Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
 
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I came across an article I found interesting. I was curious about the
reaction of the members of this group, if there is an interest. Joe http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html -- "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1913. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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Joseph Spinden wrote at 04/17/2012 09:21 AM:
> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html "This is so much the case that it can't be long before reading a book - making an unauthorised copy in your brain - is also made illegal." Sure, it's hyperbolic. But I like the sentiment... carrying things to their "logical" conclusion ... or "runaway inference". It reminds me of a few of my friends who are especially attached to the concept of "downloading" their minds into a computer. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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I don't think it's hyperbolic, it's the business model: convert a piece the collective human intellect into property, collect rents, parlay a piece of the action into enough money to change the laws of property to protect your rents.
-- rec --
2012/4/17 glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> Joseph Spinden wrote at 04/17/2012 09:21 AM: ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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In reply to this post by glen ep ropella
A sociology colleague and I
have been working on a project related to PowerPoint use in the classroom,
specifically looking at professor's use of citations in their classroom
presentations. Aside from our project getting a good rise out of our
colleagues, it is legitimately anticipating an upcoming legal fiasco.
Increasingly PowerPoint slides are viewed as Professional Product (perhaps with
university ownership rights, perhaps with the need to apply all professional
standards associated with publication). Relevant to the current article Joe
sent around, if a power point is professional product, a publisher could (at
least in principle) sue for damages over the use extend quotes. It is only a
far cry from that to questions about whether you can recite quotes in the
classroom. This is especially if people are recording, and those recordings
could later be distributed along with PowerPoints - on youtube, via a
commercial note-taking service, over a course webpage, etc.
Thus, while the claim seems hyperbolic by today's standards, the same claim in 20 or 30 years might not be. Eric On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 01:23 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote: Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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In reply to this post by Joe Spinden
Is your interest is the piracy angle? If so, there are lots of free and open ebooks for just about any topic you might care about! But on the other hand, they may not be the best suited to the class being taught.
Amazingly enough, many profs are migrating to open/free sets of notes that are equivalent to a book. The best example I know of is the brilliant Mathematics For Computer Science
And here is a huge selection of free or very inexpensive math books:
In terms of torrents, I found a russian site that had 80,381 text books that had been collected from world wide torrents and they had packaged them for direct downloads. That's a lota books! Most were an edition or two behind the latest, but still quite usable.
Apple is starting to work very hard on textbooks for ipads, even with means for "renting" them. They haven't gotten off the ground yet, but they hope to be working with universities world wide within the year.
I find that the "illegal" downloads I have done either leads me to buying a version of the book (often a used edition, and an edition behind) or deleting it.
I do believe we need to make education freely available. Clearly Coursera and Udacity are headed in that direction, with MITX following on their heels. Accreditation is a problem, but being worked on for these digital classrooms.
-- Owen On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Joseph Spinden <[hidden email]> wrote: I came across an article I found interesting. I was curious about the reaction of the members of this group, if there is an interest. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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I'll preface my laundry list of links here by saying that I'm working on a book about how technology can dramatically bring down the costs of education -- if we only let it do so. There's a lot of government investment in free/open educational materials -- both textbooks and curricula sets. See here:
The second is particularly exciting. In a phone call with the WOCL team, they estimated that the single most-used open textbook that they're funding could save students upwards of $10 million over a two year span -- in Washington State alone.
Here are a few OER platforms, for what it's worth: I even did a little bit of work with Nature Publishing, who really understood that they needed to think about how to use and generate open educational materials. Their platform is here: Paul
On 18 April 2012 00:19, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote: Is your interest is the piracy angle? If so, there are lots of free and open ebooks for just about any topic you might care about! But on the other hand, they may not be the best suited to the class being taught. Paul Kruchoski @Kruchoski | 505.720.5260 | Schedule
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Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
I was curious as to the reaction of this group to what I took to be
the main point of the article:
the global demand for learning and scholarship is not being met by the contemporary publishing industry. It cannot be, not with the current business models and the prices. I personally agree with this. I started thinking about this when I got a Kindle a few months ago, then the new iPad. I had held off for a long time because I thought the conflicting eBook formats too crippling. Then I found a program to convert between the different eBook formats. That made eBooks a bit more interesting to me. But the current business model is very inconvenient -- even for me, a relatively affluent consumer in one of the richest nations in the world. The internet could -- and, I think should -- be used to make knowledge widely accessible. The idea of putting courses and some books on-line is perhaps a step in the right direction. But I think this does not go far enough. In any case, I think the pirate sites will drive the industry to a wider dissemination of learning and information at a lower cost. I do not know what model might be effective. Since this group frequently indulges in speculative thinking, I thought perhaps there would be some ideas already considered. Joe On 4/17/12 10:19 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: Is your interest is the piracy angle? If so, there are lots of free and open ebooks for just about any topic you might care about! But on the other hand, they may not be the best suited to the class being taught. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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How do we deal with fair author protection? Certainly the current business model doesn't work. As prices soar, so does piracy. We have several authors on the list. Have you insights? -- Owen
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Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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Oops, forgot: Apple is getting into text books big time .. here is their ad:
They know its going to take a long time, transitioning to a new media, dealing with legal and authoring issues. They are working on an IDE for books, so to speak .. software that helps create the new books, with interactive media etc. They also want to take readers way beyond the current relatively static ebooks. Hard to say if they succeed, but they have worked quite a bit with schools, and iTunesU is quite successful.
-- Owen
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 8:59 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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And be sure to read
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mind-bogglingly-greedy-and-evil-license-agreement/4360?tag=content;siu-container for which there's a link on the page shown below, but you don't want to miss it. The Apple contract just blows one's mind. Bruce On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Bruce Sherwood <[hidden email]> wrote: > See http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/why-the-apple-textbook-program-will-never-work/6526. > A sample: "My colleague Ed Bott has done a thorough job tearing apart > the Apple licensing agreements and technical details that turn the > iBooks textbook program into a “mind-bogglingly greedy and evil > license agreement”." > > I had the same reaction when I saw the Apple terms announced some weeks ago. > > Bruce > > On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote: >> Oops, forgot: Apple is getting into text books big time .. here is their ad: >> http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/ >> >> They know its going to take a long time, transitioning to a new media, >> dealing with legal and authoring issues. They are working on an IDE for >> books, so to speak .. software that helps create the new books, with >> interactive media etc. They also want to take readers way beyond the >> current relatively static ebooks. Hard to say if they succeed, but they >> have worked quite a bit with schools, and iTunesU is quite successful. >> >> -- Owen >> >> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 8:59 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote: >>> >>> How do we deal with fair author protection? Certainly the current >>> business model doesn't work. As prices soar, so does piracy. >>> >>> We have several authors on the list. Have you insights? >>> >>> -- Owen >>> >>> Just FYI: If you'd like to see the titles of the now-defunct russian site >>> of 80,381 text books: http://backspaces.net/temp/all/all.txt Although the >>> site is gone, my guess is that all of these are available via torrents. >>> >>> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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The contract is pretty amazing. I can't believe any author would agree to the terms. My experience is mostly with college books but most of the issues are similar. The book market for high school and grade school books involves a lot more money and is highly politicized with publishers working very hard to get state-wide adoptions in states like California and Texas. You can check out how the publishers have been forced to remove or, at best, deemphasize, evolution if they want to get their books adopted.
A couple of observations: Some of the major publishers were known for contracting with multiple authors for books in the same area and then only publishing one of them. At least, authors had an advance so they didn't come away with nothing. The Apple contract doesn't even propose that. Authors I've spoken to in both he trade and college book area feel that when signing a contract they figure they won't make money beyond the advance. But no advance? I've always worked with Addison-Wesly which has acted honorably and didn't engage in such practices. However, they were bought by Pearson a while ago and as publishers struggle to figure out how to survive things are changing. For example, my book now has a Kindle version, something I have no control over. Fortunately (?), students don't really like technical books in electronic format (yet). But the part that is most alarming is that the students are getting screwed. Even though the numbers of books I sell each year has declined due to piracy my royalties have remained pretty constant over 15 years. Why? The prices have sky rocketed so the honest students are paying a ridiculous price. For example, at UNM, the first biology course requires a book that costs over $200. With Apple students will also have to own a compatible device. I don't think many students in Santa Fe can afford it. Unfortunately I don't think there are any easy answers. The potential of what you can do with new media is something we'd like to have available to all students. Maybe what Bruce has done with Glow Script is the best compromise for now. Ed __________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon On Apr 18, 2012, at 10:03 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
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Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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Thanks Ed, interesting. And wow Bruce, Apple is being draconian yet again. Unfortunately, their sell is that the books will not become obsolete .. presumably that is a promise to the K-12 school system that they will upgrade for free or reasonable price. Maybe!
