Stian Håklev has translated (and slightly abridged) this press release issued today by the Indonesian government:
The Indonesian government buys the copyright to textbooks...
The Indonesian government has decided to buy the copyright of textbooks for primary, secondary and high school. The purpose is to bring down the price of textbooks to a quarter of the current price, and make books accessible to people. This was announced by president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a press conference on the 6th of Feburary, 2008....
According to the president, one of the problems in the education sector is the price of text books. Because the books are expensive, many parents are not able to buy them, which inhibits the learning of their children. An important step is thus to reduce the price of text books. “One of the ways we’ll do this is through buying the copyright and giving the production rights to other publishers, so that the price of books can be reduced”, said the president. This step is also intended to avoid monopoly within the text book industry....
The target is more than 250 books....
From Stian's comment:
[W]e should really try to campaign to have them adopt Creative Commons licenses for the material, and put it online as well. This might not make a huge difference to Indonesian school children (yet), but since [government officials] own the copyrights anyway, they could make a huge contribution to projects like Wikibooks, Wikipedia etc. And hopefully in the future they can also produce better quality and cheaper teaching materials by adapting material from open resources....
Comment. Stian is right. The Indonesian plan is very promising but it stops short. How about inexpensive print editions and free online editions?
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/08/2008 01:05:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
