Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Hundreds of books on an optical disk
Message-ID: <1988Nov3.193330.808@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <300.236DAA95@mailcom.FIDONET.ORG>
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 88 19:33:30 GMT

In article <300.236DAA95@mailcom.FIDONET.ORG> postmaster@mailcom.FIDONET.ORG (Bernard Aboba) writes:
>...The advent of eraseable optic media therefore shifts the development away 
>from REFERENCE materials such as encyclopedias, to information with a 
>TIME VALUE, such as stock price data.  

Or to material that has a mass market.  A CD-ROM encyclopedia that cost
$100, rather than thousands, would probably sell quite briskly and not be
too troubled by piracy.  Bulk copying of digital media becomes a problem
in the same situation where photocopying of books becomes a problem:
when the price far exceeds copying costs, i.e. when the publisher has
decided to gouge a small market rather than try for modest profits from
a large one.  For some types of material, the publisher doesn't have a
choice, since the market simply *is* small.  For things like encyclopedias,
though, simply dropping the price will expand the market.
-- 
The Earth is our mother.        |    Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
Our nine months are up.         |uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu