Timwi wrote:
This is assuming that the larger part of the cost
of textbooks is
copyright licenses. I would imagine that it is instead the production
costs of actual books, and obviously free content won't help that.
I agree that it would be very helpful to us to have a better
understanding of the tradeoffs but I also wanted to point out that it's
a bit more complex than just copyright license + cost of production here.
Our work is free-as-in-beer but also free-as-in-speech. So the point is
not _just_ that a potential producer of paper texts saves on the cost of
copyright licensing but also....
1. They don't need to get permission from anyone at all, they can just
get started in any small and tiny way they see fit (or in any large and
mass-produced way they see fit)
2. There can be many competitors in a market ecosystem of provision of
content, rather than a single licensee attempting to capture some
monopoly rents
I think that we are already well on the way to dealing with the
copyright issues. The free-as-in-speech will probably need to be dealt
with one jurisdiction at a time.
To-day's off-the-shelf Microsoft product does not come with the huge
array of manuals that would have come with its ten-year old
counterpart. Instead we need to make do with electronic files that are
nowhere near as useful as a book that you can hold in your hand and leaf
through. Reducing production costs has a clear effect on the Microsoft
bottom line.
Whether we or a downstream user converts the material to a paper product
the production costs will always be there. Simply clarifying
permissions is still a long way from getting the material to those who
need it most. Any producer will at least want to see its costs covered.
Ec