Free the Books » business models http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks conjugating international copyright laws Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:41:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Building on the corpus of the free and digital public domain ! http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks/2008/12/08/building-on-the-corpus-of-the-free-and-digital-public-domain/ http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks/2008/12/08/building-on-the-corpus-of-the-free-and-digital-public-domain/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:38:00 +0000 georgia harper http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks/?p=44 Lessig links to a very cool new application that builds on the corpus of freely available public domain materials about our government representatives. It’s called apture, and there’s a little video that shows how it works on other people’s sites to allow you to see lots of information sources pulled together for a particular person, for example, John Kerry, and how you can install it on your site. Just takes a few minutes to watch.

I really like how nicely this ap demonstrates the value of a freely available and accessible digital public domain. All of the materials apture pulls together are in the public domain, so the barriers to its entry into this market are a lot lower than they would be if apture had to seek out and negotiate licenses to use every little shred of information about our representatives. Very good example of the idea that free can be the basis of a lot of value.

]]> http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks/2008/12/08/building-on-the-corpus-of-the-free-and-digital-public-domain/feed/ 0 Reading great books online highlights policy debate http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks/2008/02/25/reading-great-books-online-highlights-policy-debate/ http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks/2008/02/25/reading-great-books-online-highlights-policy-debate/#comments Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:21:37 +0000 georgia harper http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/freethebooks/?p=31 An interesting post today on TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home, about how the availability of great literature on the Web, because of the works’ public domain status in other countries, highlights the policy debate about the wisdom of term extension. Thus, disparities between terms of protection can be added to the long list of forces that are filling the Web with fabulous, free content, content that competes against locked up, toll-access content for the most precious thing we have to give — our attention.

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