Wikipedia's $100 Million Dream 560
An anonymous reader writes "Jimmy Wales recently asked the Wikipedia community to suggest useful, 'works that could in theory be purchased and freed' assuming a 'budget of $100 million to purchase
copyrights.' He went on to say that he has spoken with a person 'who is potentially in a position to make this happen.' Ideas are being collected at the meta-wiki. Some early suggestions include, satellite imagery, textbooks, scientific journals and photo archives." So how about it? What works would you like to see wikified?
The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as educational works go, I'm all for the textbooks. Grade school & high school, of course. But what I'd really like to see is the "Canonical works" of each field. I'm talking about the standard books that are used to teach each major in the United States. They could do a survey of books and then attempt to contact the authors & publishers to work a deal. Some titles I've seen on everyone's shelves are, of course, the Donald Knuth [amazon.com] series and this list [amazon.com] has a lot of standards I recognize just by the covers.
The most important thing for them to do would to pay lawyers and literature experts to scan the internet for potential authors willing to put out books for free. I've seen some classic computer science books go up like this and I'm sure that if Wikipedia asked for permission to host, they would be able to with mild restrictions. Like the author having the final say on what is kept and removed from the Wiki page. I mean, look at O'Reilly's OpenBook Project [oreilly.com], don't you think they would allow Wikipedia to host that for a tiny one time fee? I'd bet that sales would increase if they even put a link to buy the book. I've heard a lot of authors argue for their books to be put online so that people will feel compelled to buy a hardcopy. Wasn't that the point of Google's textbook preview search?
Other people they could target is an open invitation to any estates that own the rights of long dead authors to have their ancestor's works published. Dr. Suess, anyone? I mean, how do you license a loved one's works and continually soak up money for them? To me, the work of Disney in this respect is just plain rotten and ruined some good guidelines to release works to the public domain.
I don't know, I just think that they should spend money over a period of time searching for permission to host books for free or nearly free. I have hope that this is done very very well and augments the OLPC project nicely.
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Informative)
A Chilton Wiki? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm, computer science is not out of date every year. The seminal books in CS are all over a decade old. Some are close to 20 or 30 years (a few of these have new editions, but those are jsut to make money. Having compared the two versions of several, nothing has changed but problems, grammar tweaks, and page numbers). Programming languages change, but the basics of programming (functions, boolean logic, loops, recursion, functions) remain the same. OSes change, but the ideas they deal with (synchronization, scheduling, semaphores, mutexes, file system access, etc) remain the same. Discrete math is the same it was 2 decades ago, we just know a few more things. Same for pretty much every other field of CS I can think of. In reality, there's very few new ideas or concepts in CS- most of the big new ideas are old ideas recycled, because changes in how we do use computers or changes in hardware speeds have made them viable again. Sure, APIs will change, but if your CS program is teaching APIs instead of concepts you need to *RUN* away from that program.
More than just the freshman stuff. Maxwells laws haven't changed, and advanced courses on EM are 3rd year courses for most EEs. Neither has the workings of semiconductors on a quantum mechanical level, and thats a 3rd/4th year course for EEs. Sure, we've learned more and gained a few new fields, but its mainly tweaks on old theories. I'm a bit above my head in knowing whats changed for a 4th year physics student, but I know that from what I learned in my EE and CS courses, we could have had 30 year old books for the EE and 20 for the CS with no loss of information. Now graduate level would need more frequent updates, but a good chunk of grad level learning isn't text books- its reading articles and journals. Its not that you never need to review the books and see if new stuff needs adding, but once a decade or so is more than sufficient. Once a year is just wasteful.
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Not really... Yes, academic books are constant being revised, but the information is generally VERY static. The publishers like to reorder chapters, question, etc so that poor university students like me have to purchase "new" versions of th
Whose Textbooks and Repair manuals? (Score:4, Insightful)
Text books, for instance. Where countries have radically different curriculum at different years, and text books do change from year to year, and from location to location (economics, accounting, history, politics, botany, language, English, geography, medicine, pharmaceuticals, law, for example) ALL vary from year to year and from country to country.
Reminds me of the story of the very eminent economist who went back to his alma mater for a visit, and saw the current examination papers.
"Why, these are the self same questions I had to answer when I was here!" he exclaimed.
"Yes", replied the Dean, "But the answers are completely different!"
Repair manuals is another area where geographic and periodic differences would render anything of this nature very transient.
