RD's analysis was very interesting. But about "Informantion wants to be
free": People certainly deserve protection for the value of their
intellectual work. But greed transforms this plausible principle
often enough into abuse.
Let me give an example: Scientific research papers and textbooks.
Publishers in the past had to charge money for journals, just to pay for
the cost of distriubtion and physical production of the journal in the
first place. Same with books.
Now along come changes. First of all,technology made the things
cheaper to produce,
for example because authors supply not typed material that needs type
setting
but computer ready copy where the type-setting is just a matter of pushing
a button. Second, the distribution becomes free.
Moreover, older papers and books are free to the publisher-the publisher
already owns them.
So what ought to happen? Books ought to get cheaper, the authors ought to
get more of what they do cost(the authors are now doing some of the work
that formerly was done by the publisher), and old papers ought to be free
entirely on line.
Did this happen? Well, somewhat. Some older parts of mathematical journals
are free on
line now. But not all. The AES is charging for old papers on line and so
is Springer for example for mathematical journal articles, even old ones.
And books are not cheaper at all. Textbooks for example are a deliberate
money scam, with texts on ancient unchanging subjects like calculus going
through frequent multiple editions with only meaningless changes to make
sure that
used copies cannot be used by students. This is a deliberate attempt to
work the students over and extract money for nothing. (The changes are
trivial but are such that
students can no longer use an old eidtion, e.g., changes in the numbering
and details of homework exercises).
Publishers in short are being greedy, as are textbook authors. In a big
way. Well, it is the publishers' last
hurrah. Soon they will cease to exist and they deserve to. In a way, that
is too bad. I
like books. But many publishers are running a scam on the public. They
deserve the fate that will soon be upon them.
I was looking the other day for a cheap old calculus book to use as a
text. The subject of
couse and also how it is taught have not changed in the last fifty years
or so so I figured I could find an old cheap textbook still in print but
reissued cheap in paperback that I could use instead of asking the already
financially stressed students(suffering from the collapse of public
funding for public education in the USA) to spend nearly $200 on a
new and unnecessarily expensive textbook.
This search has failed , so far. Such is the greed of people that even
books by authors long dead are still being offered, forty years later, at
full price. The authors are no longer even around but their grandchildren
(or whoever constitutes their estate) are still trying to make money
out of books written in the 1960s.
Fie upon them. The authors of calculus books were in those days, befor the
thing became an industry, were not even making a living out of writing the
books. They were taking time from being university professors, already (at
that time) well paid and trying to make more money. This is all quite
contrary to the proper academic spirit.
Information really ought to be free, in many cases. The opposite approach
serves only to entrench the culture that says that only the rich have
access to much of anything.
Robert
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