I found a press release in my mailbox this morning about the launch of Eric Hellman’s crowd-funded Creative Commons republishing initiative for copyrighted works, Unglue.it (which we’ve mentioned a few times already here). The site has officially launched just now, with campaigns for the following five books:
- Michael Laser, 6-321
Joseph Nassise, Riverwatch
Nancy Rawles, Love Like Gumbo
Budding Reader, Cat and Rat
Open Book Publishers, Oral Literature in Africa, by Ruth Finnegan.
The idea behind Unglue.it is to raise money to buy the rights to republish these works as “unglued” CC-licensed non-DRMed free e-books. These starter campaigns range from two to six months in duration, and from $5,000 to $25,000 in goal amount.
Best of luck to Unglue.it in meeting its goals! While I will admit to having my doubts how well the scheme will work, it is a worthy goal—and without people trying new things, we wouldn’t get any new innovations.