What is the average life of a model of car, or a model of washing machine, for instance. Not very long, if the marketers have any say about it. And not very geographically wide spread, either. In America, do you know what a 2006 Monaro, or Statesman, or even Falcon even look like? No, most of you, except for the car freaks probably say "No", and I'd say the same about your makes and models, too, of course.
Gutenberg, atlases, ancient literature and history, and just aboiut any material that doesn't impact on our daily lives, with multiple interpretations would be fine for this, but manuals, text books, histories - only if you want to kill Wikpaedia off as an internationally reputable repository of information.
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Insightful)
Homer, Virgil, Euripides, Sun Tzu, Chaucer-- yeah, I think a few of those might be off copyright already.
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:4, Interesting)
I would guess each year of "copyrighted" works from 1920's on holds a value in excess of $100 Million to society. It is time society got its purchase back (we paid for those copyrights to be enforced for over half a century). Getting the law changed to stop extending copyrights (unconstitutionally) would be a very good return on a $100 million investment.
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Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:4, Insightful)
Then do yourself a favour if you're such a moderate, sensible Muslim - do something, or at least pretend to do something about the crazies who give you a bad name. Then we'll talk.
Then do yourself a favour if you're such a moderate, sensible white person - do something, or at least pretend to do something about the crazies who give you a bad name. Then we'll talk.
Then do yourself a favour if you're such a moderate, sensible Republican - do something, or at least pretend to do something about the crazies who give you a bad name. Then we'll talk.
Why is it that Christianity gets singled out? I myself have personally protested Landover Baptist's extreme (and often cannonically incorrect) views. Can we talk now? I'm not sure what else you want me, as a normal, everyday Christian person to do. As long as they're in America, they have as much right to say that "God hates queers" as the KKK does to say "We hate niggers" or the talk radioheads have to say "Democratz = teh evilz" or any other religion or ideology has to preach anything else under the law.
I don't have to like that the Crusades killed millions for the sake of misguided politics under the guise of religion. Nor do I have to like that Landover Baptist protests the funerals of murdered Amish schoolgirls. But neither of them has anything to do with me, any more than GW Bush's foriegn policy has to do with any average Joe American.
I honestly don't see where the blanket Christian hatred comes from, while people preach at us to not judge Muslims (as an example) by the actions of a relatively few radical minority.
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Informative)
The translations aren't. For out-of-copyright versions, you still have to go back to versions published a century ago, where the translations are uniformly full of "thou"s and "thee"s and written in bad verse more incomprehensible than the original languages. In fact even modern critical editions of the texts in their original languages are under copyright.
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Insightful)
Something else to go with these "books" would be high quality lectures by some of the best lecturers in respective field.
Free "books" and lectures would allow anyone anywhere, that just have access to the internet, to learn whatever he/she want.
(Another wish would be to "liberate" all papers ever written and put those on a nice website)
Copyright clearing-house online... (Score:5, Insightful)
However..... if a copyright holder is made an offer for a given piece ($1,000, $10,000, whatever) - a very straightfoward commercial decision can be made; One free of copyright religion and politics. "Is the future returns on the copyright of this piece worth less than the offer."
Someone who has a copyrighted item earning $12.50 per year might easily be swayed to release it into the public domain for $200. Almost *nothing* under copyright is actually earning any real money, and thefore may be liberated with a very modest purse.
Perhaps if there was a simple online process in place, individuals could seach for their items of choice, pay up and free them.
Most people that have the cash and some inclination simply don't have the time. If those who have the time could make this process trivial, everyone could win.
Now please excuse me - I have to RTFA
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Here here! I'm sick and tired of seeing editions 7 through 15 of the same calculus book, where the only "improvement" are the renumbering of the problems in a section, and maybe a few new ones. This subject matter is so standardized by now that
Penguin Classics are already free from copyright (Score:3, Informative)
Money over time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, $100 Million is a vast amount of wealth, which can be made more powerful if spent over time, as I assume any donor would require. I assume we are not looking for a one-time binge of purchases. The idea of spreading out acquisitions over time would prevent "bidding up the market". Philanthropic gestures can be very shrewd. "Free" money needn't be "easy-come-easy-go". If this idea catches on, a popular trust can attract more donations (so d
Re:The Penguin Classics Library (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an old rule of thumb that a classic has to be re-translated and re-introduced in every generation to remain inviting and accesible to the student and general reader. Preserving the original texts is a trival problem in comparison.
If you know Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare only as assigned English reading you'll recognize the truth of this.
