The characterization that IP law is only intended to spur creative activity is incorrect. It was designed to balance the interests of the creator with those of society. And that balance is off, IP regulation has become a tool for rent seeking.
Yes, I had the exact same reaction and actually donated a print version of the book to the Internet Archive so they might create a digital ebook. It never materialized and I ended up reading the print version, and found it well worth the physical effort.
This is absolutely the easiest solution. We did this for open.media.mit.edu in order to archive the old wordpress site. Used wget to fetch all of the HTML and ran a script over it to remove some obvious clutter. Happy to help out. Your writing really shaped the way I thought about the potential of an open internet.
Since you list other non-open source solutions as well in your question, I’ll mention one more, which might be the closest to what you are looking for > maven.com.
We started collaborating with them right after they launched, and just finished our first course on their platform.
I also wish there was a good open source alternative but the revenue sharing with maven is fair, the team is a joy to work with, and the product is improving rapidly.
Sasha Frere-Jones used to be the music critic at the New Yorker and writes a fantastic (although somewhat irregular) substack blog > https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/
Can you share some articles or studies that demonstrate the increasing openness? (I hope it’s true that it cuts both ways, but would like to see more data/research).