new text books because they just released a new edition, and by the end of the semester we couldn't sell them back because- you guessed it- they had released another edition. And I was a history major, I pity the poor fools in subjects that actually change substantially year to year. These publishing companies have far too comfortable relationships with universities, especially public universities.
You forget that to qualify, it must be:
A publisher can produce educational material without using federal funds and keep all the rights in addition to everything that doesn't fall under the educational material category.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
... wouldn't their advanced education put the few and far between college grads at the forefront of our already-too-tight job market? (I better hit "submit" before my boss catches me and I lose my minimum-wage temp job.)
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Copyright was intended to "encourage the arts" not grant special rights to publishers over works that were funded by the public. All publicly funded information should be in the public domain. If publishers don't like it then boo hoo. The only reason they even get copyright rights in the first place is that we, the public, gave them those rights and we are very well within our power to take them away for works that we funded.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This is a laudable notion, but it has a huge loophole: how do we determine that the time an author spent working on a book was funded by the government? Consider a university scientist on an NSF grant. Such a scientist is typically paid salary off the grant for two months per year, with nine months paid in university salary, and one month not at all. The scientist files grant progress reports every year indicating what she did with the grant money, aside from surfing porn. If she doesn't want to open-source a book, she simply doesn't claim it as a grant-related activity, and instead publishes it for-profit and keeps the royalties.
I suspect that this will only result in academic books being open-sourced which were already published at a loss, for example by university presses. Anything likely to make a substantial profit will still be closed source.
Actually - if you sit down and study most text books, you will realize that most of the content is indeed public domain. English, math, geography, whatever - copyright trolls are publishing nothing new. It isn't like they are researching a new field, and publishing original work. They sift knowledge that is public domain, reprint old, common knowledge, and try to pass it off as unique. In reality, the only thing that might be unique about them, is when some liberal group like the GLBT manage to insert left wing indoctrination material into a text book. None of that trash belongs in education anyway, and the group responsible should be raked over the coals for the attempt.
Education, by definition, is open source.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If the book was authored using federal funding, then publishers should not expect any level of protection; it isn't their work (or rather their "work-for-hire") to begin with. Any copyright protection to the publisher in this case should be based on that entity purchasing the rights from the funding agency (ideally at a valuation based on estimated future sales). If they have been getting a better deal than that, then it's just a case of federally-funded corporate welfare.
> Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies...
Sure. So what?
> ...in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?
This implies that you equate "traditional journalism" with newspaper publishing. Journalism and publishing are two different things. Journalism is about news and opinion. It is vibrantly alive on the Net. Publishing is about manufacturing and distributing pieces of paper with ink on them. It is obsolete.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I noticed a pattern here with Congress.
Step One. Propose a law that would hurt an industry.
Step Two. Receive large campaign donations to stop that law.
Step Three. ???
Step Four. Re-election!
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?"
No. The Internet has not done away with paper mills, printers, journalism, Hollywood, Broadway, telephone, schools, office buildings, dedicated computer clusters, data centers etc. etc.
There is a use and reason for the Internet, there is also a use and reason for all the 'traditional' stuff. You can do a lot of 'traditional' stuff on the Internet, doesn't mean you should and doesn't mean everybody will. Even I, born and raised in the Internet age prefer 'traditional' media over the Internet for some things.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Creative Commons (home of Creative Commons License) has a web portal http://learn.creativecommons.org/ dedicated to "Open Source" textbooks, learning, etc.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Whoa -- not so fast. The government usually pays for fundamental research, and when it does the public should be able to freely use the fruits of the research. This means the right to read the research papers, see the data, and use any resulting inventions (i.e. practice resulting patents). However, getting from the fundamental research to the actual product usually requires more investment that is not government-funded -- and unless we make it possible for the people who put up the capital for this stage to profit they will not invest.
For a hypothetical, assume that NIH-funded doctors discover that a particular plant extract improves survival rates from heart disease. They should have to make their research article freely available to the public (probably after a year's delay allowing research journals to profit -- this is to fund the refereeing system). They should also have to make their data available to the public so we can check the results. Note however, that knowing that the extract is useful is not the same as having a life-saving drug. Someone has to come up with an industrial process to manufacture the drug, establish appropriate dosages and safety levels and so on. Every drug company (they are members of the public too!) should be able to now use this publicly available knowledge to try make a drug. If they succeed we should give them patent protection for a while so they can recover the investment in their part of the work. Other drug companies should be able to use the public knowledge too, as long as they invent new drugs.
