We at Vital Source Technologies think that the discussion that has taken place here has been important and has been, for the most part, lively and useful. We feel like our product and company intentions have been mischaracterized, but that isn't the point of this message.
The point of this message is that there is a line; a line of decency and respect that has been crossed in the actions of a few people who have taken their views to an extreme that is deplorable.
We aren't talking about hacking, flame mail or the like - we are talking about physical threats of harm that no community should tolerate or respect.
No one should live in fear for the expression of their ideas.
>First, let me say that when you introduced the product to the University,
>that it was not reviewed by the IS department. Your company had done an
>end-run around the department, and because this, I resigned from the school.
Last time I checked, academic departments take care of determining what content gets taught and required in a curriculum.
>First of all, one can not copy the textbooks on the disk. It is a legal
>fact that owners of Books have this right under Constitutional Law, but
>you deny it to your customers.
You aren't allowed to xerox books and give them away under any law. You have previously stated feelings on music belonging to society and not the artist, so we know your perspective on copyright law.
>Secondly, you claim that you are licensing the material to the students.
>In this case, the contract would not be valid because you couple it with a
>mandate for ALL the students in the program. In order to be a participant
>in the educational activities at the university you Must Purchase the
>media and the player. Contracts in which both partners are not equally
>allowed to fairly negotiate are non-binding under case law.
We have contracts with Universities. As is obvious with NYU, we negoiate with the universities who then mandate students to purchase the disc. Your example doesn't apply.
>New York University was concerned about some of these Fair Use issues. As
>such, they guaranteed that printed books of all the material will be
>available for students if they choose to buy them. But this is not nearly
>far enough because it is a doubling of the expense to obtain what Students
>already purchased in the first place.
We offer our service to freshmen. How have the students already purchased this?
>On a broader level, if the VitalBook product is allowed to pass without
>challenge, it will be mean the inevitable end to public education and a
>free exchange of information.
Yeah, like that is going to happen.
>Next will be the medical schools, then the engineering schools, then
>undergraduate schooling, then High School Education, until we reach the
>point where privately owned libraries and freedom of discussion will be
>outlawed. As this products works, and with the abusive power brought by
>the DMCA, I don't see my Grandchildren ever owning a copy of Curious
>George or the Cat in the Hat in the future. The publishers will have no
>incentive to produce paper copies for home ownership. They'll just Lease
>digital copies for a year to year rental.
A few things on this point.
1. We aren't the DMCA.
2. The only disincentive for publishers not producing the paper version of a book is if it isn't making money.
Why don't you ask the 13 health sciences publishers who went bankrupt over the past 7 years why they went bankrupt? Why can't you purchase any version of their textbooks now? Ever think about that?
>As your aware, is not allowed to to give Their copy to someone else, and
>according to your FAQ, they can not share it with upper classmen because
>you threaten to sue them in plain black and white on your web page.
>Furthermore, they can not Sell their books to other students either. The
>prevention of this alone is a violation of the students rights, even under
>the DMCA. If an Upper Classman wants to use a lower classmans device to
>find a paragraph of material - you website makes it clear that in your
>opinion this is a violation of Copyright. Yet, every single court decision
>and Section 107 of the Copyright Act, and the US Constitution says your
>just plain wrong.
They can let others read their books - but they can't copy them. How hard is it to understand this?
>Sirs - This is just NOT GOOD ENOUGH. College Students who pay they're hard
>earned money should be able to keep their book without your permission as
>part of their basic right to property under the 4th amendment of the US
>Constitution. What your describing is Stalinist at best.
Stalinist? There are very few modern comtemporaries to the atrocities committed under Stalin. You can find modern counterparts to the murder and oppression of Stalin in different places, but I am pretty sure none of those work in the e-books industry.
>Reason Number one why students drop out - They run out of money and the
>financial pressure of staying in school becomes too great.
Do you have statistics to back this up for Dental School education?
