The Humanity Libraries Project is the sort of resource we were looking for after we came back from Kaindu in Africa in 2001: freely redistributable practical information for developing countries.
In order to achieve broad public participation to the pressing global issues, we propose that core UN knowledge should be released in “copyleft” in standard formats. Then they can be bundled on low cost cd-roms or central servers in each country. Copyleft would mean that UN agencies retain copyrights, and control over the commercial book sales. But that at the same time free use and electronic dissemination is allowed for non-commercial purposes without the actual inefficient centralized copyright control.
Most of the freed books look very NGO’ish, but it’s a start. You can send off for a cheap CD containing 160,000 pages to redistribute in your country. (via memepool)