Publishers have no moral right to make a profit at ALL.
If they can't produce a product at a cost people are willing to pay, they should go out of business.
I'm not wrong here. I'm 100% correct.
The publishing industry is complaining they can't make a profit on books and material because libraries let them borrow the material. Too bad.
Society has no moral contract with the publishers. It is perfectly acceptable for the publishers to go out of business. If society finds a need for publishers in the future, which I seriously doubt, they will have to pay for them.
But the logic that poor Publishers have to be guaranteed a profit by dismantling libraries and destroying public education and free speech, is comply unacceptable.
The cost of information has dropped like a rock.
I WANT the publishers to go out of busines...just like the Horse and Buggy.
Did you miss the point intentionally or trying to confuse the issue???
Nobody has the RIGHT to a profit...
If the publishing houses produce a product which is not economically viable - they whould be forced out of business to prevent them from producing crap we don't need.
Knolwedge and experience are different things. Experiece ONLY comes with age.
If you have expereince and knowlege at 20 - imagine what you'll have a t 40. Do you think everyone who is 40 just sat their brain dead waiting for your arrival?
If publishers can no longer stay in business publishing because technology makes it so inexpenssive to distribute material that they are no longer a viable business model, then protecting this business is essentially not in the interest of society.
Publishers just might not be needed any longer and should go the way of the Horse and Buggy...
Last time I checked, academic departments take care of determining w
hat content gets taught and required in a
curriculum.
The last time I check, Information Systems is the source of educated evaluation
of technology, including the ethical questions and reviewing the best alternativ
es for delivering digital services.
You aren't allowed to xerox books and give them away under any law. You have pre
viously stated feelings on music belonging to society and not the artist, so we
know your perspective on copyright law.
This is an unhanded, unbecoming statement. My views on copyright is not the iss
ue. It's your over reaching of copyright and suspending Fair Use rights which i
s the issue.
We have contracts with Universities. As is obvious with NYU, we nego
iate with the universities who then mandate
students to purchase the disc. Your example doesn't apply.
Wrong. It's the students paying for the service and the student individuals bei
ng licensed. Your completely wrong and bordering on being dishonest.
-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.
As a matter of fact, it is happening right and people argued for the right to do
this during the hearings at the Copyright Office in Washington DC and Standford
University. You must of missed those.
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 th
e past 7 years why they went bankrupt?
Why can't you purchase any version of their textbooks now? Ever think about t
hat?
First - Your are not the DMCA because the DMCA stands for the Digital Millinium Copyright Act of 1998.
Second - The reason not to publish on paper is because the DMCA and VitalBooks goves them a legal extortion sceme which is just unethical.
Third - The Market has spoken.... there are too many publishers publishing too ineffecei
ntly. A Free market person like you (and me) should have no trouble with that.
Why do we need any of these publishers. Why can't people publish on their own
without the Book Publishers? Why are you in the way of progress and efficiencie
s of the Market?
They can let others read their books - but they can't copy them. How hard is it
to understand this?
No - They can not according to the license. And even if they could, they're overly dependend on your prior aproval to be within reasonable fair use of the material. Your Company is willing to trade civil rights for Copyright Protections that are extra constitutional. That's a dangerous thing. Read http://www.nyfairuse.org for better insight. I no more want to protect publishers than I want to protect anyone else who has a business model which can not be sustained.
Uh, what part of show and copy do you not understand?
The part not in your FAQ. What is in your FAQ is clear and agrees with the DMCA and the opinions voiced by others in your industry at the Copyright Hearings. I can't share it with an upperclassman, or any unregistered user.
And for your information, Copying is ALSO a Constitutional Right. Giving Copies away is even legal sometimes, especially in education, and sharing information is completely essential for a healthy society.
BTW - your quoting and copying of some of my message is a violation of my copyright in your world view.... go figure.
-- 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.---
That's the problem.
BTW - You DO give away copyrighted material at the point of sale. At that point, certain rights to that material has now transported to the customer as part of their rights under the 4th and 1st amendment of the Bill of Rights.
Last time I checked, academic departments take care of determining what content gets taught and required in a
curriculum.
The last time I check, Information Systems is the source of educated evaluation of technology, including the ethical questions and reviewing the best alternatives for delivering digital services.
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.
This is an unhanded, unbecoming statement. My views on copyright is not the issue. It's your over reaching of copyright and suspending Fair Use rights which is the issue.
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.
Wrong. It's the students paying for the service and the student individuals being licensed. Your completely wrong and bordering on being dishonest.
>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.
As a matter of fact, it is happening right and people argued for the right to do this during the hearings at the Copyright Office in Washington DC and Standford University. You must of missed those.
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?
The Market has spoken.... there are too many publishers publishing too ineffeceintly. A Free market person like you (and me) should have no trouble with that. Why do we need any of these publishers. Why can't people publish on their own without the Book Publishers? Why are you in the way of progress and efficiencies of the Market?
They can let others read their books - but they can't copy them. How hard is it to understand this?
No - They can not according to the license. And even if they could, they're overly dependend on your prior aproval to be within reasonable fair use of the material.
In the case of Textbooks and materials as such, the Professors who teach at the Universities will have to publish in order to teach. It should actually be manadoty of their position......
So it's paid out of the $60,000 per yar tutition at NYUCD
mage a world where ALL textbooks are free. How do the author(s) and editor(s) get reimbursed for their efforts? How do
students get new textbooks? It is obvious that any extreme is very harmfull. Focusing on that, and that alone, only serves
confuse the issues.
I've been following this discussion in detail and since I work for the
NYU Dental School, I would like to make a few comments about your
explanation of your product. I feel compelled to clarify a
a number of the issues that your product brings and explain to you
why most reasonable people would agree that your product is not
an acceptable means for the transmission of education
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.
The reason why people are so upset by this is because, unlike what
you claim, your product does FAR beyond traditional protections of
Copyright. Actually, I think your fully aware of this because
you state right on your website that your going to end the
situation where Publishers are competing with their own
used books. Since the right of second sale is guaranteed as
part of the Fair Use Doctrine, right from the start your talking
against yourself.
The truth is, your product can not be allowed to stand because it
DOES threaten the foundations of Democracy and free speech in
this country. When the Copyright Office was making it's review of
classes of works to be be exempted from the DMCA, continually people
were asking specific cases. You would have qualified as that specific
case because you intrude on our Fair Use constitutional Guarantees in
the following specific ways.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now - I want to answer some of your points.
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.)
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.
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.
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. I shouldn't even have to give you any reasons why someone
may not finish all four years of Dental school, because it's irrelevant
to the point that your stealing the personal property of the students if
they leave the school, but let me clue you into some of the reasons
why someone might not finish the four years, which would then mean
they would not be allowed to keep their books.
Reason Number one why students drop out - They run out of money and
the financial pressure of staying in school becomes too great. They
might try to re-enter later. Or they might not. But they've completely
lost their books, or the right to recoup the costs of the books by
resale...which is one of your stated aims in your "Partners" section.
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.
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.
If they want to subscribe to get the latest information or not
is a personal decision for the graduate, and has nothing to do,
whatsoever, with the discussion.
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 received.
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.
Either way, they get to keep access the books if they paid for them in school.
But they don't have Fair Use of them. They can't make a copy of an
excerpt for distribution at a Presentation, which is completely
Fair Use and legal under Copyright Law. And then you can go out of
business, or their computer can break. Your system makes the safety
of all the information the Graduate is using dependent on your good will
and health as a private corporation. This is not a risk the public
should be asked to bare.
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.
This is only relevant if we were talking about an open market. Since
your program mandates "100% penetration" of the "Market", and since
students do not own the books, but are forced to pay for them, your
discussion of the relative cost is confusing.
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
Well - for one thing, you prevent the right of second sale, eliminating
the used book market, as you point out on your web site.
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.
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.
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.........