>Reason Number Two - Students may transfer to a different school using a
>different product or books. Now, all the education they did until this
>point become valueless because your time lock turns of the software.
All their education becomes valueless because of the time limits on our beta software? Wow, I didn't know I had that compiler setting turned on....
>I want them to use whatever information they choose to use and not be
>dictated to by VitalBooks. Dentists have continuing education mandates
>which makes it important to them to get further education. Your completely
>crossing the line when you ask this question. They have Dental Association
>Journals, Research etc available to them. They have no need of your
>product to stay up to date. I definitely WANT my dentist to have the
>original books he learned with as a point of reference when continuing his
>education as a professional. Your product simple doesn't make that possible.
We restrict people from being able to buy journals and research? Wow, I didn't know we could do that...as for my question being out of line, I think it is important to know how up to date ones dentist is. You may not care. You may have false teeth.
>Your promising Vendors that they will make more money because they'll sell
>more books, and then argue that it's cheaper for the student. How is this
>Magic performed? Hmmm
Publishers print on paper. Very little of the cost of a book is for the actual content. Most of the cost is the printing, binding and transport of the book. Therefore, publishers can charge less for a book that doesn't have to be printed on paper. So, for the same cost as the paper books, we can make available to schools more content for the same price of the paper books before.
>Secondly, you are forcing students to buy material they don't want or need
>by taking the purchasing decision out of their hands and force feeding
>them material which may or may not be apropiate for their personal use. So
>your price fixing and using extortion.
Since the content on the disc is set by the school based on their curriculum, it seems to follow that the material is important for the students use. Extortion requires an excessive or exorbitant charge. Seeing as how we are the same cost as the paper versions, I don't see how that applies.
>And your point? It's not up to public to assure a profit. For God Sakes,
>NYU Dental changes over 60K a year in tuition, and then make a tidy profit
>with their dental clinics. Let them publish their own material on the
>Internet if need be. - Oh - but that's that you and your publishing
>partners are worried about in the first place. If NYU Dental, the Largest
>Dental School in the US gets serious about self publish material cheaply
>with the Internet, and inexpensive tools for video production and editing,
>then they cut the publishers out of the picture all together.........
Who do you think writes and reviews books? Academic faculty. All you are doing in your example is making the University a publisher and taking away the rights of the authors and illustrators.
>What's the point. Everyone has to carry the cost of 100 books because you
>insist?
I didn't. We didn't. The schools decide the list based on their curriculm which every dental student is required to take.
>Oh - your being very Coy. Of COURSE you include MORE on the disk than NYU
>asks for. It's part of your guarantee to publishers. The question is why
>should NYU have to PAY for more than they're asking for..
Actually, they aren't charged for the extra material.
>No - you dropped the ball in Civics and consideration of the welfare of
>the public. Your website is quite good enough at making clear your total
>disrespect for Students and the American Publics right to own what they
>purchase and freedom to educate.
The reason we started this project was to try and solve the problem that fewer and fewer books were available because publishers were going under.
Your notion of purchase is incorrect. For example, you can't perform a play from a copyrighted work legally without paying royalties to the author, nor can you take a vinyl LP you purchased, and play it in a restaurant without paying royalties to music publishers. This has gone on for quite a while without impacting the welfare of society.
>What you call Casual Piracy is called "Fair Use" and is constitutionally
>mandated by our founding fathers to protect the public from people.....
>actually people like you.
If you copy one of our books, you copy the entire book. That isn't allowed under fair use with the paper versions. Not for non-profits, not for anyone.
>Mandating the use of product and forcing payment is the very definition of
>Monopoly.
The school requires that. Not us.
>Mandating the use of product and forcing payment is the very definition of
>Monopoly.
NYU gets to pick whatever books they want. A monopoly would restrict choice to the school. We don't.
>Run that by me again? Your making them pay for material that they don't
>need and prevent them from reselling it in the after market.