However, it seems the key problem has been publishers not finding a good model that supports the author, provides a good deal to the students (or school/state for K-12), and satisfied the publisher's needs (greed?).
One problem with digital books is DRM. If you give the student the bits, then if you use DRM, its a nightmare to manage and eventually fails. If you give them a "reader", it depends on equally on getting that right: able to access the media, generally in the cloud, and making it proprietary.
Some creative ideas are turning up, however. One is a Library subscription in the sky. Tim OReilly has Safari books: you pay and can have N books which you change over time as your needs change. Schools could use this, with the kids changing over to new library entries as they advance.
Another similar example is my son who is taking sophisticated Network Routing classes (video and text) where he's got access to an entire library, but at a monthly cost.
Definitely this is all new and will take years to settle. Tablets need to be more competitive and/or student deals on laptops have to be available. DRM is definitely messy and generally obnoxious .. penalizing the good guy more than the bad, alas. The Cloud Library means you need universal network coverage for near-zero cost.
But with OReilly, Amazon, Apple and lots more seeing it as a huge market, hopefully a reasonable solution will evolve.
-- Owen
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Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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In reply to this post by Edward Angel
Dear Earthlings of the United Federation
What kind of society do you live in where in a population of 300 million people and speaking only about 3 or 4 languages you have print runs of 50-100 for educational books costing US$200 each ? On my planet we have solved the problem through Section 32A of our Copyright Act which is based on International Laws / Treaties / Conventions. It allows "anyone" to apply for a licence to reproduce any literary work for "teaching research and scholarship" at a "reasonable price considering prevailing local conditions" within 6 months of the edition being published internationally and the original copyright holder refusing reproduction rights at the aforesaid reasonable prices to the applicant (usually all that is required is for an airmail letter to be sent to the last known address of the copyright holder) http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules1957.pdf So if anyone wants 100 copies of an undergraduate biology textbook at US$10 each instead of US200 each you know where to go (see hints below). PS: Even bigger money to be made if anyone wants their self-written text books (otherwise selling in the low 50's) to be prescribed / approved course material at one of the many universities we have in India Sarbajit NB: (a) "developed country" means a country which is not a developing country; (b) "developing country" means a country which is for the time being regarded as such in conformity with the practice of the General Assembly of the United Nations; (d) "purposes of teaching, research or scholarship" includes- (i) purposes of instructional activity at all levels in educational institutions, including Schools, Colleges, Universities and tutorial institutions; and (ii) purposes of all other types of organised educational activity.] On 4/19/12, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote: > The contract is pretty amazing. I can't believe any author would agree to > the terms. My experience is mostly with college books but most of the issues > are similar. The book market for high school and grade school books involves > a lot more money and is highly politicized with publishers working very hard > to get state-wide adoptions in states like California and Texas. You can > check out how the publishers have been forced to remove or, at best, > deemphasize, evolution if they want to get their books adopted. > > A couple of observations: > > Some of the major publishers were known for contracting with multiple > authors for books in the same area and then only publishing one of them. At > least, authors had an advance so they didn't come away with nothing. The > Apple contract doesn't even propose that. Authors I've spoken to in both he > trade and college book area feel that when signing a contract they figure > they won't make money beyond the advance. But no advance? > > I've always worked with Addison-Wesly which has acted honorably and didn't > engage in such practices. However, they were bought by Pearson a while ago > and as publishers struggle to figure out how to survive things are changing. > For example, my book now has a Kindle version, something I have no control > over. Fortunately (?), students don't really like technical books in > electronic format (yet). > > But the part that is most alarming is that the students are getting screwed. > Even though the numbers of books I sell each year has declined due to piracy > my royalties have remained pretty constant over 15 years. Why? The prices > have sky rocketed so the honest students are paying a ridiculous price. For > example, at UNM, the first biology course requires a book that costs over > $200. With Apple students will also have to own a compatible device. I don't > think many students in Santa Fe can afford it. > > Unfortunately I don't think there are any easy answers. The potential of > what you can do with new media is something we'd like to have available to > all students. Maybe what Bruce has done with Glow Script is the best > compromise for now. > > Ed > __________ > > Ed Angel > > Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS > Lab) > Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico > > 1017 Sierra Pinon > Santa Fe, NM 