[9354] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: money, commercialization, and publishing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (laura fillmore)
Thu Dec 30 02:13:48 1993
In-Reply-To: <2966219235.6.p00997@psilink.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 93 02:59:28 -0400
To: rothman@netcom.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, inet-pub@lists.ans.net,
From: "laura fillmore" <pl0142@psilink.com>
>>Encryption just enhances the isolation of the elite who have access to
>>the information in question, and hobbles this nascent communications
>>medium.
>
>Wish you'd been with me at last month's NII hearing on intellectual
>property. ;-) Care to write the same message to Ron Brown?
If you send me his email address, I'd be glad to. It seems encryption is
the reverse of what our project is all about. We see a new medium here,
a machine of sorts to enhance our thinking ability. How to formulate
and make accessible those collective thoughts, our recorded past and
the tumultuous present. It's multitudinous and confusing enough; why
inflict encryption to artificially muck things up?
>>It might be more instructive to devise a business model which >enables
>>free participation for the reader/users, the more creative >thinkers
>>among whom might themselves become part of, contribute to the >online
>>information or literature they think about by virtue of links. >The
>>future of publishing might lie in this direction. >
>
>I think it lies in a number of directions. The one you suggest is
>excellent. My hope is that readers will have many alternatives.
>
And they do today; it's all being tried, piecemeal. Per copy, site,
subscription, for free, sponsored. Where the flocks gather, there's the
hospitality tent.
>[stuff deleted]
>The challenge is to bring *copyrighted* material to the masses.
>
>I wouldn't mind better search capabilities, either. And those links you
>mention would be nice. I've already proposed hypertext-style features
>for TeleRead, and what you have in mind is entirely consistent with my
>philosophy.
The links would be more than nice, they're *it*. But then you get into
the problem of weighting chunks and putting up toll booths for
links. As I understand it, Primis has an egalitarian approach to
assigning fees due for access: a page is a page. What's fundamentally
at issue is the quality of thought, though, and the mental ends the
user assigns to the accessed thought. Kind of abstruse, OK, but
consider this: is a page of Joe's Plumbing Guide equal to a page of
Joan Didion? Depends on what you, the user, are interested in: the
underpinnings of your bathroom sink or the aqueous politics in LA.
There's the third point to the triangle: the user. The frequency of
access should determine relative worth. But wait! That assumes people
know what they want to know; where would we be if that were true?
>>[stuff deleted]
>>>
>Well, it's good to hear you're on my side on major issues.
I take it you're talking about encryption. We should look at this more
closely. What exactly is the point of encrypting current copyright
material in a W3 environment?
> As a matter
>of fact, I mentioned Stephen King in teleread.txt and said I understood
>why OBS charged what it did.
What charges are you referring to?
> Obviously you're in e-publishing for much
>more than the bucks and must work with the present net environment.
And a curious environment it is, self-aware yet out of control.
>I'm
>just sorry that the rewards aren't as great as you might have hoped.
Don't know what you mean by rewards.
>
>Under TeleRead, you'd be way ahead, and not just because of better
>distribution. The feds would promote the manufacture of affordable,
>sharp-screened computers designed for reading, writing, networking and
>the rest. Publishers would actually stand a chance of making money
>online. Why the devil can't Washington care as much about book-friendly
>computers as about HDTV?
OK, I'll bite. Tell us about TeleRead.
>
>Coincidentally I talked today to a common acquaintance of ours, Carol
>Risher at AAP. I'd love it if you shared with her your feelings about
>encryption and the need to make e-books affordable to all.
You could copy her on this message or send me her email address, and
I'll be glad to see what she thinks about this subject.
>
>Quite rightly, Carol is scared of the economics of online publishing.
And what are these economics? It means restructuring access, from the
distribution model of scattering many like copies of something around
the world, to the structured access model, customized for the user.
The latter model offers more opportunity for doing business than the
former, which is insufficient in the face of the global online market.
>I
>don't blame her. As I say in the proposal itself, TeleRead would start
>slowly so publishers and other would know dial-up patterns.
>
>We could limit the first dialups to narrow subjects and to public domain
>material. Or, as someone has suggested to me, we could also go by the
>age of the book (perhaps a combination of age and subject would be best
>if we really wanted to be cautious). What's now on the brink of being
>remaindered could be fodder for the online library. Publishers and
>writers could earn extra money, and if a certain title proved popular
>again, then it could go back into old-fashioned print.
>
Sure, this approach minimizes the risk, and if you're creative, the old
books could become veritable flowers in the desert.
>As it happens, Al Gore is once again talking about a little child in
>Tennessee dialing up the Library of Congress. But how to do this in a
>way that's fair to the book biz as well as the child? That's what
>TeleRead is all about.
Let's think about "the book biz". Does it mean publishers, foresters,
printers, truck drivers, bookstore owners, marketeers? Don't forget to
put into the mix what might be fair for the yet unnamed workers who
will benefit from online incarnation of Library of Congress books. The
programmers, link editors, acquisitions editors, proofreaders,
educators, marketeers, distributors, the keepers.
>
>I will say--as a former poverty beat reporter--that "knowledge stamps"
>are not the answer.
And what might these be? How does one earn them?
>They invite abuse and deceit.
Sounds like you're talking about food stamps. Same idea? Why not have
knowledge stamps for everyone, not just the economically disadvantaged,
on the priciple that the more you take, the more you must give back.
> It's far better, far
>more efficient, to drive down the cost of knowledge for everyone and
>have the poor benefit along with the rest of society. How to
>cost-justify this? The proposal gives the grubby details.
>
Maybe you could send me the proposal you mention so I can better
understand what you're talking about. Thanks in advance.
