Dream Big.

October 22, 2006 6:47 PM

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales asks: Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license? Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it. And they do.
posted by divabat (60 comments total)

Two links to wikipedia for an FPP? Come on! I keed, I keed.
posted by I Am Not a Lobster at 6:49 PM on October 22, 2006

Some of the suggestions are "... for use on Wikipedia", others are just more general.

I can say that as much as I'd like to see works freely available I'm just as (if not more) worried about the permanent loss of certain media like music and film. Not exactly the question asked, but that's what I'd spend my money on.

It's weird that a lot of people say "textbooks" when if you think about it those are largely ephemeral. I think efforts like what MIT and a few other universities are doing to put their class material online is far more interesting and immediately useful. But I'm thinking primarily in terms of what would help non-First-Worlders.
posted by dhartung at 7:14 PM on October 22, 2006

If you had a budget of $100 million, it would probably be best to simply buy a shortening of copyright law through the U.S. Congress. You could donate $200,000 to each and every U.S. congressman, on the sole condition that they vote for your proposed law. Cut copyright law to a reasonable five years, and suddenly lots and lots of stuff is available.
posted by jellicle at 7:15 PM on October 22, 2006

Wikipedia? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, of course. Not the movie.
posted by rolypolyman at 7:19 PM on October 22, 2006

i like this guy's suggestions: Idea 1: Make a deal with national libraries that hold public-domain content to make it all easily available. ... Pay the Library of Congress $5,000,000 to have all of these images, recordings, etc. uploaded in high-res format. Do the some with other major national libraries.
Idea 2: Buy the rights to old, specialized encyclopedias which are not yet out of copyright. ...

I'd add in buying perpetual server and storage space for all things made available in all forms of electronic media--like a permanent home archive open to everyone on Earth for everything now available but scattered, and those things purchased with this money, as well as those things that each year fall out of copyright. (and/or some kind of trust fund that would invest so that perpetual upkeep, maintenance, availability and server space would be available for decades if not centuries--Call it the Alexandria fund or something).
posted by amberglow at 7:36 PM on October 22, 2006

I'd second the Hitchhiker's Guide, but am not sure how DNA's estate and family interests would take that.

That's essentially the deal, for me. If the copyright or patent of something is owned by blood, in my opinion it should be fifty years after the lifetime of the person who invented it or wrote it or whatever. This would mean if you invent something, and don't sell it off prematurely, and you're successful with it, you guarantee properity for you and your children, but not for faceless stockholders and a board of directors.

If it's corporate interests, copyright law should be five years with an option to renew, and said corporate interest would have to be willing and able to actively defend their copyright in both court and the market place. Actively use it. You couldn't just lock something up in a vault for twenty years (Disney) and retain the copyright on it. If you're not gonna use it, it should be made available to those who can.

Blood is thicker than corporate buldada.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:37 PM on October 22, 2006

I would like to have everything, every single thing, cataloged in the US Library of Congress available for free over the internets. OK, I will settle for every single thing which was added more than 15 years ago.
posted by caddis at 7:43 PM on October 22, 2006

-- The Oxford English Dictionary (it should be available to everyone, but instead it's really expensive)

-- The entire archive of the NY Times

-- Really good (both acoustically and artistically) performances of major classical works (Beethoven and Mozart symphonies, etc.)

-- The current Encyclopedia Britannica

-- The archived recordings of BBC radio
posted by grumblebee at 7:57 PM on October 22, 2006 [5 favorites]

I'd use it to hack U.S. copyright law by creating an endowment to fund the creation of new works. At 5%, that's $5 million a year that could be spent funding new books, music, documentaries, etc. that Wikimedia (or whoever) would own the copyright to. Wikimedia could then license those works to regular publishing companies for limited lengths of time, say 5 years, and either plow the proceeds back into the endowment or use them to fund the creation of new works. Atter that, Wikimedia would release the works under the GFDL or Creative Commons non-commercial or whatever. If licensing, on average, earned enough to pay for the creation of the original work, the amount of money available to fund new content would double each year (from an initial value of $5 million!). It's viral. Net result: a huge increase in the amount of recent content available under free licenses.
posted by gsteff at 8:01 PM on October 22, 2006 [3 favorites]

Well, here is a scam that affects my father since he runs a church musical ensemble: Sheet music. The actual composition for a lot of classical music is public domain, but the sheet music is not.