87501 > 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email] > 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel > > > On Apr 18, 2012, at 10:03 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: > >> And be sure to read >> >> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mind-bogglingly-greedy-and-evil-license-agreement/4360?tag=content;siu-container >> >> for which there's a link on the page shown below, but you don't want >> to miss it. The Apple contract just blows one's mind. >> >> Bruce >> >> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Bruce Sherwood >> <[hidden email]> wrote: >>> See >>> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/why-the-apple-textbook-program-will-never-work/6526. >>> A sample: "My colleague Ed Bott has done a thorough job tearing apart >>> the Apple licensing agreements and technical details that turn the >>> iBooks textbook program into a “mind-bogglingly greedy and evil >>> license agreement”." >>> >>> I had the same reaction when I saw the Apple terms announced some weeks >>> ago. >>> >>> Bruce >>> >>> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> >>> wrote: >>>> Oops, forgot: Apple is getting into text books big time .. here is their >>>> ad: >>>> http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/ >>>> >>>> They know its going to take a long time, transitioning to a new media, >>>> dealing with legal and authoring issues. They are working on an IDE for >>>> books, so to speak .. software that helps create the new books, with >>>> interactive media etc. They also want to take readers way beyond the >>>> current relatively static ebooks. Hard to say if they succeed, but they >>>> have worked quite a bit with schools, and iTunesU is quite successful. >>>> >>>> -- Owen >>>> >>>> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 8:59 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> How do we deal with fair author protection? Certainly the current >>>>> business model doesn't work. As prices soar, so does piracy. >>>>> >>>>> We have several authors on the list. Have you insights? >>>>> >>>>> -- Owen >>>>> >>>>> Just FYI: If you'd like to see the titles of the now-defunct russian >>>>> site >>>>> of 80,381 text books: http://backspaces.net/temp/all/all.txt Although >>>>> the >>>>> site is gone, my guess is that all of these are available via torrents. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> ============================================================ >>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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To truly grasp the magnitude of the problem, you have to add a couple of zeros to the numbers of books being sold. The $200 into biology book will sell tens of thousands of copies a year in the US while a high school text may sell hundreds of thousands of copies if it is adopted by states like California or Texas where textbook decisions are made by state committees. Consequently most of what we see going on is happening for less than altruistic reasons.
Since international publication rights are handled separately, what happens in your world works fine in many ways and not in others. Personally, I don't care if I get zero royalties from developing countries although since it's my intellectual property, I should have some say in the matter, which is usually not the case. Prices in developing countries are set at just high enough that students won't copy the material. So, for example, I get less than $0.10 per book from the PRC. That says a lot about related issues but that's another discussion. More of a problem is that smaller developing countries usually have no access to recent technical books in any form. since they can't negotiate contracts as can India and the PRC. In many ways, books for developing countries are much like what happens with the drug companies. They manipulate the system to guarantee high prices for sales in the US which lets them price lower in other countries and still make huge profits. Publishers can't get away with this any more since it's so easy to make and distribute illegal copies. Ed __________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon On Apr 19, 2012, at 11:26 AM, Sarbajit Roy wrote:
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Re: Fwd: The disappearing virtual library - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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I should have pointed out that the ebook version of our textbook is
available to students for $20 per semester (essentially rented). Though there are several suppliers, the only effective one is WebAssign, a computer homework system for which Ruth and I created a suite of questions from our textbook. I don't have good data, but my impression is that students have preferred the print book over the ebook, but it is important to note that this first attempt at an ebook doesn't have any special features such as animations or links to homework problems. WebAssign is used by many (probably most) of the institutions that have adopted our curriculum, because although it has the great failing of checking answers rather than approach, it gives instant feedback. The gold standard of homework grading is hand grading, but this isn't feasible in large courses, in practice graders aren't necessarily very good, and the delay in getting the work returned means that students often don't even study the grader's comments, which may have been written with costly effort. We have students work in groups on large complex problems, writing large on whiteboards with the method checked by a teaching assistant, as part of lab or recitation classes as a way of getting at approaches instead of answers. Bruce ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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