Re: Bezos on 1-click ordering

[Adam Turoff <ziggy@panix.com>]

mjd wrote:
> [...]
> Now my book is written, and I want to have it published.  Someone has
> to pay the publisher, the compositor, the editor, the designer, and
> the printer.  Usually the way that works is that a publisher agrees to
> pay for all those things in return for a share of the revenue from
> selling copies of the book.  Now suppose you are the publisher.  You
> pay for all those things, and publish the book, and it is a big
> success and starts selling.  Then another publisher starts printing
> copies of the same book and selling them cheaper.  They can do that,
> because they were able to take advantage of all the editing and design
> you did, for free.  Now you cannot sell any books.  You paid for all
> the design and editing work, and you get nothing back.  Then you go
> out of business.

This actually happened within the last couple of years, but the results
didn't put the original publisher out of business.  (Although I admit
it just might be an urban legend.)

ORA decided to try and kill some trees and publish some of the larger
HOWTO guides from the Linux Documentation Project.  They took the 
GPL'd text of the Linux Device Drivers book, cleaned it up and 
published it.  Because it was GPL'd, ORA had to turn back the edited,
cleaned up manuscript back to the community; another publisher picked
it up off the net, made no modifications whatsoever, and published a
cheaper version of the same book.

The unscrupulous 2nd publisher was the arm of a very large, old publishing
firm; this arm was created with the express intent to kill O'Reilly.

As mjd points out, these are very real concerns.  Some publishers are
trying their hardest to allow free electronic distribution of articles
and books they print.  Techniques being tried out today include:
	- leave the original author full copyright
	- let the author post material on their website,
	  but the publisher retains copyright (typically for
	  reprinting)
	- allow limited electronic redistribution of the
	  work in source or non-source form (PostScript/PDF/etc.)
	- allow full GPL-like redistribution with the provision
	  that only one named publisher has the right to include this
	  material in a work containing an ISBN/ISSN (i.e. book or
	  magazine)

Software patents may very well be an abuse of intellectual property laws,
due to the nature of prior art and the patent office's definition of 
innovation.  But throwing out copyright and trademark law along with 
patent law because "IP is (bogus|wrong|anachronistic|misguided)" is most 
certainly throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Z.

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