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By David Rothman

Scott McNealy, Sun’s CEO, is pushing the idea of free, open-source textbooks. Laudable. But let’s not see that as a panacea to reduce the urgent need for less-Hollywoodish copyright law–and for educating copyright wimps like John Edwards. Meanwhile here’s the lowdown from ZDNet via LISNews on an initiative that McNearly is pushing:

The effort, called the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC), produces curriculum materials such as online books for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. McNealy envisions the replacement of expensive and quickly out-of-date textbooks by shared online instructional materials, testing, grading and assessment tools, all created by experts.

“This is all about open-sourcing K-12 educational materials. Imagine you have a…community-led process where we can get the best educators to create the world’s best third-grade math textbook and make it free,” McNealy said at the JavaOne trade show here. “Help contribute your time, your energy, your focus and maybe even your money.”

A worthy cause. But keep in mind that textbooks are just part of schooling. TeleRead, anyone–well-stocked national digital libraries with many kinds of books? And, oh, isn’t it time to repeal or mitigate the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and fix the DMCA? But do people on the Net care enough to get serious and ask the hard questions of “populists” like John Edwards?

More on the Edwards angle: If you can’t even get “populists” on your side, then what about the rest? Shame on Paul Jones and certain others in the UNC crowd for not standing up for the public domain, without which ibiblio would not have all those thousands of wonderful Gutenberg classics to host on its servers. Hey, Paul, are you John Edwards’ cuz or something? It’s okay to say DRM and related copyright law suck, but when will you go to work in your own back yard and educate Prof. Edwards? Remember, Prof. Edwards stands a reasonable chance of being president–or maybe running for the Senate again someday and once more sitting on the copyright-related Judiciary Committee.

While we’re in copyright territory: In the wake of the atrocious Grokster decision, I don’t see an outcry from law-oriented bloggers to get Prof. Edwards and other prospective Democratic presidential candidates to commit to appointment of Net-friendly judges. The answer isn’t just for cyberlaw activists to hide themselves in the law libraries in search of the helpful precedents–not when the greedsters own the politicians and the judges. Legal activists should do something. Educate the “populist” politicans–especially the ones the activists and their friends know–and relate copyright to economic issues. Hollywood is no small threat to the prosperity of the high-tech industry and the blue-collar workers and retail clerks who depend on tickle-downs from well-paid techies. All the open source software and wikied e-books in the world won’t balance out the damage that Washington’s copyright zealots are wreaking on tech, K-12, culture, and society in general.

 
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