They don't need any of the books required for a class? Fascinating.
>12. Can I share it with others? You can show them the books, but you can't
>copy it. The FAQ on the site is poorly worded.
>
>It's worded perfectly
Uh, what part of show and copy do you not understand?
>13. We don't sell computers.
>We don't sell our rights!
We don't give away intellectual property.
>Don't publish and die as a business. That's your problem.
Why is it so funny that we referred back to/. for discussion - we read it, use it, and realize that it is a better forum for discussion than anything we would create on our own site overnight.
As for the price controls, the publishers set the price - just like now. They own the content and set the price, we are just an alternate delivery mechanism.
I would have replied sooner, but I was on an airplane. (Now why don't we have 802.11 in the air?)
First off, I think everyone here was taken aback by being compared to facists, evildoers or harbingers of a RMS nightmare.
There are quite a few misconceptions that are permeating through the thread. Let me try to clarify some of these...
1. This isn't the situation that RMS describes. A licensed user can let someone look at their book. They aren't allowed to give copies of the books to their friends, but then again, you can't legally go xerox a whole book either. (This is regardless of the DMCA.)
2. The users who decide to continue the service will get to keep those editions of the books that they have when they leave school. We are working out the details so that a subscription model is in place for those folks who have graduated can have the most up to date references in one place.
Contrast this with the 40 year old dentist who still has their textbooks from college. Do you want them to be using those 15 year old books as a reference or the latest available information? Right now (before VitalBook), they have to purchase the latest edition at full cost - with us, they can pay less for a subscription and stay up to date. If they don't want the subscription, then they just keep the last edition that they recieved.
Either way, they get to keep access the books if they paid for them in school.
It is almost entirely like the CodeWarrior subscription model.
3. VitalBooks cost less. There are a lot more books than the required amount before, and you get all that extra content for the same price as you used to pay for less content on paper. You get more information for the same cost. This isn't a price gouging ploy. You get more for the same price you would have paid with a paper version.
4. Information isn't free. Someone had to write the textbook, someone had to draw the drawings, someone had edit the content, someone had to review the content to make sure the content was correct. That goes into most every book.
5. A VitalBook disc has ~ 7 GB of content and over 100 books on one disc.
6. Schools determine what books go onto the disc. They give us a list and we try to get every book on the list on the disc. Usually, we even put more on the disc. I don't know of a case where we limited what a school could put on a disc - notwithstanding those publishers who we could not negoiate a license with.
7. Our WWW site sucks. It is so bad that we have been obsessed about making a good product that we dropped the ball on Internet marketing?
8. Why is purchase mandated at the schools who use the system? So that 1) it is ensured that students have the materials required for class, 2) by requiring everyone to purchase, you eliminate the casual piracy that goes on (if we didn't do this, we would have to charge more, 3) by allowing people to search across multiple books and manuals at the one time, the schools thought this was good stuff for the students to have.
9. We don't restrict publishers from being available on the disc. There isn't a monopoly on information here.
10. For quite a while some schools have required purchase of computers - sometimes they even specify brand...Is this a monopoly?
11. Dental school curriculums are a fixed entity. Everyone goes through all of the classes. Therefore, at some point during your time at school, you will need the book for a given class.
12. Can I share it with others? You can show them the books, but you can't copy it. The FAQ on the site is poorly worded.
13. We don't sell computers.
14. Our affiliation with Total Sports...We share a common investor. Our net infrastructure is shared with them for the time being.
15. Copy-restriction schemes are a necessary evil for electronic versions of content (otherwise you won't get electronic versions of some content...). I don't think there is any good argument around this. The honor system doesn't work. Does it? (unless you are Stephen King...)
What is a fair and equitable way of making sure that authors, illustrators and the middlemen who bring a electronic product to market get paid for their work?