Dr. Suess, anyone? I mean, how do you license a loved one's works and continually soak up money for them? To me, the work of Disney in this respect is just plain rotten and ruined some good guidelines to release works to the public domain.
The truths about Disney that the Geek ignores is that the Disney archives remain intact and the Disney product remains accessible and to affordable. You want Bambi in pristine digital restoration? You'll find it at your corner drugstore selling for under $20.
Bambi was filmed in three-strip technicolor. The matte paintings on glass survive. The pencil tests survive. Steamboat Willie was distributed on unstable nitrate stock with synchronized sound on phonographic disks. Conservation costs money. Restoration costs money.
The skills required are rare and demanding.
But you don't need Big Daddy Warbucks to "rescue" Mickey Mouse. The Mouse is still on stage.
How about the original Mickey Mouse cartoon? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Book one. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how many people might get drawn into reading sequels if the first book in a series or trilogy were made available for free?
Well (Score:5, Funny)
Use the money to generate new works (Score:5, Insightful)
What a waste! Buy an existing base. (Score:5, Interesting)
$100 million not enough for most popular textbooks (Score:5, Insightful)
3,860,567 = Number of 20 year olds (2000 census rough estimate based on 1/5th of 20-24 year olds)
27% = Percent of population over 25 with a bachelor's degree (2000 census)
25% = Percent of students taking the most popular/useful classes (estimate)
50% = Percent of these students using the most popular textbook (estimate)
5 = Years a textbook edition remains in print (estimate)
6% = Risk free rate of return (estimate)
$100 = Average textbook price (estimate)
20% = McGraw hill net margin (per www.fool.com)
The textbook company would sell 131,259 textbooks per year, for a net profit of $2,625,186 annually. Given the 5 year life span and 6% risk free rate, the textbook company would be willing to sell a textbook with the above expected sales for no less than $11 million. This means we could purchase roughly 9 of the most popular textbooks for $100 million. May be off by a fair margin, but it's clearly not going to be near 100 textbooks. Seems like there are much better uses of the money.
Depends on the Author I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if you could find academically minded authors who'd take a relatively small payoff and the feeling that they'd done good for the world.
Re:Depends on the Author I suppose (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's pay for something new.
I'm betting most academics don't earn much over $100,000 a year. Take the $100M and pay the thousand smartest people on the planet to each spend an entire year writing about everything and anything they feel is important for the future of humanity - with the stipulation that every word they write in that year goes immediately into the public domain.
Think of the qualitative improvement in Wikipedia if we added tens of thousands of new articles by the smartest people in their fields.
Re:$100 million not enough for most popular textbo (Score:4, Interesting)
An editorial team could be drawn from the very same people who have created the products currently in use. A full, usable set could be accomplished in 18 months or less. The quickest I've seen being 12 months requiring 3 writer/editors, a designer, and a production person per grade.
n i c h o l a s [at] e d u k 8 . c o m
Re:What a waste! Buy an existing base. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What a waste! Buy an existing base. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Use the money to generate new works (Score:4, Insightful)
Why assume that anything produced under such a scheme would be any good? It makes a lot more sense to buy existing works known to be worth the money than it does to spend it commissioning work that may very well not be worth anything to anyone by the time it's finished.
Re:Use the money to generate new works (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Use the money to generate new works (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people could actually make a working windmill, water wheel or atmospheric engine to kick start any sort of failed society?
How did we mine basic ores, make good charcoal and smelt them into metal?
How did our first carts and harnesses work?
How does one craft rock by hand?
What about the basics of farming? Most people in the west now live in cities and have no clue about food production.
This information needs recording permanently.
Re:Use the money to generate new works (Score:4, Insightful)
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Common misconceptions (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Do you know how long it took us to do it the first time? The big problem of building the world isn't the technology - the problem is the shear cost of it all. It took something like 15,000 years to go from good stone tools to steam ships. That also required an increase in population from around 20 million to around 1 billion.
3) If there were a "post-apocalypse," the cost minimization strategy wouldn't be about knowing about technology, but rather establishing institutions that would enable collective effort. Same reason Africa has modern technology, but the farmers can't afford steel hoes let alone GM crops and combine harvesters.
If half of the world died, we'd have big problems. But half the coal miners, and half the geneticists and nuclear physicists, and half the politicians would likely survive. The shear numbers of these "specialists" in as large a population as we have on Earth would make the proportion of survivors roughly equal to the proportion of survivors in the general population.
