[ih] New history of the Internet

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Fri Sep 24 13:14:27 PDT 2010


    > From: Amelia A Lewis <amyzing at talsever.com>

    >> While I can understand reluctance to make the complete text available
    >> in machine readable form, lest it reduce sales

    > I'm afraid that I don't understand that. I'd like to *buy* it in
    > electronic format 

Understood that you wanted to buy it in that form, but my remark was about
how once something is available outside a small circle in machine-readable
form, it's much easier to make 'bootleg' copies available, which will
inevitably impact sales.

Yes, yes, I know there's a big whole debate about how content industries will
have to adapt to a world in which copying things is easier, but having been
on both sides of that, I can see a decision to only make something available
in a form where it cannot easily be copied by third parties.

	Noel



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