We would love to know. Let us know if you have ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
We at Vital Source Technologies think that the discussion that has taken place here has been important and has been, for the most part, lively and useful. We feel like our product and company intentions have been mischaracterized, but that isn't the point of this message.
The point of this message is that there is a line; a line of decency and respect that has been crossed in the actions of a few people who have taken their views to an extreme that is deplorable.
We aren't talking about hacking, flame mail or the like - we are talking about physical threats of harm that no community should tolerate or respect.
No one should live in fear for the expression of their ideas.
Thanks for listening.
>First, let me say that when you introduced the product to the University,
.....
>that it was not reviewed by the IS department. Your company had done an
>end-run around the department, and because this, I resigned from the school.
Last time I checked, academic departments take care of determining what content gets taught and required in a curriculum.
>First of all, one can not copy the textbooks on the disk. It is a legal
>fact that owners of Books have this right under Constitutional Law, but
>you deny it to your customers.
You aren't allowed to xerox books and give them away under any law. You have previously stated feelings on music belonging to society and not the artist, so we know your perspective on copyright law.
>Secondly, you claim that you are licensing the material to the students.
>In this case, the contract would not be valid because you couple it with a
>mandate for ALL the students in the program. In order to be a participant
>in the educational activities at the university you Must Purchase the
>media and the player. Contracts in which both partners are not equally
>allowed to fairly negotiate are non-binding under case law.
We have contracts with Universities. As is obvious with NYU, we negoiate with the universities who then mandate students to purchase the disc. Your example doesn't apply.
>New York University was concerned about some of these Fair Use issues. As
>such, they guaranteed that printed books of all the material will be
>available for students if they choose to buy them. But this is not nearly
>far enough because it is a doubling of the expense to obtain what Students
>already purchased in the first place.
We offer our service to freshmen. How have the students already purchased this?
>On a broader level, if the VitalBook product is allowed to pass without
>challenge, it will be mean the inevitable end to public education and a
>free exchange of information.
Yeah, like that is going to happen.
>Next will be the medical schools, then the engineering schools, then
>undergraduate schooling, then High School Education, until we reach the
>point where privately owned libraries and freedom of discussion will be
>outlawed. As this products works, and with the abusive power brought by
>the DMCA, I don't see my Grandchildren ever owning a copy of Curious
>George or the Cat in the Hat in the future. The publishers will have no
>incentive to produce paper copies for home ownership. They'll just Lease
>digital copies for a year to year rental.
A few things on this point.
1. We aren't the DMCA.
2. The only disincentive for publishers not producing the paper version of a book is if it isn't making money.
Why don't you ask the 13 health sciences publishers who went bankrupt over the past 7 years why they went bankrupt? Why can't you purchase any version of their textbooks now? Ever think about that?
>As your aware, is not allowed to to give Their copy to someone else, and
>according to your FAQ, they can not share it with upper classmen because
>you threaten to sue them in plain black and white on your web page.
>Furthermore, they can not Sell their books to other students either. The
>prevention of this alone is a violation of the students rights, even under
>the DMCA. If an Upper Classman wants to use a lower classmans device to
>find a paragraph of material - you website makes it clear that in your
>opinion this is a violation of Copyright. Yet, every single court decision
>and Section 107 of the Copyright Act, and the US Constitution says your
>just plain wrong.
They can let others read their books - but they can't copy them. How hard is it to understand this?
>Sirs - This is just NOT GOOD ENOUGH. College Students who pay they're hard
>earned money should be able to keep their book without your permission as
>part of their basic right to property under the 4th amendment of the US
>Constitution. What your describing is Stalinist at best.
Stalinist? There are very few modern comtemporaries to the atrocities committed under Stalin. You can find modern counterparts to the murder and oppression of Stalin in different places, but I am pretty sure none of those work in the e-books industry.
>Reason Number one why students drop out - They run out of money and the
>financial pressure of staying in school becomes too great.
Do you have statistics to back this up for Dental School education?