5. A VitalBook disc has ~ 7 GB of content and over 100 books on one disc.
So? The NY Public Library in multiples of that. Ever hear of
Index Medicus?
What's the point. Everyone has to carry the cost of 100 books
because you insist?
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 negotiate a
license with.
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..
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?
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.
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,
That's just not true..
For your own website:
the core concept of the VSTi
solution hinges on the concept that static content
is no longer sold to students for a one-time
payment; continually updated information is now
licensed to students for a recurring, yearly fee.
Students license books from year to year, with the
opportunity to continue those licenses throughout
their professional lives as continuing education. This
gives publishers the opportunity to offer continually
updated information in exchange for a revenue
stream that adds additional revenue each year,
instead of simply replacing revenue each year.
In the VSTi model, students are mandated by
universities to pay a yearly fee licensing their
reference curriculum. That fee is forwarded to VSTi,
and VSTi is the conduit through which individual
publishers receive license fees for individual titles.
Publishers receive a mandated, preset fee for every
student for every title chosen by professors.
Because the service is a global curriculum
application, the fee comes in from each student each
of the four years of their studies.
So, a book that in the past was "required" or
"recommended" for a given course, and which
carried the weighty overhead of production,
distribution, and return, is now licensed by every
student every year and distributed digitally.
The reason for mandating the students is to stifle competition and
destroy the market.
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,
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.
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.
Fine - but that has nothing to do with mandating the product.
9. We don't restrict publishers from being available on the disc. There isn't a monopoly on information here.
Mandating the use of product and forcing payment is the very definition
of Monopoly.
10. For quite a while some schools have required purchase of computers - sometimes they even specify brand...Is this a
monopoly?
Yes - and NY State has laws against this called the Second Source rule.
This is actually a criminal violation of NY State Law.
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.
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.
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
13. We don't sell computers.
We don't sell our rights!
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
Don't publish and die as a business. That's your problem.
And what happens if they Transfer schools, drop out, change graduate studies, etc.
Also, what happens when this is a success and all Universities, and programs use a similar method of distributing Copyrighted Material. What happens when publishers REFUSE to publish on Paper?
It's going to be mandated next year and the Vital Book web site says they are ygoing to PUSH more books to 100% saturation then the publishers previously were able to get the university to take.
--They're kidding, right? Last I checked, music belongs to whoever wrote it. --
That would be wrong and is the heart of the issue. Music and all intellectual creations are owned by society. This is an indelible aspect of human society. There is no human society a without shared culture. Cultures that are not shared become exinct, often after a long period of catastrophic disease - such as the old USSR.
We all share and are owners in a common culture. All a muscian has is a limited license to comercially exploit the music he created and to have credit for it's creation
What non-sense, and this is essentially why Microsoft keeps winning the software wars. A relational database is a database where data is related in a series of tables.
MYSQL is a fine RDBMS which does a great job and can be a drop in replacement for Access, Foxpro, Paradox, etc. These are the programs it can replace at very reasonable cost and little overhead. Given time it will likely have ACID complience as well.
It's time to learn that usability is REALLY important to the end user and the developer. And the MYSQL team actually supports the product on their mailing list. I've never seen a question go unanswered.
If anyone needs a cluestick poke, I think it's some of the DBA's of the world who religiously beleive in their own Dogma. I doubt even the Pope suffers from this form of mental illness.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Why didn't he show the numbers". MYSQL has a bunch of Benchmark results in the docs and the testing methods. He also had said that Postgres has a fatal BUG which prevented Postgress 7.0 from being tested.
What more do you want than full disclosure and honest assesment?
Only on a Negotiated CONTRACT - and even THEN - they can NOT prevent free speech. You can NOT agree to give up your right to free speech, any more than you can agree to be sold into slavery.
TNo - but my 12 year old has done all these things, and has for a few years.
All I'm say is if you REALLY want a screwed up Computer User, have them install a Scanner is Windows and then have it freeze solid, as it does about 50% of the time when installing hardware, and see how screwed up they get.
