On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 04:34:31AM -0800, Caliann the Elf <calianng_graves at yahoo.com> wrote: > The first problem with this has already been addressed: Most > established authors already have contracts which they must > fulfill. But not necessarily the new ones; that's the promise of any such system. Without the stamp of the old, it must depend on the new. > The second problem is copyright. No matter how hard you try > and how many cascade transparencies you put up on a site, > SOMEONE will manage to break it and steal the data. Once it is > sent out once it will be sent out to whomever wants it. That > means the work will be available free-of-charge to whomever > want it...and the author won't get paid. While this is in fact a problem, it's not a serious one. Sure, everyone in the industry yells about it. The RIAA and MPAA complain loudly about piracy cannabalizing their sales and scheme up new and interesting ways to try to prevent unauthorized copying, while to date print media has continued in the long tradition of ... no protections whatsoever. Why? Because the law is sufficient when the people wish to do the right thing. Of the people on this list, how many would steal a Brust novel if they could do so? How many would rather buy it honestly? The fact is, even very simple technical protections function sufficiently well to make people aware that the material is copyrighted and that it should not be redistributed. And that is the key point -- where people perceive purchasing the material to be the right thing to do, and the material is reasonably priced, that's what they will do. (How do I know this? When I'm wearing my professional hat I manage a website that does almost exactly what I am describing, for a different type of content, and makes not at all trivial amounts of money doing so.) > Although theft of books has always been somewhat of a problem, > it would be MUCH more of a problem if they were published > online. That's entirely a matter of opinion at this point. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp