> o no fees or compensation are charged for use, copies or access to
> this information
Following on from my previous message, under this condition the whole of
USENET and the Internet is in violation. Charging for access to USENET
and ftp is common-place.
If it was a choice of buying the CD-ROM for $39.95 or ftp'ing the FAQ
collection at $1 per megabyte (one of the proposed volume charges for
Australia), I know which I would choose. By your argument, once volume
charging is introduced here in Australia, it will be illegal to distribute
your FAQ over the Internet here.
If you object to CD-ROM distribution, then you must also object to USENET
and ftp distribution. So, you better pull your FAQ from USENET right
now, Mark. :-)
Now, I will be the first to admit that FAQ maintainers don't want
commercial companies selling their intellectual property at exorbitant
prices, but the pittance the CD-ROM company will make off each FAQ is not
worth getting upset about. CD-ROM distribution works out at less than 5c
per FAQ. Ftp distribution here in Australia will be significantly more
than that per FAQ.
To do some back of the envelope calculations, assume that each FAQ on the
CD-ROM is 5c, the typical user reads 5% of the FAQ's on the CD-ROM, and we
set the "author value" of a FAQ at $10. For the CD-ROM company to rip an
author off by $10, they would need to sell 4000 CD's. To rip all of the
authors off by $10 each, they would need to sell 3196000 CD's. Even if
authors got a royalty per FAQ actually read by a user, it wouldn't be
worth it.
So, my advice is, don't order a pizza this week and you'll recover what
the CD-ROM company "stole" from you. :-) You'll have to go without pizzas
for a decade to recover what Internet volume charges for ftp and access
charges for USENET are stealing from you.
Maybe we need a GNU-like license for FAQ's? The way I understand it, it
is not against the GNU license to sell GNU software, but if a buyer then
wants to pass the software onto someone else for free, there is nothing
the seller can do about it. So, under a GNU-like license, if I buy the
CD-ROM, I can then pass the contents onto someone else for nothing and the
FAQ's keep circulating as they should. This kind of distribution also
keeps the CD-ROM cost down because users won't buy a high-priced CD-ROM if
they can get it for free elsewhere, but they'll buy a low-priced one
because it is more convenient than ftp, www, USENET, etc.
Cheers,
Rhys.
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