Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

on 3 Aug 2000 Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:

> But I have been puzzling over a similar problem and have not
> yet received a satisfactory answer. Few print publishers want
> to publish on paper a work unless they can secure the rights to
> it. For example, O'Reilly and Associates did print a Linux
> manual that was under the GPL, but another publisher simply
> copied it and sold it at a reduced price. It was no longer
> ecoonomical for ORA to distribute it unless at a loss considering
> printing costs.
>
> However, this situation does not occur in online publishing,
> where the costs approximate zero. Thus a GPL or public domain
> work can be easily published online.

	True only for the reprinter. The original producer
	has front end-costs -- an investment that can be
	considerable -- that must be recovered. For publishers
	of highly specialized research materials, the cost of
	the first copy often exceeds the cost of all additional
	copies.

Albert Henderson
Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com>

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