While we are on the topic of music, what kinds of early 20th century drama and music can be brought into the public domain? How about some pre-Hollywood Mae West or Sophie Tucker?

Do a troll through the early movie industry and make an offer on everything that is now out of print. For that matter, what kinds of deals can be made on out-of-print magazine titles.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:13 PM on October 22, 2006

jellicle writes "If you had a budget of $100 million, it would probably be best to simply buy a shortening of copyright law through the U.S. Congress."

Absolutely. It's an interesting challenge, though -- I was about to argue that it should go to lobbying or conversion costs and not for paying fees to acquire something that "should already be free." Of course, before copyrighted works, our democratic system should already be free as well!
posted by VulcanMike at 8:18 PM on October 22, 2006

[Nerd On]

All the great old Avalon Hill game copyrights Hasbro now owns, but that they feel are too unprofitable for a large toy company to produce, and too valuabe to liscnece to the smaller game companies.

[Nerd Off]
posted by Jezztek at 8:30 PM on October 22, 2006

Wow, that's what happens when I post after I've been drinking, and forget to hit spellcheck...
posted by Jezztek at 8:31 PM on October 22, 2006

You folks are thinking pretty big. Bear in mind that the going rate for publishing rights - not sheet music rights, just publishing rights to the recordings of a mere 12 hours of music was $47.5 million in 1985. That's $83 million in 2005 dollars.

It's arguably not even very good music.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:32 PM on October 22, 2006

I'd love to see a lot of old news footage from around here.

This is an excellent start, but there's still those blasted copyright issues in the way.
posted by drstein at 8:44 PM on October 22, 2006

You know, that without the copyright you won't see a lot of this stuff ever. It's a trade. The dark forces have been tilting the balance of this trade as of late (Steamboat Willie should have been public domain a few decades ago) but the fundamental idea, embraced in the Constitution, is still sound.
posted by caddis at 9:02 PM on October 22, 2006

Steamboat freakin' Willie.

What a complete and utter albatross around the neck of the copyright liberation movement.

Ask people if stuff written fifty years ago should be freely available, and you'll probably get a good deal of support. Ask if Mickey should be public domain, and you won't.

Stop making excuses, stop pretending that the line between Copyright and Trademark matters here, and stop letting the few things that are still in clearly active trade hold up the universe of ideas that is being locked away behind the need to keep Mickey safe.

If Disney didn't need to do this to protect Mickey, they'd be on our side (since they make their living recycling old tales).
posted by effugas at 9:21 PM on October 22, 2006

All I see is "100 MILLION TACOS" when I visit the article. Gotta love Wikipedia.
posted by bhouston at 9:36 PM on October 22, 2006

I would buy the President of the United States and use him as my sockpuppet to fix everything that's wrong with intellectual property laws.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:41 PM on October 22, 2006

Everything grumblebee suggested. I like Jezztek way of thinking, and jellicle's idea has merit, but if I had the cash, I'd be hiring hit men to deal with the lobbyists, so that really wouldn't be an issue.

Basically I would look for the nerd's Nirvana: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Red Dwarf, Good Omens, the complete works of Chris Moore, Harrison, Asimov, Clarke, and P.K. Dick. (and while I hate to admit it; Stephen King and Clive Barker). And if they are not already freely available, Lovecraft and Vern. These are the authors that shaped my life. I would like to think that they could affect others in a positive way as well.

Though, the more I think about it, I like dhartung's concept of getting the MIT classes in the clear.
posted by quin at 10:41 PM on October 22, 2006

Obviously textbooks. The average college student spends thousands on them directly and the average taxpayer is getting ripped off. You would only need a few hundred of them and a wiki method to update them by professors who use them. It would allow anyone in the world to access them too, allowing self-education on a scale unheard of. California spends around 500 million per year on them alone.
posted by Brian B. at 11:08 PM on October 22, 2006

I suspect that the mystery funder's name is either Sergey or Larry.
posted by gsteff at 11:19 PM on October 22, 2006

Service manuals for everything.

Raw performance data for everything, like failure rates for cars, appliances, pharmaceuticals, whatever. It would require repair techs/doctors/whoever to sign on to collect the data, but it would be fantastic.
posted by Chuckles at 11:40 PM on October 22, 2006

It's really sad that the majority of these suggestions are "nerd nirvana" shit. Shit that doesn't fucking matter one whit. The rights to THHGTTG are not what really needs to be in the public domain.

It's even more sad that most of the stuff they'd want to buy the rights to would quickly swallow that $100 mil. budget. I don't think they should be giving that money to line the pockets of the people that were restricting access in the first place. It should go to lobbying, advocacy, sponsorship of creation, and acquisition through fair use.
posted by blasdelf at 11:40 PM on October 22, 2006

In the US you have that wonderful thing where works of the United States Government are public domain by definition. So, in commonwealth countries, stuff like weather data and maps cost a lot of money. Another kind of raw data that should be free.
posted by Chuckles at 11:45 PM on October 22, 2006

I heartily second Brian B. on textbooks, though I'd be a bit worried about wikifying them; if they've reached the sort of "classic" status that gets them bought out, they're probably good enough to stand on their own.

I might fund translation projects, too--Spanish, French, Russian, and Arabic would open the textbooks up to most of Central & South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
posted by Upton O'Good at 11:54 PM on October 22, 2006

Not one damn thing! Paying these f*ckers will only lengthen copyrights!

jellicle has the right idea, spend all the money eliminating long copyrights laws.

Your 100 million will go further in Europe if you choose the countries wisely: France is a no brainer, as is some selection of small countries, like Sweden, but Germany might be sticky since their publishing companies are powerful. Otoh, the Brits can't be trusted to make a pro-population anti-corperation law.

I'd also loby for mandatory source code publication for ANY copyright on software. You think MS would publish the source if half the E.U. required it?
posted by jeffburdges at 2:15 AM on October 23, 2006

Why buy old textbooks?

Encyclopedia articles are usually written by influential professors at major research universities. Textbooks are usually written by professors at small teaching colleges. So wikipedians can much more easily repalce the textbook authors.

Imho, wikibooks major problem is the "one size fits all" approach of the MediaWiki software. Wikibooks needs a couple killer features, ideally patented.

One such feature would be paying "institution/instructor accounts" which allow customized forks, along with flow control making such forks eaiser. Such accounts could create customized versions for their own students (still using the foundations hosting service). Wikignomes could merge their changes back into the main fork, often as special configurations.

Departments always fight over various details in textbooks so customizability might be a killer app.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:24 AM on October 23, 2006

re: textbooks

As I understand it, professors and/or schools often choose textbooks based on the accompanying perks, much like doctors prescribing one brand over another.. A copyleft textbook library could conceivably benefit 3rd worlders, if they actually were adopting this technology, but it's not going to save the typical poor 'western' student any money.
posted by unmake at 3:37 AM on October 23, 2006

The music of Beatles and Nirvana.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:41 AM on October 23, 2006

The complete Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts -- basically every major show on and off Broadway since 1970. This is a cultural treasure and should be open to everyone. Aside from that, probably open it up for any films that filmmakers would be willing to part with.
posted by graymouser at 4:02 AM on October 23, 2006

Lobbying. Why target certain works when you can fix the whole system?
posted by Mick at 4:39 AM on October 23, 2006

It's really sad that the majority of these suggestions are "nerd nirvana" shit.