>Reason Number Two - Students may transfer to a different school using a
>different product or books. Now, all the education they did until this
>point become valueless because your time lock turns of the software.
All their education becomes valueless because of the time limits on our beta software? Wow, I didn't know I had that compiler setting turned on....
>I want them to use whatever information they choose to use and not be
>dictated to by VitalBooks. Dentists have continuing education mandates
>which makes it important to them to get further education. Your completely
>crossing the line when you ask this question. They have Dental Association
>Journals, Research etc available to them. They have no need of your
>product to stay up to date. I definitely WANT my dentist to have the
>original books he learned with as a point of reference when continuing his
>education as a professional. Your product simple doesn't make that possible.
We restrict people from being able to buy journals and research? Wow, I didn't know we could do that...as for my question being out of line, I think it is important to know how up to date ones dentist is. You may not care. You may have false teeth.
>Your promising Vendors that they will make more money because they'll sell
>more books, and then argue that it's cheaper for the student. How is this
>Magic performed? Hmmm
Publishers print on paper. Very little of the cost of a book is for the actual content. Most of the cost is the printing, binding and transport of the book. Therefore, publishers can charge less for a book that doesn't have to be printed on paper. So, for the same cost as the paper books, we can make available to schools more content for the same price of the paper books before.
>Secondly, you are forcing students to buy material they don't want or need
>by taking the purchasing decision out of their hands and force feeding
>them material which may or may not be apropiate for their personal use. So
>your price fixing and using extortion.
Since the content on the disc is set by the school based on their curriculum, it seems to follow that the material is important for the students use. Extortion requires an excessive or exorbitant charge. Seeing as how we are the same cost as the paper versions, I don't see how that applies.
>And your point? It's not up to public to assure a profit. For God Sakes,
>NYU Dental changes over 60K a year in tuition, and then make a tidy profit
>with their dental clinics. Let them publish their own material on the
>Internet if need be. - Oh - but that's that you and your publishing
>partners are worried about in the first place. If NYU Dental, the Largest
>Dental School in the US gets serious about self publish material cheaply
>with the Internet, and inexpensive tools for video production and editing,
>then they cut the publishers out of the picture all together.........
Who do you think writes and reviews books? Academic faculty. All you are doing in your example is making the University a publisher and taking away the rights of the authors and illustrators.
>What's the point. Everyone has to carry the cost of 100 books because you
>insist?
I didn't. We didn't. The schools decide the list based on their curriculm which every dental student is required to take.
>Oh - your being very Coy. Of COURSE you include MORE on the disk than NYU
>asks for. It's part of your guarantee to publishers. The question is why
>should NYU have to PAY for more than they're asking for..
Actually, they aren't charged for the extra material.
>No - you dropped the ball in Civics and consideration of the welfare of
>the public. Your website is quite good enough at making clear your total
>disrespect for Students and the American Publics right to own what they
>purchase and freedom to educate.
The reason we started this project was to try and solve the problem that fewer and fewer books were available because publishers were going under.
Your notion of purchase is incorrect. For example, you can't perform a play from a copyrighted work legally without paying royalties to the author, nor can you take a vinyl LP you purchased, and play it in a restaurant without paying royalties to music publishers. This has gone on for quite a while without impacting the welfare of society.
>What you call Casual Piracy is called "Fair Use" and is constitutionally
>mandated by our founding fathers to protect the public from people
>actually people like you.
If you copy one of our books, you copy the entire book. That isn't allowed under fair use with the paper versions. Not for non-profits, not for anyone.
>Mandating the use of product and forcing payment is the very definition of
>Monopoly.
The school requires that. Not us.
>Mandating the use of product and forcing payment is the very definition of
>Monopoly.
NYU gets to pick whatever books they want. A monopoly would restrict choice to the school. We don't.
>Run that by me again? Your making them pay for material that they don't
>need and prevent them from reselling it in the after market.
