Remixing books is popular on services like Wattpad where users write fanfiction inspired by books, celebrities, movies, etc. From a legal perspective, some fanfiction could be seen as copyright or trademark infringement. From a business perspective, the book industry would be smart to learn from the PC gaming business. Instead of fighting over pieces of a shrinking pie, try to grow the pie by getting more people to read and write books.

In the gaming world, “mods” are user created versions of games or elements of games. Steam has about 4500 games but about 400 million pieces of user-generated content. Dota itself was originally a user-created mod of another game, Warcraft 3.Contrast this to the music industry, which relies on litigation to aggressively stifle remixing and experimentation.

PC games are so popular they can also make money from live events. Live gaming competitions have become huge: over 32M people watched the League of Legends championship this year, almost double the number of people who watched the NBA finals.

The types of games on Steam vary widely, as do the business models. The most popular game, Dota 2, is free. It makes money selling in-app items, mostly “cosmetic items” that alter the appearance of characters.

Non-Traditional Students: The New Majority

2. Is it reasonable to compare the costs of xMOOCs to the costs of online credit courses? Are they competing for the same funds, or are they categorically different in their funding source and goals? If so, how?

it is difficult to see how publicly funded higher education institutions can develop sustainable business models for MOOCs;