Additionally, if our national product was cut in half, we'd be living like they did in the 1984. If cut into a quarter, life would regress to 1962. If to one tenth, to 1940. If to one twentieth, 1915. If to 100th, to 1872. Assuming we get back to 1872 means (in general) 1% of our population, and 1% of our capital (assuming technology benefits and lack of new job experience cancel each other out).
The worst known disease outbreak (smallpox in the Americas) killed about 95% over several centuries. Nuclear warfare between superpowers *might* be able to accomplish the same, but I personally doubt it. If both happened simultaneously and instantaneously, we'd be back to 1839. The amount of destructive effort necessary to take us back to before the Industrial Revolution is mind-bogglingly huge. Getting back to the stone-age is nigh impossible.
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Not everyone could be taught how to build or do everything in the project, but it would be a reference. How many people would be able to make a metal fork from scratch right now? (Most everyone would be using chopsticks or carved wooden forks) I can make a mold an
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Hardcopies or OLPC could bring this info to areas of the world that are not up to current technology levels. This would might help them improve life even if their technology level remains 5
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Plus you don't have to figure out how to c
Re:Use the money to generate new works (Score:4, Insightful)
Open content GIS data (Score:5, Insightful)
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Text books of course (Score:5, Insightful)
How about one book per academic subject (Score:5, Insightful)
One book per academic subject.
One for each kind of math.
One for each kind of music.
One for each kind of computer science.
One for masonry, or automotive, or other trades.
and so on...
So, someone can go to the "tutorial" section of wikipedia and learn how to do whatever they would normally need textbooks or college to learn.
Granted that you could likely only reach an ametuer level this way most of the time, it would be a great starting point for a lot of people into business and hobby.
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Core concepts do not go out of date (Score:5, Insightful)
My core computer science texts date back more than ten years. They are still perfectly relevant today. Core subjects in computer science have not changed in ages. Data structures, operating systems, networking, relational databases all go back more than two decades. And they are just as, if not more, relevant today.
The key is to acquire texts on core concepts. These are things that should hold true forever. You would not want to waste money on Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days. For things like that, someone will write up a tutorial. Instead you would acquire works on the concepts of higher-level languages, virtual machines, design patterns, etc.
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Need you ask? (Score:4, Funny)
With this funding, I believe that we may at long last be able to open-source Natalie Portman.
GIS + sat. images (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of all the nice free applications that could be built and integrated into wikipedia if we had public domain GIS data and sattelite imagery for the entire planet. I guess it will happen in my lifetime as copyrights and whatnot expire, but it would be nice if it was before my 80'th bd. (Fuck you Disney)
james bond bad guy radar (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a hard time finding additional imagery after teraserver sold out. (to MS iirc?) I would like to have even been able to order it, but USGS charges a fortune for their quarter quads and you don't get the high resolution coordinates for each area on the map due to them not being photographed perfectly square. This is something that I would like to see opened up.
One thing to bear in mind unfortuantely is that this information goes stale. google maps is about 15 years out of date for half my city. So this would have to be renewed occasionally to stay of value.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:How about some software? (Score:4, Insightful)
Media is a pain in the ass on every platform. Linux users cringe every time they see a Quicktime file, a Flash file, etc, etc, etc.
Given that state of affairs, it doesn't make sense for an organization that supports freeing information to invest in software from a company that's exacerbating the problem in the first place.
Dictionaries (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia could be a great platform to host dictionaries on. Every article/term should have an option to translate the term.
I know that the feature is half-way there already in the way that you can find the same article in a different language, but that doesn't work that great as a two way dictionary.
Buy a good base of dictionaries translating criscross between all (ok most of) the languages on wikipedia.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.wiktionary.org/ [wiktionary.org]
Lawyers, bureaucrats, and lobbyists (Score:5, Interesting)
- The Lexis Nexis database
- All scientific works ever written. This is work done by scientists for the betterment of mankind and to have it locked away from the public behind electronic library access fees is absurd. The public has a right to academic works, not just academics.
-- BobRe:Lawyers, bureaucrats, and lobbyists (Score:5, Interesting)
When "the public" pays me to referee papers by other astronomers, and "the public" pays the page charges for the papers I write ($110 per page, by the way), and "the public" pays the editors and typesetters of the journals, then "the public" might assert a right to those papers.