Hey all,
Just remember, saying you're all for it on an internet forum doesn't actually do anything... Write your elected officials in support of S.1714, the "Open College Textbook Act of 2009". Here are some links, just in case you're THAT lazy....
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
http://takeaction.lwv.org/lwv/dbq/officials/
Remember to get the senate AND the house.
-T
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?
Short Answer: Yes.
Long Answer: Yes, but some bright spark will come along, figure out a way to make a metric shit-tonne of money from it and blaze the path for other companies to follow. It's how capitalism is supposed to work.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Whos'e that walking on my bridge? Fox what?
I have no idea how many might be out there (hopefully, this bill will result in them being easier to find), but I know that IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) and NSF (National Science Foundation) gives grants for writing curriculum. There was a talk at last year's ASIS&T meeting about the work done so far on a series of modules that teachers could use to build curriculum for digital libraries classes. (either from the Library or Comp. Sci side of things).
It's also pretty common for educational materials to be developed as parts of other funding. I think there were guidelines for all of NASA programs to spend 2% of their budget on EPO (Education and Public Outreach). Much of it's available on the internet, but there might've been other materials made, too.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Did some work for a publisher back in the 90's before CD-R's replaced books. The Publisher which will remain nameless but has initials (PH) seemed very concerned about certain content. Namely a particular cartoon Egg character and a male figure wearing a purple shirt. The Egg which had no gender or genitalia need clothes and of course the purple shirt might imply the male was somewhat less than manly. If you think books are too expensive it is because a lot of effort goes into issue such as these.
Education, by definition, is open source.
I agree. Even more so when the compilation of the material used for it's purpose is funded by the public. Now if someone wants to privately fund a compilation of the material and charge for it, fine.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Who wants to bet that the publisher's lobby is going to have this bill killed?
Sorry, it did look a bit overboard.
Your are correct in that the drug company should be compensated for their costs in bringing a drug to market. But, really, don't you feel that they go way overboard to the point of gouging the public. We are all entitled to compensation for our efforts but there is a limit especially if we paid for the foundation work. Patent protection does not mean thousands of $ per month for a drug that returns its costs many times over in the first year of a 17 year patent with the remaining 16 years being almost pure profit...
Did you forget to attach the sarcasm tag?
To quote "The Princess Bride", "You keep using that word (hacker). I do not think it means what you think it means."
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
They have been endangering my bank account and my credit rating for years. Half the time they release books that suck, at ridiculous prices, and since the bookstore doesn't have a used copy, I end up paying for the full price.
Textbooks that are worth their sticker price are rare. The majority of the text aren't worth half of that sticker price.
I do not think it means what you think it means. A "hacker" is not "just a programmer". You can be a hacker without programming. It's actually "anyone who takes things apart to learn how they work and then make them do something else."
Changing the [program, books, picure] IS the point of the open source license.
No, the point of open source is having the source. Changing the source is one aspect, but simply having free access to the source allows one to understand the "program" better (for computer source) or reformat it or use it in other media (not "changing") for open source texts.
A CC http://creativecommons.org/ license book will: Remove Power from small committees of BIG states in determining what is in a textbook: Cal. Texas, NY, etc.
I don't know where you get this idea from. The open source California books were vetted by the state committee, just like any paper book. State departments of education will still mandate which textbooks will be used, whether they are paper or electrons. If you mean that local teachers will "update" the official textbooks, well, they already can provide extra material for printed books, and I don't know that I want local teachers "updating" the textbooks anyway. In fact, having them "update" an e-textbook means they can make it say whatever they want and it will still have the official stamp of approval from the state or local school board.
It's been some time since I graduated, but keeping my books is, to me anyway, an important part of keeping the skills I learned in school. A digital copy that I have perpetual rights to would be great, but a reserve copy in the library may not work at all after a while.
I usually can find stuff in my old textbooks really fast if I need to brush up on it or use it. Without my books I'm a bit handicapped.
--PeterM
It's actually "anyone who takes things apart to learn how they work and then make them do something else."
Actually, it's anyone who does the above maliciously. Yes, I know you all want that to be the definition of "cracker." Unfortunately that's not how language works.
I thought the EU parliament operated exactly the same as Congress - direct election of the man (or woman) you want to represent your district.