Yeah, it was depressing as I scrolled down that interminable list and saw nothing but images and reference works and the like. Of course, when I then went to the first link and looked at Wales' actual message, I found that he said:

Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives?

...so he got it pointed in that direction. But the good folks of MeFi are in the same groove. Fuck literature, we want pop music and politics.

It's arguably not even very good music.

I assume by "arguable" you mean "capable of being argued by someone with no musical taste."
posted by languagehat at 5:33 AM on October 23, 2006

Textbooks are overly expensive because they're constantly updated; this project can't do anything about that except in a few instances where innovation is very slow. Much better to figure out all the -other- books that a large, public university is assigning over the course of two or three years, and purchase the rights to those.
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:00 AM on October 23, 2006

Ps- Does anyone honestly think that wikipedia can win a battle against Disney and the Big Pharma over intellectual property? $100 million is chump change to these people.
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:03 AM on October 23, 2006

A lot of want people want to bee free are things that people on the whole don't want or can get inexpensively anyway.

The pop music movies stuff is a waste because if it's recent and in demand, $100 million isn't enough for a substantial number of them, and if they are inexpensive, its because no one wants to see them.


Better to spend the money on an ongoing project to create a free dictionary, reference encyclopedia, textbooks, etc as reputable as established names like oxford or britannica that will be updated regularly but which will be freely available on the net for everyone and at a nominal price=marginal cost in hardback.
posted by Pastabagel at 8:05 AM on October 23, 2006

OCR capture of old public records would be a worthy venture.
posted by StarForce5 at 8:08 AM on October 23, 2006

anotherpanacea - texbooks are expensive because they are updated for stupid things like pictures and layouts, etc. The history of the world up to WW2 is not being updated. There's not a lot that's new in algebra.
posted by Pastabagel at 8:15 AM on October 23, 2006

jellicle has the right idea, spend all the money eliminating long copyrights laws.

I'll take the contrary view here. Why is this an important goal? What difference does it make if the copyright to Porky Pig or The Sun Also Rises won't expire until 2525 or whenever? You can buy a copy of every porky pig cartoon for less than $30, and the sun also rises is probably less than $7. This is not a lot of money, and don't forget that there are free legal ways to get these things (cable TV and libraries).

It's a pretty screwed up society where we as individuals value modern works of art at $0 (which is what you mean when you want to eliminate copyright), but we value a Big Mac or a Starbucks Latte at $4.
posted by Pastabagel at 8:25 AM on October 23, 2006

What difference does it make if the copyright to Porky Pig or The Sun Also Rises won't expire until 2525

None at all. That simply misunderstands the argument completely.

If copyright terms were reasonable, everything would be available in the public domain sooner. The vast majority of copyrighted works are completely out of print within 20 years (maybe even 5 years, but I don't want to quibble).
posted by Chuckles at 8:42 AM on October 23, 2006

If copyright terms were reasonable, everything would be available in the public domain sooner.

But why is this important? The only value in the public domain is in using the work to create a derivative work. That's the one thing of any consequence that you can do with a public domain work that you can't do with a copyrighted work.

But from a policy standpoint, is this really what we want? Isn't it better to encourage artists to create new original works?
posted by Pastabagel at 8:55 AM on October 23, 2006

The vast majority of copyrighted works are completely out of print within 20 years (maybe even 5 years, but I don't want to quibble).
posted by Chuckles at 11:42 AM EST on October 23
[+]
[!]

Also, this ignores the reality. The reason they are out of print is that they are not selling - these are the books and works in the long end of the tail. If the work falls into the public domain, that won't encourage anyone to publish the work, because there isn't any money to be made there.

It may make it possible for someone to put it on the internet I guess, but the policy issue to balance is whether the benefits of making the long end of the tail available outweight the benefits of extracting maximum value (tax revenue and encouraging creativity) from the short, high end of the tail.
posted by Pastabagel at 9:00 AM on October 23, 2006

It means the works are predicted to be unable to be unprofitable within the framework of their business model and their expected return on investment. Nothing more. Not exactly the same as "nobody wants them".

