Yahoo has announced today on the Yahoo! Blog that they have created the Open Content Alliance in an effort to help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content.
This announcement comes a week after Google was slapped with a copyright lawsuit for trying to digitize book content. So how will the Open Content Alliance get around the copyright obstacle? According to the OCA website they will only make items available that have been authorized by the copyright holder. So it appears Yahoo has pulled ahead slightly in the race with Google to offer book content online. Additionally, wikiBooks has begun to offer a collaborative approach to bringing textbooks to the online space thus further adding competition to the book to online migration. For more information on wikiBooks check out the wikiBooks About page.
These press articles on Yahoo and the Open Content Alliance on the washingtonpost.com, USA Today, NY Times and PaidContent.org offer more information.
Find out the blogosphere’s perspective by checking out post on Online Marketing Blog, Ben Metcalfe Blog, achievable ends and Agregador.