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                            THE BLIND NEWS DIGEST

                                 Issue # 1095

                          Monday, December 05, 1994

Today's Topics:


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            Internet Bookstore criticizing Disabled Access Gains


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Subject: Internet Bookstore criticizing Disabled Access Gains
From: bernie@access4.digex.net (Internet(e)Bookstore)
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, USA

IMPORTANT NOTE:
This material is frank and direct. Anyone who might be offended by strong
opinions concerning print- access by people with disabilities and
criticism of non-profit leadership should delete this message NOW.

(The following is a response to a posting by George Kerscher who is the
originator of Computerized Books for the Blind and RFB Recordings for the
Blind's E-TEXT electronic texts of books program. George is heavily
respected and relied-upon for electronic print-access expertise and has
participated with other print-access leaders for years at the forefront
of developing standards for electronic print access by print-disabled
people and blanket permissions from the publishing industry for
electronic access to print by print-disabled people)

Dear George,

I was saddened and angered to read your posting that bemoans the
expensive difficulties still haunting your conversion of print and the
unending resistance from those short-sighted publishers who just don't
see it your way.  But, excuse me,  you and the other print-access
leadership elite have only yourselves to blame.

Besides, who didn't know that these were the original problems to solve?
Aren't those the core problems that you and the rest of the print-access
elite have insisted on ignoring all along?  Why couldn't you just bully
everyone into it? Didn't the IBM name tear down their resistance? Doesn't
everyone want to throw away the print-book model? Isn't copyright just an
antiquated practice?  No.  Of course not. We made the equal access and
copyright-safe system that solved all that, the e-dition instant delivery
electronic book system, because we knew that all along, didn't we? And
what did you do about it? Obfuscated, minimized, played non-profit
in-crowd and stonewalled. And where did it get you and print- access?
Yeah, you should moan.

Well, I told you so.

But the resulting vindication doesn't feel very good.  The print-disabled
reader, who I gladly gave up a small fortune for, is still nowhere,
thanks very much. You and your buddies, the all-important non-profit
middlemen, with your money and negative influence have insisted that you
alone know everything - can control every cause and effect - Right. Nice
job. And all the while, every user, publisher,  and any 'non- elite'
expert who we could get to see the instant, copyright-safe equal-access
ebook system feels something like, ' Oh, wonderful, it's finally done -
we can have the digital publishing solution that solves everyone's
problems!'.  Of course, that assumes that the trusted print-access
leadership is actually looking for a solution to universal print access,
not just their own ego and power play.....  Little do these non-
influential innocents realize that it's not that simple.  Better
mousetrap be damned if the mousecatchers union is against it.

For  six years now, you and your counterparts have easily managed to
downplay and minimize the only possible electronic book publishing
solution - on-demand,  copyright-safe e-ditions. But why? Well, the
e-dition system does offer  universal benefit - for the print producers,
government, print-disabled readers and everyone else. Oops, the
non-profit, academic and bureaucratic unthinkable - yes, we actually give
something besides trouble to those godless profit companies whose assets
we seek to use. And yes, another problem is that the usefulness of
e-ditions does exceed the 'print-disabled-only' parameters of your
mission - that's better still though, isn't it? God only knows your
answer to that one...

Do I seem bitter? - It's not nearly as simple as that - I'm usually an
optimistic realist and I'm also a veteran of business and federal
contracting so I've seen a lot.   I'm just disgusted at a leadership that
has insisted on such a huge waste of time, resources and lost access
potential for individuals over these past years.  They happily continued
to beat their drum while not noticing that everyone following them was
marching over a cliff.  The worst is that the only thing print-access had
going for it - the longstanding goodwill of Publishers giving royalty
free access to their works - has been affected and the credibility of any
print- access leadership in the near future will be subject to suspicion.
I just hate to see leaders' worst delivered when their very best is
desperately required.

Probably the only effect I would wish on you and the other print-access
elite leadership is to invoke embarrassment over the lack of access
wrought these past five years by your insider games.  This understanding
is obviously not self-evident to most people, of course. They needs clear
facts to work with, not just endless rhetoric. I doubt if your crowd will
have time, but for those who are interested in what could have been,
there is a universally accessible showcase for our copyright-safe
e-dition publishing system called THE INTERNET BOOKSTORE which your crowd
can't shut people off from.  40 Publishers were motivated to experiment
with it, publishing their own e-ditions corresponding to their new print
books, solving all the problems you moan about, but it is just a tiny
shadow of what could have been a little funding and without the haughty
and exclusionary tactics of you and your counterparts. And you being the
ones who are entrusted with furthering print-access for print disabled
individuals. Shame.

So, let's compare the print-access elite's accomplishments with The
Internet Bookstore system which incorporates all the solutions we keep
producing and you keep ignoring. First of all, it is easy and everything
about it follows the familiar print model you so disparage. Anyone can
send simple email to ebooks-info@access.digex.net and 30 seconds later
they will have new email from the Bookstore with basic information and
instructions! They learn about using the ebooks-search address,
ebooks-catalog address, ebooks-comments and ebooks-orders addresses. They
can even get sample software and books instantly. Try it, George. This
will give almost anyone a rather strong hint of the access that could
have been achieved and the quality of current books that would have been
available to everyone if resources had been directed at results, not just
hot air and business-as-usual. A few years instead of months would have
been productive too.