Each EU country can choose among systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_elections#Voting_system
Almost all use variants on the crappy list system, where you vote for a party, and the party list is usually headed by a bunch of sleazy vampires who would be unelectable as individuals. The list system also results in a really weak link between voters and the elected elite. Arguably, it's as bad as the first-past-the-post system used in US congressional elections and UK parliamentary elections - gerrymandering is no longer needed, being replaced by list precedence, which is determined by internal party machinations. In EU elections, Ireland and Northern Ireland use the much better transferrable vote system, which gives almost as proportional result as the list system, but keeps a strong link between voters and their elected representatives, all of whom are elected as individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I keep a list of who proposes good laws and bad laws. This one was introduced by Senator Richard J Durbin. I'm adding him to my good list.
Durbin for president?
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But I think it's more like the way Wikipedia endangers paper encyclopedias. Remember, this is only for publicly funded textbooks. These open-source books will become, like Wikipedia, the learning source for the masses. But there will be other books, akin to Encyclopedia Brittanica, that are definitely more expensive, but may be better, and will be bought by expensive private schools like Harvard, Yale; maybe even some private high schools.
Also, there may be special topics (e.g. "High Performance Parallel Computing with Brainfuck") that never have books produced with federal funds; these you'll have to pay through the nose for anyway.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
In conclusions, I commenting, not writing a thesis.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Most publishers will simply contract with professors to write textbooks. (They do this already.) Then they will simply pay them a small kickback in exchange for their cooperation in forcing students to have use that professor's book. A few hundred highly priced books every three to four months is a cashcow that publishers won't roll-over for... Further what's the garantee that if the information is free it is also accessible? IMO, all it will do is bury information that isn't profitable to someone, leaving a void in quality educational materials. Not that I'm against the concept. I just don't think the consequences create an entirely plausible/workable solution...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
"Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?"
We can only hope so. Let's face the facts, this is one of many industries that is a leech on a helpless, target audience. They deserve the painful death that is coming to them.
-- sudo.ca
I'll borrow the top half of your line.
College is hard because not everyone can master the material. What's terrible is the "low$" degrees help subsidize everything else. A lecture class = 2 books, 42 lectures, and "the right to pick the prof's brain for 42 questions per semester". (Much more than that gets you frowned at!) Then this is proven by an evaluation of four papers and three exams. So Hitchiker aside, a college class should cost $250 tops. The entire degree would come in at $8000 + $2000 misc = $10,000.
Education is going to crash in the next wave as soon as we quit distracting ourselves in our current topics.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I can walk down to B&N or Borders and buy a NY Times Bestselling Novel or Hardcover for $10.00 or $20.00 depending.
That same eBook on Amazon.com costs $9.95. WTF?
I'd like to see the slashdot versions of college textbooks.
The stones used to build the pyramids were mined in India and floted down the misisipi river by Napeolian during the crimerian era.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
This is due in large part of their control and abuse of copyright. When one party controls the market, the market tends to bear a lot more than it would under non-monopolistic circumstances.
Is the price of an eBook being nearly the same as a hard copy abuse? I think so. The cost of good sold is nearly zero... certainly closer to zero than the same content in hard copy form. And the abuse doesn't stop there. If for just about any reason the eBook publisher wishes to remove the content from your possession, they have demonstrated that they are willing and able to do so.
It seems fair that something paid for by public money should be openly available to all Americans, but what about foreigners? What happens if they commies get a hold of our U.S. History textbooks? Then they will know that Christopher Columbus discovered North America while proving that the Earth was round.
Furthermore, they might also discover that America won World War I single-handedly. This is dangerous information that I am certain few other nations possess.
You can find your Senator here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
And your Congressman here:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
I wrote them a note like this, and you can copy it/use it/change it. Whatever you like.
I support the Open College Textbook Act of 2009!
Open formats for education works derived from taxpayer dollars is essential for the longevity of information. Non-open formats such as .doc (MSWord) are subject to software changes and incompatibility issues. Open formats like .odf (Open Office) and .pdf (Adobe) allow the data to be accessed for countless decades.
Information paid for with taxpayer money should be made freely available to the taxpayers!
...endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?"
He says it like it's a bad thing or something.
Books, with perhaps a few exceptions (none of which have decent plots), are not source code. They are not software. Therefore they cannot be open source.
STOP SAYING EVERYTHING FROM SONGS TO GUACAMOLE RECIPIES IS OPEN SOURCE ALREADY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Better is to educate people to not believe advertisements they see. Which is happening.
If it were happening, we might have President Paul. But he was already eliminated before the primaries even got to my state.
Twenty years ago 70% of Americans believed TV news sources were unbiased, now only 30% do.