Just to forestall the inevitable responses, no, the federal government is not paying my salary, and no, it hasn't paid for the page charges of my most recent publications. The NSF and NASA do support a great deal of research in astronomy, of course, and grants from those agencies do pay for good fraction of the publications in this area.
On second thought, almost all recent work in astronomy and physics is freely available to public at the LANL preprint archive site [lanl.gov], so maybe this whole discussion is moot....
Re:Lawyers, bureaucrats, and lobbyists (Score:5, Insightful)
Strike 1. You don't understand how the refereed astronomical journals work. I pay THEM $110 per page so that they will publish my paper; they do not pay me.
Strike 2. RIT has a long history of teaching and has only recently -- in the past 5 or 7 years -- started heading in the direction of research. The school has a very detailed breakdown of income from tuition and expenses on items such as faculty salaries. Most of the money spent on my salary comes from tuition.
Would you care to try for a third statement illustrating your ignorance of this topic?
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Correct. The parent poster claimed that "the public" should have free access to all scientific research, the copyrights to which are largely owned by a few journals. I was trying to say that if "the public" wants to own the copyright to this material, then "the public" ought to pay for all the expenses involved in refereeing, editin
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Nice try. But I don't think you're aware of how much Lexis Nexis is worth. It dumps nigh on THREE BILLION /every year/ in revenue to its parent, Reed Elsevier (http://www.reed-elsevier.com/media/pdf/t/2/RE_Int erim_FINAL_27July06.pdf [reed-elsevier.com]) - I suspect they'd get an offer of $100M for copyright to their database and, well, laugh...
Bank notes! (Score:5, Funny)
Journals! (Score:4, Insightful)
--Rob
senators and congressmen (Score:5, Interesting)
How much did it cost Disney to buy the senators and congressmen who voted for the latest copyright extension?
An alternative use for the money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I would suggest the money should be used instead to support a powerful well-funded lobbying effort for copyright reform...
I disagree. While $100 million is no laughable chunk o' change, its effectiveness is somewhat doubtful. Buying the rights to publish copyrighted works for all to use would have the most immediate (and gauranteed) benefit to those not just in the US, but all around the world.
I think reforming copyright is a futile effort at the present time. This isn't to say that it isn't worth
Create a Non-profit (Score:5, Interesting)
This suggestion is already in the list, and it is far and away the best suggestion I have seen.
A few of relevance to my subject area: (Score:4, Interesting)
- The Feynman Lectures
- Weinberg, volumes 1-3
- Landau and Lifschitz
- Zinn-Justin
- Wald
- Kleinert
to name but a few.This is a shame, really (Score:5, Insightful)
He was a big sponser of the Copyright Term Extension Act, DMCA, the patriot act II on steroids, FBI carnivore, extended wiretapping, and his office wanted to get the Claritin patent extended because he was using their jet when running for president.
Anything to get this IP black hole out of office will reap a 10x benifit in the future, and not just for better copyright law.
Once that is done, get a repeal of the bastard CTEA law (it won't happen while he is in the senate). In fact, bet on a CTEA II to come down the pike to protect that nasty rodent [wikipedia.org]
Happy Birthday (Score:5, Interesting)
Would be a nice touch to put that one into the public domain.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Happy Birthday (Score:4, Insightful)
Same with MLK's speech.
As both are copywritten they would be a good test of civil disobedience.
What would people think if you sung a "obviously" public song and got fined or jailed.
Maybe then people would want more public and less greed.
Or at least stuff in which the author has passed away, both true I believe, is public.
Re:Happy Birthday (Score:5, Interesting)
It's my son's first birthday on Tuesday and I'll be singing Happy Birthday to him. That's a copyrighted song, with royalties payable on public performance I believe.
Would be a nice touch to put that one into the public domain.
I completely disagree. There is no better spokesperson for the absurdity of our copyright laws than example, and this is the best example of absurdity that I can imagine.
When you tell someone they are infringing on copyright and have to pay royalties for singing Happy Birthday, they clue into the ridiculous laws that have been imposed on them. This awareness is the first step to creating momentum for reform.
The more absurd examples we can provide that the general public understands, the better armed activists are to achieve reform.
Re:Happy Birthday (Score:4, Informative)
"The version as we know it was copyrighted in 1935 by the Summy Company as an arrangement by Preston Ware Orem, and is scheduled to expire in 2030. This was the first copyrighted version to include the lyrics. The company holding the copyright was purchased by Warner Chappell in 1990 for $15 million dollars, with the value of "Happy Birthday" estimated at $5 million. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You [wikipedia.org]
Teaching English to access more content (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand why people are suggesting basic textbooks, but they're taking too much for granted.
