Open Content Alliance launched

Brian · 10-03-2005, 06:41 PM

The Open Content Alliance, a new project conceived by the Interet Archive and Yahoo! to digitize books and multimedia files, was launched today. Unlike Google's Library Project, another digitizing project for which Google is being sued by the Author's Guild, works not in the public domain are only digitized after the copyright holders opt-in.

"The Open Content Alliance (OCA) represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo!
The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors."

Contributors to the Open Content Alliance include Adobe, European Archive, HP Labs, Internet Archive, National Archives (UK), O'Reilly Media, Prelinger Archives, University of California, University of Toronto, and Yahoo!

[via TeleRead]

rlauzon · 10-03-2005, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian

Unlike Google's Library Project, another digitizing project for which Google is being sued by the Author's Guild, works not in the public domain are only digitized after the copyright holders opt-in

In other words, they are going to copy Project Gutenberg and add a whole bunch of works that no one cares about.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Seriously, with copyright being so long today, most of the works that we care about are not in the Public Domain - but neither are they being published or offered in any other form. The opt-in is nice, but it assumes that the copyright holder even knows that he holds the copyright. And you can bet that most big content holders won't part with any of their "property" willingly.

So excuse me if I give a yawn to the Open Content Alliance.

Bob Russell · 10-03-2005, 07:30 PM

I was impressed with Google's response. Instead of ripping on Yahoo, they simply said that they support anyone making content available. Good for them! I also like to see more and more doing this. Gutenberg has a place in history, and I hope they always remain a significant player, and are honored for all their groundbreaking efforts. But I also hope to see a lot of others doing the same kind of work.

Now if we could only bring the length of copyrights down to a decade or two instead of nearly forever. Or at least have some sort of tiered release schedule so that maybe content is available for educational use after 5 years, for personal use after 10yrs and freely in the public domain after 10yrs. Personally, if we are looking at the overall well-being of society, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Especially with the face pace of content creation. But I realize that's just wishful thinking.

10-03-2005, 06:41 PM	#1
Brian MobileRead Editor Posts: 447 Karma: 84 Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Massachusetts Device: Treo 700p, Zodiac2	Open Content Alliance launched The Open Content Alliance, a new project conceived by the Interet Archive and Yahoo! to digitize books and multimedia files, was launched today. Unlike Google's Library Project, another digitizing project for which Google is being sued by the Author's Guild, works not in the public domain are only digitized after the copyright holders opt-in. "The Open Content Alliance (OCA) represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo! The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors." Contributors to the Open Content Alliance include Adobe, European Archive, HP Labs, Internet Archive, National Archives (UK), O'Reilly Media, Prelinger Archives, University of California, University of Toronto, and Yahoo! [via TeleRead]

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Getting Full Content from Partial Content Feeds	thread314	Calibre	5	05-05-2012 10:49 AM
Choosing a reader based on open content formats	wrburgess	Which one should I buy?	3	12-01-2009 09:37 PM
Open Book Alliance	daesdaemar	News	0	08-21-2009 08:45 AM
Reference Open eBook Forum: Open eBook Publication Structure. IMP. V1.0.1 14 September 2007	DaleDe	IMP Books	0	09-14-2007 05:06 PM
eBookwise launched	Colin Dunstan	Fictionwise eBookwise	23	12-25-2005 07:15 PM

10-03-2005, 07:30 PM	#3
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	I was impressed with Google's response. Instead of ripping on Yahoo, they simply said that they support anyone making content available. Good for them! I also like to see more and more doing this. Gutenberg has a place in history, and I hope they always remain a significant player, and are honored for all their groundbreaking efforts. But I also hope to see a lot of others doing the same kind of work. Now if we could only bring the length of copyrights down to a decade or two instead of nearly forever. Or at least have some sort of tiered release schedule so that maybe content is available for educational use after 5 years, for personal use after 10yrs and freely in the public domain after 10yrs. Personally, if we are looking at the overall well-being of society, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Especially with the face pace of content creation. But I realize that's just wishful thinking.

Advert