In fact, walk to your local bookstore and you will see lots of public domain works for sale. The companies, and divisions of companies, that sell public domain books are completely separate from the ones that market and sell new releases. This changes the cost structure, and suddenly something that had fallen out of the economy is viable again.

In addition to that, you are assuming that what is interesting to people today will be the same as what will be in the future. The extraordinarily long term of copyright protection that currently exists is causing lots of creative works to be lost completely, and who knows what might have been discovered in those works - Great Library of Alexandria, and all that.

Besides, we aren't just talking about fiction for consumers here. As you say, derivative works. Also, research. Also, non-fiction. Look at the Eyes on the Prize problem.. I often see documentaries were they are unable to attain rights to footage of certain key historical events. In some cases, it is because the footage is too expensive, but in many cases, it is because the company that owns the work wants it to go down the memory hole.. One specific example of this is US network television coverage of the Vietnam war - censored all to hell.
posted by Chuckles at 9:19 AM on October 23, 2006

the policy issue to balance is whether the benefits of making the long end of the tail available outweight the benefits of extracting maximum value (tax revenue and encouraging creativity) from the short, high end of the tail.

More or less, but the catch, from an economic perspective, is that all the benefits from encouraging new works come well into the future, while many of the benefits of making old works available come now. Thus discounting makes the present value of reducing copyright terms for existing works likely to be much larger than the present value of future benefits from author incentives. Five nobel winners explain that here.

More generally, copyright restrictions of any form serve only to transfer wealth from consumers to producers in the short run, it's a wash in terms of economic efficiency. The potential gains come from the long term incentive effect, but there's diminishing marginal incentive for every additional dollar of producer surplus you provide, while the effect on consumer surplus is spread out over so many people that it's harm is basically linear. This strongly suggests that the socially efficient balance will emphasize consumers interests (though I can't immediately suggest what that means quantitatively).
posted by gsteff at 9:20 AM on October 23, 2006

The only value in the public domain is in using the work to create a derivative work.

Nope. Giving people shit for free is an incredible social benefit.
posted by gsteff at 9:21 AM on October 23, 2006

If the work falls into the public domain, that won't encourage anyone to publish the work, because there isn't any money to be made there.

But companies are still more than happy to control the rights of works they don't publish and they'd be contacting their lawyers pretty quickly if any one made a derivative work of something that they no longer published.

One of the problems is that the system of fair use is broken because it's expensive to defend in practice, so most people can't. This is an area where copyright is broken.

But from a policy standpoint, is this really what we want? Isn't it better to encourage artists to create new original works?

There's very little that's completely new. I like the section in Kembrew McLeod's Freedom of Expression
(free download) where he points out that the cost of samples stifled creativity in hip hop by making it so expensive to use multiple tiny samples that albums like 3 Feet High and Rising and It Takes a Nation of Millions would be financially untenable today and unimaginative cheaper sampling is the norm. Hip Hop wouldn't be what it is today if it hadn't been built on the back of works that would be impossible to make now. What other new works/forms are being strangled by overzealous copyright? Shakespeare, with his wholesale lifting of plots would have real problems writing in this day and age.

A strong public domain, constantly renewed by the use of a reasonable (and non-extendable) term of copyright, means more creativity not less.
posted by drill_here_fore_seismics at 9:31 AM on October 23, 2006

To clarify my point about consumer and producer surplus... in the simple model I described, you'd want a buttload of copyright restrictions, because their short-term effect on economic efficiency is zero, as described, and the long term effect is positive (increasingly small, but positive). The reason you'd want to restrict them is because they also increase the cost of creating new works, because copyright makes derivative works more expensive. This is assuming that you want to maximize economic efficiency. If you instead think society should maximize consumer surplus, as many economists do, then you'd want keep a lid on copyright restrictions even without the effect on derivitive works. I'm taking most of this from a paper Posner wrote in the laste 70s.
posted by gsteff at 9:40 AM on October 23, 2006

s/laste/late
posted by gsteff at 9:40 AM on October 23, 2006

It means the works are predicted to be unable to be unprofitable

Err.. Ya! That's exactly what I meant!

