'Arts & Culture'
MacUpdate reports that a number of libraries, joined in the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), decided to actually pay for having their bookes scanned by the Open Content Alliance (OCA), rather than having Google or Microsoft scan them for free.
The reason is, that the OCA keeps the content “search-engine neutral” as BLC Executive Director Barbara Preece said: “Google and Microsoft are interested in search, and the OCA is more interested in content and helping libraries handle their content the way they want to.”
The exercise costs close to $3 million, $845,000 covered by the BLC and another $2 million through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Newspaper all over the world are full of headlines how greedy Radiohead fans are, one third of them paying nothing for downloads and pushing the average album revenue down to £4 (while ‘normal’ CD prices are around £10, or a full iTunes download would cost £7 or £8). From a CD or iTunes sale, artists get some 12 % to 16 % (according to zoom in online) — i.e. £1.20 … £1.60 (while one source claims, Radiohead would make £3 from selling a CD). £4 is roughly three times £1.20. Greedy fans? I’d say: generous.
An interesting discussion on librarything (click to see it) on the question if writers would rather prefer being paid or being read. It turns out that it’s all about “I love it when people read my work” and “I don’t want someone else making money from my writing while I don’t”, acknowledging that it is nice to get paid (even if it only “puts me roughly at the same wage level as a banana picker in Guatemala”) and that “publishers have a wider range of readers than most individuals”.
What do you think?
The WIPO has published a new booklet in their “Learn from the past, create for the future” series — a school study and exercise book on The Arts and Copyright.
Details of WIPO’s announcement are here.
The booklets should be ordered from the WIPO electronic bookshop at www.wipo.int/ebookshop.
Today we recieved a commenton this campaing website by some guy called directoryguru which I’d hesitate to hide from our readers (as I do on a regular basis with all the penis enlargement, naked girls and investment opportunities):
Hi there! I was surfing the internet Wednesday afternoon during my break, and found your blog by searching MSN for trees. This is a topic I have great interest in, and follow it closely. I liked your insight on , and it made for good reading. Keep up the good work…
(Emphasis by me)
