On Wednesday 03 October 2007, you wrote: > Follow up - the OpenU recently published a pre-proposal for the project: > > See http://telem.openu.ac.il/resources/files/proposal.pdf >
Item 4.2(2) says, very emphatically, that the books must be published in an "open and free" (no definition of 'free' given) format, with all their features accessible from at least IE6 and FF2 on Windows, Linux and OSX using free software. Sounds great. But then 4.2(10), entitled 'DRM', requires DRM that will block printing more than a page at once and saving local copies. Surely they must be aware that this combination of requirements is kind of pointless? This looks like people with very different ideas came to a weird compromise. BTW, item 5 says the books 'are and will remain under OU copyright'. That's all there is on the subject of licensing, but given the stated goals of not allowing things like saving local copies, and since the site will require registration for access (item 4.1(8)), I imagine there will be a click through usage agreement where users will also agree not to do these things. Why is the OU interested in imposing these kinds of limitations? I would really like to know. It's a university, it has already decided to publish these books online free as beer for all comers. What else is there but to let people use the books in the most efficient and convenient ways they can think of? -- Dan Armak ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
