With BSNL broadband, you can’t play games. You can’t watch streaming video as yet without cursing the latency of the bandwidth and strangulated wires. You would want to curse and heap all abuses at the boffins who seek to regulate the access to resources.

However, you can definitely contribute to Open Access and Open Resources. Remember, there are a huge majority of people who still don’t have an access to the digital resources, the way we have. Instead of surfing Google Images for porn images, I believe that most of us can definitely set up some time to contribute to Project Gutenberg.

The have this fantastic project called as “distributed proofreader”- each one of contributes his/ her time to proofread the text and the scanned image online; each one at his/ her pace. I got interested in this when I recieved the best of Project Gutenberg’s e books via CD; some one sent across from US. FREE. My interest perked up and it definitely makes sense to volunteer; if not monetarily, atleast by giving some time towards the resources.

Here is the FAQ of the distributed Proof Reader Project which is almost a no brainer to follow. I agree with the basic philosphy of opening up access. To reproduce from the site:

Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971. His idea was: anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely. This led to the concept of entering books into computers and sharing these books with the whole world.

(Emphasis mine)

(This is the workflow diagram taken from the FAQ to give you a general idea as to how it is done).

Here is the home page of Ditributed Proof Reader’s Project.

Another fascinating resource for me is Wikipedia. There are many controversies as far as “some content” is concerned; however by and large I never cease to wonder about this huge online repository of knowledge.

To profit from something which is already in the public domain is “evil” nonetheless. Once I have more time on my hands, I’d like to devote to the discussion on Open Source and Open Access movements and how Broadband can alter the landscape of learning.

Getting “unlimited broadband” was the first step towards realising some personal goals. I am glad that I have fought (albeit along with lots of others) to get myself what is long due to me. Not the pifling limits that these bastards impose on us.