BTW - My kids can DEFINETELY install a printer with SUSE. - Even those in 2nd grade.
That's completely Bogus.
Advocates of redefining Copyright Law to a new definition of absolute property, which is NOT what it is currently, it's a VERY limited license it subject to Fair Use, love to talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Yeah - Software is Art, blah blah blah, the Artist's need to have control, blah blah blah. What a bunch of bull.
They come to the public and talk up the rights of the creators and then they talk to Congress to pass copyright laws which take the ownership of the Copyrighted material away from the artist who are descibed as mear "Employees". It's reached a point where the artist doesn't even OWN any part of the work, and never ever will.
I'm sick of the double talk. If we're protecting artist, then we should END corperate ownership of Copyright and restrict it to the Artist. Then the Artists will stop being ripped off by the same companies running around fighting for "the right of the Artist" under copyright, which they've managed to legally reduce to Artists having their work ripped off, lock stock and barrel by Time Warner sharks.
Actually, even in the case of a Book - Copying it would be legal.
This is LEGAL
For example, I had a Professor in College assign a Book that he wrote which was out of print, but manadorty for the Course. The Professor sued the local copy store for providing copies of the Book. The Copy Store counter sued, and won BOTH cases.
The judge essentially laughed the professors claim out of the court.
It was clearly fair use.
Slashdot Mirror
What's insane is you asking me to go to a Microsoft web site to learn about fair use.
No
I'm right
Publishers have no moral right to make a profit at ALL.
If they can't produce a product at a cost people are willing to pay, they should go out of business.
I'm not wrong here. I'm 100% correct.
The publishing industry is complaining they can't make a profit on books and material because libraries let them borrow the material. Too bad.
Society has no moral contract with the publishers. It is perfectly acceptable for the publishers to go out of business. If society finds a need for publishers in the future, which I seriously doubt, they will have to pay for them.
But the logic that poor Publishers have to be guaranteed a profit by dismantling libraries and destroying public education and free speech, is comply unacceptable.
The cost of information has dropped like a rock.
I WANT the publishers to go out of busines...just like the Horse and Buggy.
Did you miss the point intentionally or trying to confuse the issue???
Nobody has the RIGHT to a profit...
If the publishing houses produce a product which is not economically viable - they whould be forced out of business to prevent them from producing crap we don't need.
Ach
Knolwedge and experience are different things. Experiece ONLY comes with age.
If you have expereince and knowlege at 20 - imagine what you'll have a t 40. Do you think everyone who is 40 just sat their brain dead waiting for your arrival?
Ruben
Wrong
Publishers have no such right to profits any more than the homeless do...
If publishers can no longer stay in business publishing because technology makes it so inexpenssive to distribute material that they are no longer a viable business model, then protecting this business is essentially not in the interest of society. Publishers just might not be needed any longer and should go the way of the Horse and Buggy...
Oh No - My SuSe 6.4 has 15000 Aps - all
for 29.95 at CompUsa!! No No - too much Bloat!
If I want a word processor, damn it, I'll by it
seperated for $299.00
All I want on my computer is Notpad and Solitaire damn it!
Second - The reason not to publish on paper is because the DMCA and VitalBooks goves them a legal extortion sceme which is just unethical.
Third - The Market has spoken.... there are too many publishers publishing too ineffecei ntly. A Free market person like you (and me) should have no trouble with that. Why do we need any of these publishers. Why can't people publish on their own without the Book Publishers? Why are you in the way of progress and efficiencie s of the Market? They can let others read their books - but they can't copy them. How hard is it to understand this? No - They can not according to the license. And even if they could, they're overly dependend on your prior aproval to be within reasonable fair use of the material. Your Company is willing to trade civil rights for Copyright Protections that are extra constitutional. That's a dangerous thing. Read http://www.nyfairuse.org for better insight. I no more want to protect publishers than I want to protect anyone else who has a business model which can not be sustained.
