[737] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: What's Going on Here?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brendan Kehoe)
Tue Jul 14 14:33:57 1992
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1992 13:25:16 CDT
Reply-To: brendan@world.std.com
From: Brendan Kehoe <brendan@world.std.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I've been reading the discourse on various lists and in newsgroups
with interest; the note by David Tyckoson put forth some common
(although perhaps extreme) concerns.
David wrote:
>[PACS-L] did not need print publication to authenticate its status as
>a leading journal in our field.
However, I imagine its publication will reach a lot more people than
would otherwise have been aware of PACS, or anything it represents.
Why not share the information? You're not being deprived of anything.
As fast as our industry is going, it'll still be a long time before
the general public has the intuition to look for something to be in
electronic form first, and printed matter second. The latter has been
around for thousands of years; you don't convert things that quickly.
Gutenberg's a fabulous step forward. Realize, though, that there
won't be many high school English teachers referring their pupils to
the electronic copy of the Scarlet Letter for a long, long time.
To be almighty and insist something be maintained in electronic form
exclusively is to say you feel anyone without the knowledge to gain
access to it should suffer in the face of their own ignorance. That's
not right. The number of people that wrote me commenting on Zen that
got *printed* copies from friends was absolutely amazing. A professor
here said she chuckled when she saw my name on something sitting in a
lab at Temple University. I've discovered there are a lot of people
that've only encountered Zen in hardcopy, having never realized it was
distributed electronically.
> An even more threatening statement is the publication of Zen in
>print only. What this says to me is that some publishers have found out
>that there is money to be made on them thar networks, so they are going to
>try to make us pay for information that has been available "free" to
>everyone in the past.
Your implication is that someone's trying to deprive you of some basic
right. Don't you realize how special this environment is? It's one
of maybe a dozen places in the world where you'll find people spending
considerable amounts of time and effort contributing to the Public
Good. Were that it represented the status quo in all of our society;
that, indeed, would be a Utopia.
The publishers didn't "find out" that there's money to be made. I'm
sure there are dozens of other books published by Prentice Hall this
month that easily overshadow any of the money Zen might make. Buying
the second edition gets you a lot more information than is in the
first edition; sure, there's some duplication, but it's not like I
printed a copy of the first edition out and sent it as camera copy for
the second edition. A considerable amount of work went into making it
reasonably complete and something that would be professionally
acceptable.
Let's say you buy a book on how to cook chicken (e.g., chicken
marsala). That information's been freely available to you for
centuries, but you bought the book for the recipe. Just because you
didn't know to ask your aunt (or look in the Usenet cookbook with
WAIS, for that matter), does that mean the company shouldn't publish
its cookbook?
When he was approached, this author realized "real" publication was
the only way he could realistically afford to continue his work on the
book. The first edition was done entirely in my own spare time.
I'm right now a third-year undergraduate supporting himself completely
independently, not a staff employee who can get permission from his
boss to work on a special project for a few months. I have real
tuition bills, real rent and food bills, and, while I believe in the
spirit of the Net, I have had to face the facts. Without support, you
can only do so much. The kudos and congratulations are
wonderful---but Widener wouldn't take a hundred written letters as
barter for my tuition. (Nor the free publicity they've reaped as a
result, but that's a different story.) The results have to be
tanglible. (In my case, the only tangible result they can to see is a
signed check.)
In all likelihood, Zen would not have grown past the first edition at
all had it not been for the interest of Prentice Hall. The amount of
time it takes to put together something of this size is amazing; to
have it take up all your free time is an equally remarkable
phenomenon. Listening to people gripe and complain really makes you
become cynical at times about the work you're doing. Why bother, if
you're incessantly hearing people saying it's not enough, or you've
sold out?
Think about it from a perspective other than your own for a moment.
>I have thought of the Internet as one of our best efforts at
>distributing information to anyone in the world on an equal basis,
>but publishing guides to this system on a "for sale" basis will erode
>the democracy of the system.
I strongly disagree. If anything, it'll attract more people TO the
system. There's more than enough altruism on the Net to outlast all
of our lifetimes. Don't make Zen the cornerstone for the fall of
Jericho; it's only one amongst many things that are (and will be)
available on the Net.
Publishers are becoming savvy about the Internet. Zen and The New
Hacker's Dictionary are evidence of that fact. Notice the first
edition of Zen is, and always will be, publicly available. If you
realized the amount of time I spent just fighting for that much, you'd
probably be considerably less negative.
Now that government and other agencies are starting to wake up and
realize that funding information services for the public good is a
Good Thing(tm), the possibilities for the future have expanded a
thousandfold. I think it's a crime that Archie had to grow out of a
grass-roots effort, rather than have the backing of (at least) the NSF
long before it was even accessible. Similar efforts have been made by
people who feel it'll benefit more than just themselves. Let's hope
that our journey into the Twenty-First century will be accompanied by
a higher conscience about the massive need for support this technology
has brought with it.
The corporate environment has also changed dramatically in the last
decade. "Open Systems" are the latest buzz-words in advertising.
Companies are seeing the benefits of releasing information for public
dissemination. There's a higher consciousness about the threats of
patenting software (the president of Borland International is among
those fighting them). Digital, Sun, and other computer companies are
releasing what amount to trade secrets (the Alpha assembler, the Sparc
design), realizing it's in their own benefit to encourage others to
follow their lead. The trend is towards freedom of information, not
hoarding and profiteering.
>I hope that this publication of ZEN is not an indication of future
>privatization of the Internet.
It certainly is not; neither is the licensing of version 3 of the
Archie server, nor the sale of Internet access, nor Usenet CD-ROMs,
nor the support by BSDI for CSRG's Unix work, nor the sale of
Clarinet, USA Today, and other news services. Yes, you will see many
more commercial ventures as people realize the market that Cyberspace
represents (particularly with CIX getting up full gusto). Don't
immediately equate that activity with fascism. I've even seen press
releases of an "adult service" available over the Internet. Now, if
we haven't come full circle with that, I don't know what the litmus
test could be.
This commercial activity, though, will serve only as a catalyst to
bring more people into the fold---it won't be a cancer on those who
appreciate the free side of things. Please remember, the word "free"
can have two interpretations: you can have a free lunch, and you can
have free speech. The Net represents free speech, and freely
redistributable information in all forms. To imagine that this is any
way free of monetary obligation is completely unrealistic. Do you
believe that all of the information you've obtained over the net for
your use at SUNY-Albany was in any way freely transmitted? SUNY, and
many others, are paying large amounts of very real money for your
enlightenment. The mere fact that it doesn't come directly from your
wallet shouldn't lead you to believe that it's free of the
requirements of modern society.
>If not, July 10, 1992 may have marked the beginning of the end of
>free access to electronic information through the Internet.
Imminent death of the net predicted---news at eleven.
Brendan
