tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post5015620326418645265..comments2023-04-15T11:42:35.385-04:00Comments on Go To Hellman: Open Access eBooks, Part 2. What does Open Access mean for e-books?Erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14172740163003223132noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-5955556268267705822012-05-14T21:31:09.176-04:002012-05-14T21:31:09.176-04:00Amazon's distribution system may not be all th...Amazon's distribution system may not be all that helpful, but Kindles have an "experimental" browser which can be used to go directly to Project Gutenberg (or anywhere else on the web) and download an appropriate version of just about anything.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-75013739621898138002011-05-07T13:21:26.100-04:002011-05-07T13:21:26.100-04:00I've rewritten the last part quite a bit based...I've rewritten the last part quite a bit based on comments:<br /><br />Consider the book How Wikipedia Works by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates. Is it an open access e-book? What about What Matters Now by Seth Godin? Or how about the author’s Ph. D. Dissertation, posted on his personal web site? If you go by the licensing, you might say the first is “free”, the second might be, and the third isn’t. How Wikipedia Works comes with a GNU FDL license; it’s clear what you can do with it. What Matters Now doesn’t come with any license except for a statement that says “feel free to share this”; it’s still covered by copyright law. The third has a copyright statement “all rights reserved” and is registered with the copyright office. <br /><br />The practicalities are quite different. If you search for How Wikipedia Works on Google, you’ll have to dig quite a bit to get a free e-book. Amazon will sell you the Kindle version for $21.64. You can buy it in three different formats from O’Reilly or from No Starch Press, the publisher, for $23.95. Google Books has it through their publisher program; it appears to fully available and Google doesn’t try to sell it to you. You can find the e-book in a library through Worldcat, but the libraries that hold it restrict access to their own users. Wikipedia itself has a page for it, but no download link; for that you need to look on the talk page. What Matters Now and the author’s dissertation can be found on both Google and Worldcat, but the listing for What Matters Now in Worldcat covers only a print version apparently published through Lulu.com. The author’s dissertation is not only accessible through Worldcat, but has been made available as a PDF download by the Stanford University Library.<br /><br />The lesson of these examples is that for an e-book to be both cost-free and effectively available, there should be an intent by the publisher to make the e-book openly available, expressed with an appropriate license, and there must be effective distribution. This combination is what makes an e-book “Open Access” with capital OA.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14172740163003223132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-21013354228563009632011-05-03T08:14:35.139-04:002011-05-03T08:14:35.139-04:00Mike- What I'm not sure of is whether Amazon&#...Mike- What I'm not sure of is whether Amazon's distribution system will deliver unencrypted .mobi files, not whether you can read the unencrypted file on the Kindle. Perhaps other readers can help.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14172740163003223132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-40591778019070939742011-05-03T04:41:47.820-04:002011-05-03T04:41:47.820-04:00A couple more comments:
"Noteworthy among th...A couple more comments:<br /><br />"Noteworthy among these is the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), created by the Free Software Foundation to allow software documentation, manuals and other text to be distributed with strong “copyleft” provisions compatible with the GPL software they’re meant to accompany."<br /><br />I've never seen this abbreviated as just FDL before, always GFDL. There is a prevailing sentiment that the GFDL is not very good for most text because of some exotic provisions that made sense for GNU documentation; as a result the GPL (though originally intended for source code) is sometimes used instead.<br /><br />"The GNU FDL is stronger, and even forbids the use of DRM. It’s not clear whether it would be legal to distribute a GNU FDL e-book to a Kindle e-reading device without permission from the author."<br /><br />No -- the Kindle can read non-DRM'd formats, and it is surely fine to shove a GFDL's plain-text file (for example) on a Kindle for reading. I assume the issue here was meant to be whether you are allowed to encode in the Kindle's DRM-encumbered native format (and surely in that case it IS clear that it would not be legal?)Mike Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039663158335543317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-74602269631006659862011-05-03T04:30:49.242-04:002011-05-03T04:30:49.242-04:00Good stuff, Eric.
In the section beginning "...Good stuff, Eric.<br /><br />In the section beginning "Laypeople often confuse public domain for “free”, and vice versa", or maybe much earlier in the article, you really need to nail down the distinction between free-as-in-freedom and zero-price. It's a constant curse on our language that it conflates these two very important concepts.Mike Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039663158335543317noreply@blogger.com