I recently decided to revisit a book I read five years back (Philip Ball, Designing the Molecular World, Chemistry at The Frontier, ISBN 0691029008) and set about trying to find a copy. My local library drew a blank so it looked as if I would have to buy. The obligatory search at Amazon turned up a lot of used copies that were much cheaper than the new version. The cheapest used book vendor with a copy in good condition was Better World Books (my book was AU$11 delivered). When I looked I found that Better World has a interesting take on business that appeals to my altruistic side.

Better World provide some of every sale to one of a range of literacy programmes like Room to Read, Books for Africa, Worldfund, and the National Center for Family Literacy. Better World also provide books directly to schools where they are needed. A commission goes back to the library that provided the used book for sale: source libraries save on the cost and effort of holding their own used book sales. A levy is placed on every order to cover the carbon emissions in processing and delivering the book: making the process carbon-neutral through CarbonFund.org. To cap it all off you can email Better World books and get a reply from a real person, the books are well priced (prices change dynamically with demand), and the international shipping is very cheap (US$2.97 vs. Amazon’s US$12).

Better World is somewhere to buy that actually has a social conscience. They support providing the joy, indeed the necessity, of books to those in need in the hope of making the world a slightly better place. So, the next time you want a book try Better World Books and feel better for it. Incidentally, I’d love to hear of an Australian equivalent.

One of the large figures in the free software world is Eben Moglen, a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University and heavily involved in defending and extending the GNU General Public License. In the video below Eben Moglen is speaking at a lecture for the Scottish Society for Computers and Law titled, “The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3.” The video is 80 minutes long (about 160MB) but Moglen manages to eloquently encapsulate why Free Software is important in the first 20 minutes. If you are in the slightest interested it is well worth the time.

The event is also available as streaming audio and a transcription.

I found this talk one of the most persuasive arguments for the freedom of software (and knowledge in general). In addressing the reproduction of knowledge in digital form Moglen notes that the incremental cost of further copies is approaching zero and follows:

The consequence of those changes is the onset of a very powerful moral question. If it is possible, easily possible, to give to each human being who wishes it, anything of utility or beauty in our world of civilisation, if it is possible to deliver any such entity anywhere at any time at low cost or at zero cost, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything she wants?

This argument really appeals to me.

References:

1. The video is sourced from The Internet Archive and is released under the Creative Commons: Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 by Al Broom, Valley Technology.
2. The GNU image is by Aurelio A. Heckert, release under the Free Art License. From http://www.gnu.org/graphics/heckert_gnu.html