They don't need any of the books required for a class? Fascinating.
>12. Can I share it with others? You can show them the books, but you can't
>copy it. The FAQ on the site is poorly worded.
>
>It's worded perfectly
Uh, what part of show and copy do you not understand?
>13. We don't sell computers.
>We don't sell our rights!
We don't give away intellectual property.
>Don't publish and die as a business. That's your problem.
I don't get your point.
Why is it so funny that we referred back to /. for discussion - we read it, use it, and realize that it is a better forum for discussion than anything we would create on our own site overnight.
As for the price controls, the publishers set the price - just like now. They own the content and set the price, we are just an alternate delivery mechanism.
I would have replied sooner, but I was on an airplane. (Now why don't we have 802.11 in the air?)
First off, I think everyone here was taken aback by being compared to facists, evildoers or harbingers of a RMS nightmare.
There are quite a few misconceptions that are permeating through the thread. Let me try to clarify some of these...
1. This isn't the situation that RMS describes. A licensed user can let someone look at their book. They aren't allowed to give copies of the books to their friends, but then again, you can't legally go xerox a whole book either. (This is regardless of the DMCA.)
2. The users who decide to continue the service will get to keep those editions of the books that they have when they leave school. We are working out the details so that a subscription model is in place for those folks who have graduated can have the most up to date references in one place.
Contrast this with the 40 year old dentist who still has their textbooks from college. Do you want them to be using those 15 year old books as a reference or the latest available information? Right now (before VitalBook), they have to purchase the latest edition at full cost - with us, they can pay less for a subscription and stay up to date. If they don't want the subscription, then they just keep the last edition that they recieved.
Either way, they get to keep access the books if they paid for them in school.
It is almost entirely like the CodeWarrior subscription model.
3. VitalBooks cost less. There are a lot more books than the required amount before, and you get all that extra content for the same price as you used to pay for less content on paper. You get more information for the same cost. This isn't a price gouging ploy. You get more for the same price you would have paid with a paper version.
4. Information isn't free. Someone had to write the textbook, someone had to draw the drawings, someone had edit the content, someone had to review the content to make sure the content was correct. That goes into most every book.
5. A VitalBook disc has ~ 7 GB of content and over 100 books on one disc.
6. Schools determine what books go onto the disc. They give us a list and we try to get every book on the list on the disc. Usually, we even put more on the disc. I don't know of a case where we limited what a school could put on a disc - notwithstanding those publishers who we could not negoiate a license with.
7. Our WWW site sucks. It is so bad that we have been obsessed about making a good product that we dropped the ball on Internet marketing?
8. Why is purchase mandated at the schools who use the system? So that 1) it is ensured that students have the materials required for class, 2) by requiring everyone to purchase, you eliminate the casual piracy that goes on (if we didn't do this, we would have to charge more, 3) by allowing people to search across multiple books and manuals at the one time, the schools thought this was good stuff for the students to have.
9. We don't restrict publishers from being available on the disc. There isn't a monopoly on information here.
10. For quite a while some schools have required purchase of computers - sometimes they even specify brand...Is this a monopoly?
11. Dental school curriculums are a fixed entity. Everyone goes through all of the classes. Therefore, at some point during your time at school, you will need the book for a given class.
12. Can I share it with others? You can show them the books, but you can't copy it. The FAQ on the site is poorly worded.
13. We don't sell computers.
14. Our affiliation with Total Sports...We share a common investor. Our net infrastructure is shared with them for the time being.
15. Copy-restriction schemes are a necessary evil for electronic versions of content (otherwise you won't get electronic versions of some content...). I don't think there is any good argument around this. The honor system doesn't work. Does it? (unless you are Stephen King...)
What is a fair and equitable way of making sure that authors, illustrators and the middlemen who bring a electronic product to market get paid for their work?
We would love to know. Let us know if you have ideas.
Thanks,
Engineering, Vital Source Technologies