Twenty years ago, we didn't have MSNBC at the left and Fox News at the right.
Is Don Knuth a "copyright troll" for publishing The Art of Computer Programming? Almost everything in there is derived from research he did not do. Most textbooks cover such a wide range of material that no one person could do that much research. The textbook author has the task of reviewing all of the research and identifying what is important and what is not. He standardizes all of the terminology so that it is easy to see how things relate (cutting edge research often has different people inventing different names for essentially the same things). They come up with exercises so that you can test your knowledge and understanding of the material. (In fact, the most valuable part of The Art of Computer Programming is the exercises.) That is a lot of work and it is original and worthy of copyright protection.
I don't dispute that there are plenty of crappy textbooks out there and that publishers often push unnecessary editions out there to try to kill the used textbook market. But none of that means that every textbook is a simple reprint of public domain material by a "copyright troll".
Are you people really that stupid? You really don't understand why it's a good idea to collectively fund education? For example .. do you have any idea what the return on investment is for student loans? I now pay more in taxes every single year than all of my student loans put together now... why? Because they allowed me to go to a top line engineering school that I couldn't afford without them and start a fantastic career
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
Good points. First - the vast majority of public school text books have nothing to do with "cutting edge". I really mean, the overwhelming majority. K-12, you're unlikely to find even 1% of any textbook with anything that was "cutting edge" even 5 years ago. "See Dick run. See Jane run." Those textbooks were, and are, just as good as any reading primers you will find in the schools today. The same can be said of most subject material, up through 6th grade - 50 year old books contain all the knowledge and skills available to day. "New Math" books had nothing new in them.
Now, when you transition from high school to even a junior college or a vo-tech, THEN you start to see things that are new, and required genuine research. Going higher, you will see a lot of text books that require yet more intensive research. Someone who is working on a thesis at MIT is quite likely to require a lot of "cutting edge" material. Copyright protections on those works make sense.
We could dicker over the protections that such works should enjoy. But, I think most people can agree that general educational materials in the early grades are pretty much cut and dried. Only copyright trolls and political action committees see any great value in those copyrights.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Prior to CSPAN the Congress used to actually sit on the floor. After CSPAN they started hiding behind closed doors. So really CPSAN didn't reveal government - it just drove it underground.
The everyday work of the House and Senate is done in committee.
There are 100 Senators. 435 Representatives.
Twenty-five commitees in the House alone. Committee Offices Each with its own staff and funding.
In 1850 the House had 233 members and the Senate 62.
The Senate in those days was the place to be if you wanted to hear some remarkable debate and oratory: The Seventh of March Speech
But this sort of thing eats up a hell of lot of time if everyone wants to have their say.
In 1900 the House had 357 members and the Senate 90.
At this point, you simply have to break the work down to managable size or nothing gets done.
The standing committee with a permanent staff has a reasonable chance of holding its own against the executive, the bureaucrat and the lobbyist.
This is the fallacy of term limits.
No one is going to master the federal tax code, military procurement, agricultural policy, Social Security and Medicaid-Medicare - in two years.
I completely agree that most K-12 textbooks are trash. That has always been the case. It has been a long time since I was a high school student but I think the best teachers I ever had would agree with me since none of them ever used a text book. They used their own notes, current events, and an occasional xerox'd copy of a reputable article.
I don't agree, though, that copyright should be reserved for only the good stuff. This isn't like patents. Even trash like Harry Potter books deserve copyright protection.
Besides, research is done all the time on the best ways to teach people of different ages. If someone comes up with a good way of teaching science to 6th graders, I want them to make a lot of money with their superior textbooks.
Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?
You say that as if it's a bad thing.
Then there's no reason not to support the bill. But more along the lines of your undefended assertion: What's your evidence? I need to see what figures you use to arrive at the conclusion quoted above.
As a matter of principle, I don't see why I should care if people seek other funding sources. As a matter of fact, I find it hard to believe that there will be no takers for public money conditioned on releasing in a manner in line with public use. After all, if we taxpayers paid for the book we should collectively own that work and that means releasing that work to us all under terms that allow sharing, modification, and distribution without royalty. Many government publications already come to us this way and people seem to be okay with continuing to write them.
So? And there's nothing that says one won't be paid to write such books. Just that one won't retain copyright to said book and be able to control its distribution for as long as copyright allows.
Digital Citizen
Oh, don't get me wrong - I don't want to eliminate all copyright. Harry Potter deserves some protection. I have definite problems with they way copyright law has evolved, but I do NOT want to eliminate it.
