[justincpollard]

So now textbook authors are forced to license their books in such a manner? Or is this a choice that certain authors can make?

If it's the former, financial incentives for textbook authors have fallen precipitously. So, the question is, who's going to write these "free, openly licensed digital textbooks for the 50 most popular lower-division college courses offered by California colleges"? Might the authors receive government subsidies? If this is true, then we're simply shifting from a market mechanism to a government funded model. Either the cost of writing a textbook won't actually change, the quality will go down, or we'll have many fewer options to choose from.

[sentientbicycle]

"So now textbook authors are forced to license their books in such a manner?" No. This would be much bigger news if that were the case. This is who would make them from the council digest: "The bill would require the council to establish a competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties would apply for funds to produce, in 2013, 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and related materials, meeting specified requirements." This will enable the exact opposite of your last three conjectures. It will decrease the cost of textbooks, the quality will go up, and we'll have even more options to choose from. Plus this is a big win for other educational enterprises. Under the CC BY license outside industries will be able to utilize the material for commercial endeavors.