Mark Surman has written about an interesting new business model: Noank. You have to read his post to understand this one.
As Mark says its an interesting proposal, most interesting is not the idea of the all-you-can-eat-buffet but the (current) undertaking to share subscription revenue with those who have open licensed their work.
That obviously offers a possible revenue stream to those who open license their work. But the approach is based on the idea that one pays subscription for content, including open content. While the the aggregator may perform a service by bundling open and closed content, it nevertheless supports the notion that one pays for content, in all contexts including education, and not just in respect of consumer based entertainment.
That is a problematic idea, especially since even “small monthly fees” do not scale well in Africa, even the most minimal charges operate as a further barrier to access to those Africans who have managed to get on-line access because most Africans don’t have access to on-line payment mechanisms.
In other words this is a new business model which may help to change the environment within which the open educational resources and access to knowledge movements operate. It provides new challenges because it attempts to extract value from open resources, but does so in a non exclusive way. It does so however by charging a subscription.While the open material will be available elsewhere without paying the premium, the existence of the subscription aggregator may undercut the incentives for open access players to create open access aggregators and services. Those unable to pay the premium, i.e. those who already have the greatest barriers to access to knowledge may face a greater difficulty in locating open content if there are fewer open aggregators.
If it works in China and Russia it promises to be a very disruptive business model, and one which seems to create a better environment than the current one for open access, however it should not be confused with open access, or with development focused initiaves.