The part not in your FAQ. What is in your FAQ is clear and agrees with the DMCA and the opinions voiced by others in your industry at the Copyright Hearings. I can't share it with an upperclassman, or any unregistered user.And for your information, Copying is ALSO a Constitutional Right. Giving Copies away is even legal sometimes, especially in education, and sharing information is completely essential for a healthy society.
BTW - your quoting and copying of some of my message is a violation of my copyright in your world view .... go figure.
That's the problem.BTW - You DO give away copyrighted material at the point of sale. At that point, certain rights to that material has now transported to the customer as part of their rights under the 4th and 1st amendment of the Bill of Rights.
I've been following this discussion in detail and since I work for the NYU Dental School, I would like to make a few comments about your explanation of your product. I feel compelled to clarify a a number of the issues that your product brings and explain to you why most reasonable people would agree that your product is not an acceptable means for the transmission of education
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.
The reason why people are so upset by this is because, unlike what you claim, your product does FAR beyond traditional protections of Copyright. Actually, I think your fully aware of this because you state right on your website that your going to end the situation where Publishers are competing with their own used books. Since the right of second sale is guaranteed as part of the Fair Use Doctrine, right from the start your talking against yourself.
The truth is, your product can not be allowed to stand because it DOES threaten the foundations of Democracy and free speech in this country. When the Copyright Office was making it's review of classes of works to be be exempted from the DMCA, continually people were asking specific cases. You would have qualified as that specific case because you intrude on our Fair Use constitutional Guarantees in the following specific ways.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now - I want to answer some of your points.
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.
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. I shouldn't even have to give you any reasons why someone may not finish all four years of Dental school, because it's irrelevant to the point that your stealing the personal property of the students if they leave the school, but let me clue you into some of the reasons why someone might not finish the four years, which would then mean they would not be allowed to keep their books.
Reason Number one why students drop out - They run out of money and the financial pressure of staying in school becomes too great. They might try to re-enter later. Or they might not. But they've completely lost their books, or the right to recoup the costs of the books by resale...which is one of your stated aims in your "Partners" section.
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.
If they want to subscribe to get the latest information or not is a personal decision for the graduate, and has nothing to do, whatsoever, with the discussion.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.
But they don't have Fair Use of them. They can't make a copy of an excerpt for distribution at a Presentation, which is completely Fair Use and legal under Copyright Law. And then you can go out of business, or their computer can break. Your system makes the safety of all the information the Graduate is using dependent on your good will and health as a private corporation. This is not a risk the public should be asked to bare. This is only relevant if we were talking about an open market. Since your program mandates "100% penetration" of the "Market", and since students do not own the books, but are forced to pay for them, your discussion of the relative cost is confusing.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
Well - for one thing, you prevent the right of second sale, eliminating the used book market, as you point out on your web site.
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.
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.........
So? The NY Public Library in multiples of that. Ever hear of Index Medicus?What's the point. Everyone has to carry the cost of 100 books because you insist?
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.. 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. That's just not true.. For your own website:the core concept of the VSTi solution hinges on the concept that static content is no longer sold to students for a one-time payment; continually updated information is now licensed to students for a recurring, yearly fee. Students license books from year to year, with the opportunity to continue those licenses throughout their professional lives as continuing education. This gives publishers the opportunity to offer continually updated information in exchange for a revenue stream that adds additional revenue each year, instead of simply replacing revenue each year.
In the VSTi model, students are mandated by universities to pay a yearly fee licensing their reference curriculum. That fee is forwarded to VSTi, and VSTi is the conduit through which individual publishers receive license fees for individual titles.
Publishers receive a mandated, preset fee for every student for every title chosen by professors. Because the service is a global curriculum application, the fee comes in from each student each of the four years of their studies.
So, a book that in the past was "required" or "recommended" for a given course, and which carried the weighty overhead of production, distribution, and return, is now licensed by every student every year and distributed digitally. The reason for mandating the students is to stifle competition and destroy the market.
What you call Casual Piracy is called "Fair Use" and is constitutionally mandated by our founding fathers to protect the public from peopleYes - and NY State has laws against this called the Second Source rule. This is actually a criminal violation of NY State Law.
