From: Wilhelmina Randtke <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:57:44 -0600 Maybe a constructive awareness-raising thing to do would be to lay out alternatives to prospective authors selling rights for a song to Apollo Global Management. In academic law land, where I currently reside, the open text book initiative is eLangdell ( http://elangdell.cali.org/ ). CALI, a consortium, accepts proposals for textbooks from professors at member law schools. The professor gets a payment from CALI and assigns the copyright of the textbook to CALI. Then CALI makes these available through that website under either BY-NC-SA or BY-SA Creative Commons licenses (that CALI will do this is part of the initial agreement with the author, see http://elangdell.cali.org/content/write-elangdell-casebook-or-chapter ). What is going on with open textbooks in other fields? -Wilhelmina Randtke On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:14 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > From: Heather Morrison <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:38:39 -0800 > > Although this is textbooks rather than scholarly works, this is an > important development that scholars, educators, and university > administrators need to be aware of. > > McGraw Hill, one of the world's top textbook publishers, was just sold > for $2.5 billion to Apollo Global Management, according to Inside > Higher Ed. Debra Borchardt, in The Street, describes Apollo Global > Management as a private equity firm that "gives Wall Street a bad > name. And that's saying something". > http://www.thestreet.com/story/11730510/1/the-dimming-lights-of-apollo-global.html > > From Inside Higher Ed: "Waterhouse said that the company would > continue to expand in digital education, and that - as a private > company - "we won't need to worry about short-term focus and > pressures". > http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/11/27/mcgraw-hill-education-sold-25-billion# > > Comment: a Wall Street bad apple expanding into higher education is > something we should be watching - and take note of the long term > focus. A company like this might well go into open education in the > short term, planning to reap big profits from their $2.5 billion > investment in the long term. > > Faculty and teachers: DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR WORK FOR COMMERCIAL > RIGHTS. If you are using CC licenses, use Noncommercial. > > Discussion welcome. > > Heather G. Morrison, PhD > Simon Fraser University School of Communication > The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/