More Open Access To Digital Content
from the spreading-the-wealth dept
While things like MIT’s OpenCourseWare and the new file sharing of lessons from the Berklee College of Music are getting all the attention, the well known iBiblio has been chugging away for over a decade, hosting all sorts of content for free. Years ago, it was known as SunSITE, when it was sponsored by Sun, but it eventually became iBiblio, and is hosted at UNC. It’s mostly known for hosting open source software, but is expanding rapidly into all sorts of open content that people all over the world find useful. The guy who runs it seems to understand that there’s a value in giving away things for free – and says that he’s told folks in the music industry how they’re making a mistake in calling music downloaders pirates. He points out that the people who go to the trouble of downloading music are the ones who are most interested in the music, and thus should be the people the recording industry is most excited about.
