creative commons

Sign our petition to support the Open College Textbook Act of 2009

Please sign this letter to your Congressmen encouraging Congress to support openly licensed textbooks by voting for the Open College Textbooks Act of 2009. You can learn more about the Open College Textbooks Act right here on New Media Rights!

Open College Textbook Act (S. 1714) promises seed money for the open education cause

The Open College Textbook Act proposes "to authorize grants for the creation, update, or adaption of open textbooks."

Specifically, it would authorize the Secretary of Education to award 1-year grants on a competitive basis to higher education institutions, professors, non-profit, or for profit-organizations that produce textbooks. The textbooks would be open licensed and available to be downloaded, redistributed, changed, revised, or altered by any member of the public.

Learn more here and then please sign our petition supporting the Open College Textbook Act.

Youtube puts ads on videos without permission

Youtube's filtering technology may be causing advertisements to appear on content without permission.  Besides the possible contract violations, the ads create catch 22's when uploading openly licensed (ie. Creative Commons) content to Youtube.   Youtube could have a significant effect on the future openly licensed video content.  This is appears to be a slap in the face to open content and step in the wrong direction.