But, public education and/or books developed with public funds are the subject of this whole discussion. Those works should be much more open than something like Harry Potter.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I don't care about the publishers' interests. They don't look out for the public's interest (as even a cursory examination of recent copyright law shows) and it's not my job to look out for the publishers' interests. Responding as that loaded question would have us respond respects the framing of the issue as if this should hinge on publisher involvement or approval. Time to take the reins from corporatocracy and define more things to be too important to leave to the market.
Digital Citizen
Basic K-12 and Undergrad materials and course work do not change that much. Why shouldn't there be open source materials available? If they are publicly funded in any way, it should have been a requirement long ago. I for one used to refuse to sell my books back to the store for pennies on the dollar. It was always better to keep them or give to another student. With open source, more people could afford to go to university.
This isn't necessarily directly under the scope of this, as I'm not sure if it counts as "publicly funded", but there is open content for K-12 science and math materials, including a decent system to put your own books together. Check this out:
CK-12.org
As a high school biology teacher in Thailand, where it is actually difficult to get decent biology books for a reasonable price, I have found this to be incredibly useful, and as far as I can tell the content is accurate. The book layout isn't tops, but, the pictures are pretty and the content works. I've also been checking out their physics and math books to refresh myself on a lot of things I have forgotten.
Point being, there are open materials out there, freely accessible. I would like to see more teachers using them. :)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Why limit this to College? Most college text books are written by professors, and commissioned by publishing companies. How many college textbooks are actually funded by the government, anyway?
The place open textbooks actually makes sense is in Elementary and High School. The public schools are already spending the resources necessary to decide what should be in the books. Why not take the next step and start publishing them? There is no reason for public Elementary and High Schools to be buying books from 3rd party publishers, when the government could commission (and distribute freely) their own. If it was made open source, teachers could submit corrections and improvements which would benefit everyone (instead of lining the publishing companies' wallets). It's not like the things being taught in Elementary and High School change very much. High quality books could quickly be written, then small revisions every year would suffice.
I would also like to point out that if the government actually did commission their own textbooks, they could distribute an infinite number practically for free. For the cost of a few textbooks, every public school desk could have a computer on which to read the new digital textbooks.
Finally, this would be a great source of low cost textbooks for low GDP communities both domestic and foreign.
Profs. hate this just as much as the students do because they have to constantly rework their syllabus to fit the new chapters. This results in the profs wanting to use the same edition book for years and years. The book publishers figured out that this is impossible if they stop publishing their old editions. Thus, profs can't require the old book because there's nowhere to buy it.
Then why don't the profs themselves collaborate to write books for these intro-level topics and release them as open textbooks? If making it available in this manner would solve this syllabus-reworking headache, multiple professors at different schools could use these books to teach their classes and save themselves a lot of time -- or maybe I'm missing the whole picture?
"Forces to come off their lazy asses and provide a useful service for their money" is a new meaning for the word "endangered", is it ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
there are a couple of services they provide which are valuable and cost money. The first one is qualified and expereicned editors, the second is profession information designers.
Actually, I think that the most significant service they (sometimes) provide is advertising/distribution know-how. (Not sure how significant this is going to be in the future, though.) The current business model gives them a big incentive to be as good as possible at getting your content sold.
On the other hand, I can see the two services you have listed easily becoming available in the form of work-for-hire from independents whose business model is a customer base of other independents (content producers).
Only makes sense - the public did pay for it through their taxes. I love the smell of socialism in the morning. See it isn't so bad, is it?
When we talk about 'open source' I expect the source code to be available. For a book, this would be not just a PDF, but the files used to create that PDF: the formatted text and graphics. But then we arrive at the next problem: how open are those? If the publisher chooses to publish it in a proprietary format (Word, Quark XPress, FrameMaker) it still isn't truly 'open source' IMO.
In this context I think it's better to talk about public domain than open source.
What would the actual patent(s) be on? The use of the active ingredient for that purpose would already have been established, so the patent would have to be for some aspect of the manufacturing process.
Not exactly. They could still be hired to put the textbooks together, and could negotiate their fee. They'd just get paid once instead of 100 times. Probably the profits would be smaller, but payments would be negotiated up front, so nobody would be shortchanged.
It's also possible we'd get better textbooks. In IP issues, people often argue that removing copyright takes away incentives to create. But it also takes away obstacles to creation. Imagine a textbook that combines all the best information and illustrations from 10 previous, competing editions. That's what you could have if all 10 of those had been open sourced.