Why are we still getting Information
from Dead Trees?Why are we still getting Information
from Dead Trees?I really want the Library of Congress on line. I don't like being separated from journals just because I am no longer employed at an academic institution and live out in the country. I am overwhelmed by the task of organizing piles of magazines and articles printed on dead trees into a useful personal library. Putting pieces of paper away is a serious empediment to organizing and using the knowledge contained on those pieces of paper!
There are several roadblocks to the goal of 'the Library of Congress on line'. Obviously the most important is the human labor to make it so. Of almost equal importance is the problem arranging to pay royalties to authors and artists for their labor.
One way is to have an electronic signature on each article and each user. All individual people who use the internet will be enrolled as subscribers to the royalty fund.
All articles to be transmitted will be registered with the royalty fund and issued a unique code which will be embedded in the article's name. The author will designate wether the article is royalty free or if a royalty is expected. Whenever that article is transmitted to a recipient on the internet the article's account will be credited with a 'hit' and the recipient's account will be charged the royalty. These fees will be reasonable and they will be stated before the article is transmitted - in the nature of 25 cents for small articles and no more than a couple of dollars for book length articles.
Since this method will increase percentage the collection of royalties the individual royalty amounts can stay low. For users concerned with matters of personal freedom the system may be set so that the amount of the royalty owed the fund is recorded but is not linked to the material downloaded. That is I download "Customizing Explosive Devices to Fit in Ryder Rental Trucks" and "The Tourist's Guide to Federal Office Buildings". At the Royalty Fund the royalty is credited to each book's author and the charge for the royalty is charged against my account, but I can request that no permanent record as to which book I downloaded is kept. So the transaction becomes that I owe the Royalty Fund some amount and the Royalty Fund owes the authors some amount but there does not have to be a record as to which author I am actually paying if I desire anonymity.
For this to work, it would have to be an integral part of the entire Internet system. There might be several categories of user. The user who chooses to prepay a royalty into the Royalty Fund could get a discount reflecting the reduced costs of billing and collecting. Institutions would not automatically get a bulk discount however - since the use of the information by individual users at the institution deprives the author of royalties. Authors could choose as to wether they wanted to grant bulk discounts to institutions.
Among the 40 lbs of mail that comes to my house in a week - the electronic forum is the obvious alternative for:
Information for which the copyright holder expects no royalty, such as scientific journals, club newsletters, materials for public education.
Information intended for such a small readership that it is published at a loss to the publisher, such as specialized journals, club bulletins.
Catalogues of all types.
We are in a time of transition from paper based information to electronic based information. It is an exciting time and a frustrating time.