(and non-extendable) term of copyright

Non-extendable in one sense, sure. I actually think the founders copyright system makes a lot of sense. If you choose to extend the copyright, by requesting that the item be extended on that specific work, then 5-20 more years in addition to the orignal 5-20 years (in the founders case specifically, it is 14 + 14). With so much automation, you would have to add a small cost to the extension request process..
posted by Chuckles at 9:41 AM on October 23, 2006

Textbooks are usually written by professors at small teaching colleges. So wikipedians can much more easily repalce the textbook authors.

The problem with a grassroots wiki are that they don't provide raw information well in an educational context, which is by definition in the expert realm, and in combination with teaching skills. They need a start. I can attest that there are textbooks out there sitting on thousands of collaborator's computers in infinished form and in rejected or lapsed forms. They can be purchased by the pound at this point and surrendered to the wiki process, but the wiki process is dangerous in its own way, like ants on the jungle floor. There needs to be editor-in-chief's on the textbook side.

The wiki process has not yet evolved to the point of getting authors to surrender their expertise for a minimum price. It's worth more to them to keep it.
posted by Brian B. at 9:43 AM on October 23, 2006

texbooks are expensive because they are updated for stupid things like pictures and layouts, etc. The history of the world up to WW2 is not being updated. There's not a lot that's new in algebra.

I understand the development cycle of textbooks all too well Pastabagel. I'd quibble whether the history of WWII, for instance, is understood the same way today as it was fifty years ago, when it was recent... but I don't think that's your point. You're probably arguing that the scholarship of Joan of Arc hasn't changed in meaningful ways. (This is also false, by the way: see Karen Sullivan's The Interrogation of Joan of Arc.) Our understanding of mathematics has changed a bit too, but again, the real issue is the trifling, year-to-year changes that publishers use to keep used textbooks off the market.

These minor updates are part of a complicity between professors and publishers. Where the changes don't matter (as with ancient history and settled mathematics) there's no reason for us to assign the newest, most modern textbook... yet we do anyway, to our shame. Sometimes we prefer newer texts because the language is modern and easier for students to understand, and sometimes we assign the texts we know, or the ones written by our buddies. This is precisely why we don't need to buy those textbooks out of copyright: there are already great alternatives in the public domain. It's a different matter to convince teachers to assign them. In any case, it would be a waste of money to buy textbooks. Better to devote the money to good translations of primary sources, where that's germane, and to free, original textbooks on ten thousand different topics where it's not. (I'd love to see wiki put Kluwer out of business. I hate those guys: $60 for 90 pages of Husserl?)
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:47 AM on October 23, 2006

Non-extendable in one sense

To clarify, I meant non-extendable to prevent what happens now, where the big copyright holders constantly get the term of copyright extended so that in effect nothing enters the public domain, so I think I'm agreeing with your usage. Certainly the founder's length of copyright seems about right to me.

It's ironic that as culture moves faster and faster copyright terms are getting longer and longer.
posted by drill_here_fore_seismics at 9:54 AM on October 23, 2006

Pastabagel: But why is this important? The only value in the public domain is in using the work to create a derivative work. That's the one thing of any consequence that you can do with a public domain work that you can't do with a copyrighted work.

In contrast, I would argue such derivative works (including stage performances) are often important for creation and development of new works, as well as historic continuity. After all Hamlet, Macbeth, la Boheme and Marriage of Figaro are all derivative of older works, and have been used for the basis of of modern reinterpreted works. (These are also works that are often performed today.)

In addition, the public domain is important for educational and historic purposes as well.

But from a policy standpoint, is this really what we want? Isn't it better to encourage artists to create new original works?