Start by acquiring the best English skills courses so that these billions of third world kids will be able to understand first world content.
Giving a kid a laptop only gets them so far: they have to be able to understand what they're viewing. That's where the $100 mil could really leverage all of Wikipedia's existing content. Make it easy for these kids to learn English, no matter which language they're starting from.
Re:Teaching English to access more content (Score:4, Insightful)
Yay for cultural imperialism!
But seriously, that is a pretty racist remark. English is a minority language in the world, and by no means has a monopoly on 'first world content'. But the bottom line is why spend vast amounts of money teaching people a language that has no relevance to them (apart from understanding said 'first world content'), when you could pay someone to translate it, more cheaply and end up with content that fits in with local cultural tradition.
Re:Teaching English to access more content (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't let them know you're loaded! (Score:4, Funny)
Classic Games (Score:5, Interesting)
classic "no-longer-for-sale" games should be handed over to the public domain.
The intellectual property for future projects and sequels should of course
remain in the hands of the copyright holder. It seems to me that this is a win/win
for publishers since the properties would gain a new lease on life.
Really, I just want to be able to download M.U.L.E., some Infocom titles
and Master of Orion (although I'm not sure I need another addiction in my life
right now).
the obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Physics (Score:4, Interesting)
National {fire|electrical|building} codes (Score:5, Informative)
Buy JSTOR, WoS, allow annotating papers (Score:4, Informative)
Finnegan's Wake (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a drawback to this, though. James Joyce did not intend that the novel be understood. It was meant to model a dream -- albeit a boringly long one -- and if someone wakes you up every two seconds to tell you what something means, it's not as fun. Annotated, it's like reading Nabokov's version of Eugene Onegin, and if given the choice, I would not have that one wikified, with all due respect to that Lolita guy.
While the Wake wiki is good for comprehension and finally understanding what that huge word in the second paragraph was, the addition of technology makes it inferior to the original. Obviously, you can ignore the links, but in several other cases with e-books, reading a book is made more inconvenient by wikifying it. There is no real electronic substitute for "flipping through a book", and the simple format of a single finite page, as opposed to turtles all the way down. (Just check out an e-book: most of the time, the webpages are huge.)
Oh, and Gutenberg [gutenberg.org]? If anything, have Wikipedia partner with them, if the two are not in cahoots already. No use forming a needless schism in the world of free online e-books.
scientific articles may need more money (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting broad rights to scientific articles across many fields would be nearly impossible in the current culture of journal price-gouging. Support of one of the many attempts to break this business practice would be great.
What about Commissioning books to be written (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it would make sense to hire professionals to perform edits and create base models for textbooks for classes in specific fields which could then be edited as needed perhaps with keeping some sort of professional editorial oversight.
The Larry Flint archive (Score:4, Funny)
I would still swear I read wiki for the articles though.
Don't buy some books, buy some Senators (Score:3, Interesting)
A workable replacement for the RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
a) It's better to buy newer copyrights, because 'nearly expired' copyrights will run out soon, and taking an optimistic stance that common sense will prevail over the Disneys of the world and reduce the length of copyrights in future.
b) It's going to be cheaper to buy things before they are successful rather than after
and
c) Authors of copyrighted works will object to thier income supply being turned off
I suggest investing in new talent.
Offer musicians the following deal:
1) We'll press your music onto CDs, and sell them to anyone in the world for $10 each. You get 80% of any profits.
2) We'll sell mp3s, and lossless files at $0.99 a track and give you 80% of the profits
3) 5 years from the day we make it available, it goes into the public domain.
4) Here's a community of freelance record producers, cd-inlay designers, marketing organisations, tour managers etc. who are willing work for a percentage if they like your music. Do anything you like with them, but we get the rights, and it all goes into the public domain after 5 years.
5) We pay an advance or do marketing based on peer-review of your work, if your music is really good, you'll get a big advance against future earnings from our $100m.
6) We charge $0 per play for radio and TV performances.
That's a whole load better than any RIAA company will do, any major artist at the end of a contract would jump at it, and radio/TV stations will love it too.
Do you hate our children? (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/20/school.sh
Machinists Handbook! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Entertainment as well as education (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Current editions of Shakespeare aren't.
Re:My vote.... (Score:4, Funny)
hookers and beer!
in fact, forget the beer! ah, screw the whole thing!