A Networked World

Textbooks & Entertainment - Compare and Contrast

The ever inventive Tim O'Reilly has taken the next logical step in the Open source revolution by getting all granular on us with SafariU. The quickie from the site says

While talking with instructors and trainers about what's not working for them in the classroom ... we've come up with a solution: SafariU, O'Reilly's new web-based platform for creating, publishing and sharing textbooks. With SafariU, you can create and publish your own textbook, selecting exactly the book chapters, sections, or articles you need from the impressive Safari database. SafariU costs you nothing to use and offers your students more focused course content at less cost.

Whatever is the Opposite of Schmology

Unlike Music Rebellion, Umair Haque gets it. He runs Bubblegeneration, has an MBA majoring in Strategy from London Business School and an undergrad degree, from McGill University in Psychology, focused on Neuroscience. In The New Economics of Music: File-Sharing and Double Moral Hazard he looks at Why the Music Industry is (Really) Broken and how it can be fixed.

There's Righteous Indignation

And stark raving bone-headed lunacy. There is no triumph, trophy nor tactical sense in "settling" a threatened lawsuit against a 12 year old girl for her music downloads for $2,000. Especially not when the girl in question is from a low income housing project and, apparently, from a single parent family. There is a strangelovian self destructiveness about an industry that will pursue children with punitive lawsuits as if they had somehow lost out on the last $2 that was going to keep the company alive.