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.
It's worded perfectly
We don't sell our rights! Don't publish and die as a business. That's your problem.And what happens if they Transfer schools, drop out, change graduate studies, etc.
Also, what happens when this is a success and all Universities, and programs use a similar method of distributing Copyrighted Material. What happens when publishers REFUSE to publish on Paper?
It's going to be mandated next year and the Vital Book web site says they are ygoing to PUSH more books to 100% saturation then the publishers previously were able to get the university to take.
So are you going for a lynching now?
(I highly don't recomend that)
That would be wrong and is the heart of the issue. Music and all intellectual creations are owned by society. This is an indelible aspect of human society. There is no human society a without shared culture. Cultures that are not shared become exinct, often after a long period of catastrophic disease - such as the old USSR.
We all share and are owners in a common culture. All a muscian has is a limited license to comercially exploit the music he created and to have credit for it's creation
Performance/Price
When Price is 0 then the ratio is always infinitely better than MS SQL Server??
Nuh? Big boy like you can do math?
What non-sense, and this is essentially why Microsoft keeps winning the software wars. A relational database is a database where data is related in a series of tables.
MYSQL is a fine RDBMS which does a great job and can be a drop in replacement for Access, Foxpro, Paradox, etc. These are the programs it can replace at very reasonable cost and little overhead. Given time it will likely have ACID complience as well.
It's time to learn that usability is REALLY important to the end user and the developer. And the MYSQL team actually supports the product on their mailing list. I've never seen a question go unanswered.
If anyone needs a cluestick poke, I think it's some of the DBA's of the world who religiously beleive in their own Dogma. I doubt even the Pope suffers from this form of mental illness.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Why didn't he show the numbers". MYSQL has a bunch of Benchmark results in the docs and the testing methods. He also had said that Postgres has a fatal BUG which prevented Postgress 7.0 from being tested.
What more do you want than full disclosure and honest assesment?
Ruben
WRONG
Copyright does not give property rights. Copyright is NOT Property.
Duh....
And even property doesn't have absolute usage rights.
BTW
If you even THINK that UCITA will prevent publications from printing Benchmarks and software reviews, you really need to get your head on straight.
Only on a Negotiated CONTRACT - and even THEN - they can NOT prevent free speech. You can NOT agree to give up your right to free speech, any more than you can agree to be sold into slavery.
Duh!!
TNo - but my 12 year old has done all these things, and has for a few years.
All I'm say is if you REALLY want a screwed up Computer User, have them install a Scanner is Windows and then have it freeze solid, as it does about 50% of the time when installing hardware, and see how screwed up they get.
BTW - My kids can DEFINETELY install a printer with SUSE. - Even those in 2nd grade.
Well
My kids are using Linux form the 3 year old to the 12 year old. They find it easy. So if you can't use it, then it must be YOU -
But it sure as hell isn't Linux.
I point out that Companies can NOT prevent publishing of Benchmark tests under Copyright Law, or Comercial Law.
Yeah - Software is Art, blah blah blah, the Artist's need to have control, blah blah blah. What a bunch of bull.
They come to the public and talk up the rights of the creators and then they talk to Congress to pass copyright laws which take the ownership of the Copyrighted material away from the artist who are descibed as mear "Employees". It's reached a point where the artist doesn't even OWN any part of the work, and never ever will.
I'm sick of the double talk. If we're protecting artist, then we should END corperate ownership of Copyright and restrict it to the Artist. Then the Artists will stop being ripped off by the same companies running around fighting for "the right of the Artist" under copyright, which they've managed to legally reduce to Artists having their work ripped off, lock stock and barrel by Time Warner sharks.
This is LEGAL
For example, I had a Professor in College assign a Book that he wrote which was out of print, but manadorty for the Course. The Professor sued the local copy store for providing copies of the Book. The Copy Store counter sued, and won BOTH cases. The judge essentially laughed the professors claim out of the court. It was clearly fair use.