As a college professor with a huge interest in e-textbooks and access to
education, I was appalled at Apple's expansion on user-unfriendly EULAs
into new territory.
Apple is claiming rights to *content* produced with its tools. As if
Microsoft were to claim rights to books produced with Word.
This is insane. I'm glad to hear moves are afoot to try to get the FTC
involved. Kudos to the OLPC community for doing it!
Quixote.
On 01/20/2012 09:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. E-Textbooks good, now is a time to speak (Aaron Baca)
2. Re: E-Textbooks good, now is a time to speak (Samuel Klein)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:19:31 +0000
From: Aaron Baca<[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]"<[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]"<[email protected]>
Subject: [Olpc-open] E-Textbooks good, now is a time to speak
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
As many here are aware, Apple has made recent annoucements regarding e-Book
textbook initiatives. I urge the OLPC community to act quickly with respect to
this matter. I feel that e-Book textbooks can be a great source of knowledge
for the OLPC project to give to developing nations. The issues though, I feel
the OLPC community could uniquely address.
1) Apple's EULA for publishers requires books authored with their software
remain distributed ONLY via Apple channels. Hopefully officials at OLPC have
some contacts with the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) which can begin steps
to remove such restrictions, such that publishers could donate professionally
produced materials to the OLPC project, as well as private citizens making
donations of licensed materials.
It should be noted that Apple uses the ePub open format wrapped in their
Fairplay DRM. Essentially, publishing e-books created with the Apple software
to other platforms only requires the removal of the wrapper, and if necessary,
the addition of a new one. Content would remain 100% usable with capable
reading software.
2) OLPC is at an interesting juncture where the pricing of their devices as
well as the rugged qualities thereof better meets the needs of school systems
in the US as well as the rest of the world. This presents an enormous
opportunity for a device such as the XO-3 tablet to not just get more
widespread recognition, but for partnerships with better funded US school
districts to be formed. Such partnerships would allow wider production of the
XO-3 and other models as well as well as create large bulk orders of devices
with matching hardware donations to developing nations.
3) OLPC as a charity organization enjoys positive press such that if the
community and it's leaders spoke out about iBooks and other proprietary Apple
practices which affect education, their voice would carry stronger political
and social weight. The benefits would not only be to OLPC, but would trickle
down to other platforms and greater openness of information and knowledge.
Such a movement could also be leveraged equally against publishers who ransom
knowledge at the highest margin they can accomplish.
The idea of e-book textbooks is nothing new, but if there is to be a
significant scale revolution to the use of e-books in the classroom, everyone
should be included.
I have also copied Jimmy Wales on this correspondence, as I hope some of this
message coicides with his ideals at Wikia.
I appreciate your time,
Aaron Baca
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:22:05 -0500
From: Samuel Klein<[email protected]>
To: Aaron Baca<[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]"<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Olpc-open] E-Textbooks good, now is a time to speak
Message-ID:
<CAAtU9WKpcRPXSFazt2uiSKnQMru94Og9p=6yrde1wh78ryb...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Aaron, thank you for your ideas. We will certainly be pushing for the
unfortunate EULA provisions to be dropped; it is not clear that they
are enforcable. And Apple has in the past made reasonable decisions
about dropping unnecessary DRM.
The idea of e-book textbooks is nothing new, but if there is to be a
significant scale revolution to the use of
e-books in the classroom, everyone should be included.
Just so.
SJ
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