I don't see how the two goals are competitive with each other.

Also, this ignores the reality. The reason they are out of print is that they are not selling - these are the books and works in the long end of the tail. If the work falls into the public domain, that won't encourage anyone to publish the work, because there isn't any money to be made there.

This assumes that the only method by which works are distributed/used depends on volume sales. After all, great paintings and artifacts are not reproduced in mass quantities and redistributed. They are preserved and archived in museums that solicit private and public funds for their maintenance and display.

There are non-profit organization models and business models that work well for the needs of a small volume of persons interested in works of historic significance.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:33 AM on October 23, 2006

anotherpanacea - my point was more that knowledge of Joan of Arc to the extent that a highschooler needs to know it hasn't changed all that much, certainly not enough from year to year to merit a new book. I think we're talking cross-purposes. I'm talking textbooks for k-12, you seem to be talking about high school, college and beyond.

With respect to copyright - are we arguing about making it longer, or about shortening it considerably? I don't think it should be made any longer, nor do I think it needed to be extended in 99 or whenver they did it last (the sonny bono extension). I do not think anyone is better off if the term is shortened considerably, however. The brief gsteff cited is more about the negligible or even negative benefits of the additional time in the extension vs the costs, which I don't disagree with.
posted by Pastabagel at 10:37 AM on October 23, 2006

Porn. A hundred million dollars worth of porn.

http://www.wikiporn.org/
posted by XMLicious at 10:38 AM on October 23, 2006

my point was more that knowledge of Joan of Arc to the extent that a highschooler needs to know it hasn't changed all that much, certainly not enough from year to year to merit a new book.

While my experience with K-12 books is limited to my own education and my partner's work in Harlem K-6, I don't think the same revision history is at issue. Those texts change, but they are purchased much less frequently because of institutional re-use. As I recall, a textbook stays in circulation until a decade of Sesame Street backpacks has destroyed it. A wiki version of a second-grade textbook would only help if each child also had a laptop... and I think our money might be better spent funding these schools individually than trying to change the landscape of K-12 instructional texts.

Moreover, especially in impoverished communities, the desire to get some pedagogical edge through the latest methods and organizational strategies seems to outweigh the marginal cost of copyrighted materials. There, the short end of the tail is where all the value is to be found: teaching to the newest test, or using the newest insights from cognitive psychology and studies of early human development.... If we know anything, it's that we're still not satisfied with the old techniques. The material may be the same, but there's continual innovation in best practices of inculcating it. That's ignoring the money that some districts spend on ideologically specific textbooks, like my alma mater Dover: how much did they spend on legal fees and textbook development for their stupid 'intelligent design'? Last time I checked, the bible is in the public domain.... :-(
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:28 AM on October 23, 2006

Last time I checked, the bible is in the public domain.... :-(
posted by anotherpanacea at 2:28 PM EST on October 23

Check again.
posted by Pastabagel at 12:27 PM on October 23, 2006

Pastabagel, You are dead wrong. Copyright limits the method of distribution by definition, and often prevents availabilirty outright.

And we also don't like popular culture being under pseudo-monopoly control.. better off knocking down those monopolies & letting new institutions develop.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:49 PM on October 23, 2006

How about buying Atari? They are cheap and desperate, and they have a huge treasure of valuable litte games like pacman, and stuff. We could even release crappy games based on the Matrix franchise!
posted by darkripper at 2:56 PM on October 23, 2006

Check again.

This is good example of what I'm recommending: the King James version, first published in 1611, is certainly in the public domain. But the newer, more accessible versions (the New International Version and its derivatives) are not. While I wouldn't recommend purchasing these texts in particular, in general it's valuable to get good, contemporary translations of canonical texts into the public domain more quickly. Everyone benefits, just as they do when the most recent pharmaceuticals become available in generic form: language mutates just like pathogens... our cultural heritage needs to evolve to keep up.
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:17 PM on October 23, 2006