"Louann Miller" <louan
...@yahoo.net> wrote in message
...
> On Fri, 04 Oct 2002 16:18:50 -0400, Nyrath the nearly wise
> It was right here (here being r.a.sf.w) that we had the flame war that
> led to Eric Flint proposing the Free Library to Baen in the first
> place.
That is quite correct. It was as a direct result of the discussion here
that I called Jim Baen and, after we discussed the issue, the Free Library
got created.
I have to say that what I find most absurd about the continuing insistence
on the part of some people that the approach which I take will lead to sure
disaster is that they ignore the ongoing experience of Webscriptions, which
has been one of the few successful e-publishing enterprises going. People
get fixated on flashy stuff like the Free Library and, now, the CD which
goes along with Dave Weber's WAR OF HONOR. That's because of the totemic
magic power of the word "free."
But it's silly, really. The books which are sold through Webscriptions,
month after month, come in _exactly_ the same format as the ones in the
Library: i.e., they are completely unencrypted. So somebody has to pay an
average of less than $4 apiece for them. Big deal. Does anyone really
think a thief is deterred by the prospect of having to invest a bit of
capital? ("Sorry, guys. We can't rob that bank because first we'd have to
spend our OWN money buying bullets for the guns and filling up our getaway
car with gas. Can't be done. S'against the Thieves Code.")
It is SO goddam silly. That's _already_ how 99% of online copyright
infringement takes place. It doesn't happen because some genius hacker
figures out how to break the -- try to keep a straight face -- Utterly
Unbreakable Latest Corporate Code. It happens when some goofball goes out
and buys a _paper_ copy of the book -- for more money than a Webscriptions
title -- and then scans it. (And theoretically proof-reads the resulting
mess carefully. Ha.)
Webscriptions bypasses the whole thing. And at the same time pays more in
the way of royalties to the authors than any other e-publishing enterprise I
know of. (Leaving aside what Stephen King might be able to pull off.)
The reason it works is because Webscriptions titles are: a) cheap; b)
user-friendly. So there's simply no incentive for anyone to engage in
copyright infringement except pure and simple goofballs. And those ye shall
always have with you, but by themselves they're nothing more than (at most)
a petty nuisance.
The other gigantic advantage to the Baen approach, of course -- and the
reason I personally took the stance I did -- is that is does not require
trampling all over the Bill of Rights and genuflecting at the altar of
corporate welfare.
Eric