The following long-standing features of our accessible book system should
be sufficiently embarrassing to anyone in the advocacy cycle who has
pushed ASCIIish books (This includes just about everyone, since most
disability professionals have been trained, or are simply content, to
unquestioningly follow you and the other print-access leadership elite.
Then again, you may not have to worry - how would they know to try it
anyway? Your crowd's official line controls the professional disability
standards and information flow - doesn't it? I don't really expect your
crowd to even recognize themselves, much less feel any embarrassment
since all have repeatedly shown that they are sufficiently self-important
and entrenched as to be completely insulated from such contrary
unpleasantness as this - claiming to be reality.)

****
COMMENTS, FACTS AND FEATURES TO EXAMINE AND COMPARE

-  You can send for any  book by email and 30 seconds later you get new
email with your accessible bookfile attached. It is custom encrypted to
only work with your personal key device. A complete record of you and the
transaction is recorded for billing or control. (Why don't you send your
books by email, George? It's free, you know. A few size and copyright
problems coming back to bite you, George?)

-  E-ditions are single units like books - no multiple breaking down for
size is necessary since they are already small. Seven average books and
the software can reside on a single diskette, for instance.  (It always
seemed stupid to me that your 'superior' computer access form intended
for print-impaired students would have to be carved up for space. How
ridiculous if a teacher says "Turn to page 282" and the user had 27 files
comprising the book! Which of these ASCII files contains page 282,
George? How easy is it to get to, George? Nuts. This kind of obvious
illustration - clear to any child  - is always somehow characterized by
the entrenched print-access leadership as being either beneath response,
inconsequential (yeah, right!) or simply too late (If most people skip
important steps, they have to start over. But not your crowd.).

-  Each e-dition IS the print book - every page including publishers
contents, Index, everything. An e- dition delivers the same text, page
for page as the print product using the same page numbers. With a
keystroke, you can instantly turn-to any page in the corresponding print
book, leave personal bookmarks and margin notes and use lots of logical
reading features and adjustments for you own ideal reading.

-  E-ditions are copyright-safe (not just making people promise not to
distribute them) You can copy at will - but only with your personal key
attached can it recreate the next piece of the original text that fits
onto your custom screen.  Each bookfile itself is just binary 'garbage'
that requires a person's key and is unreadable without it. Even if one
person's encryption was 'broken, with all the time and expense that would
take since it is unique,  only that person's books would be broken -not
all books. The pirate would have to start over for the next person. The
economics of pirating don't work - especially with the low cost and
utility of the e-dition itself. Because of this dynamic encryption, the
publisher is protected and the user gets total veracity of the original
print book and the full benefit of computer functions as well, even small
file size and the portability of copying.

-  E-ditions are instantly available to customers anywhere on the
Internet Bookstore 24 hours a day and never out of stock since they are
custom made on-demand. You can even order the fully illustrated print copy.

-  Instant e-ditions have proven they are acceptable for the Publishers
to use themselves! For the first time, as designed, our system has freed
print publishers to offer personalized electronic bookfiles of their
current (brand new) print books electronically via Internet at the same
time they are produced in print. And the Internet Bookstore experiment
proves they WANT to publish electronically if an acceptable medium is
ever invented. Well, it was invented almost seven years ago - our custom
encrypted e-ditions! It is outside non-profit leadership's scale of
thinking that major publishers (THE SELFISH ENEMY!!) like Macmillan,
McGraw-hill, Oxford U. Press, Dearborn Financial, Applause, Keats
Medical, Que and dozens of others could be motivated to actually skip
over all the problems and produce accessible ebooks of their own. These
commercial visionaries have done this without non-profit delays and
obfuscating middlemen like the print-access in-crowd. (Tell me, George,
how fast have publishers fallen all over themselves to publish your ASCII
or Book Manager books......yeah right, nice choice, Ace.  However, I
guess it isn't within the realm of reason to expect you elite leaders to
embrace any solution that doesn't come from you or else place you
squarely in the middle of the print-access road - as an expert helper,
you say, not a roadblock...yeah, I believe you - history and results just
look kinda bad to the uninformed.....)

-  Internet Bookstore users don't need to buy anything to search in a
book - they can search every word  or capitalized phrase in every book in
seconds and for FREE via email to the ebooks-search address. Anyone,
right now, can get the actual publishers' Contents, Index, full publisher
brochure, reviewer excerpts - even see a cover graphic of every book -
all accessible and free via standard email.

-  E-ditions faithfully recreates any source ASCII - English, Romance
languages, even Grade 2 Braille notation.

-  The Starter kit and personal key device are cheap - a one-time
lifetime cost of $29.95 could even be given away to certified blind, etc.
if any agency cared to..... (Expensive tape players, YES - Cheap key
devices, NO)

-  E-ditions and software are portable - small and easily copied for  use
on any MS-DOS machine. Software for other platforms would be easy enough
and would not change the binary bookfile at all.

-  E-ditions are fast to use. Turn instantly to any book or print-page  -
even fast from diskette!

(LET'S NOT GET TECHNICAL - IT'S OVER PEOPLE'S HEADS!!! No, lets get a
little more technical....)

-  The e-dition isn't just a dump of ASCII that may or may not match the
original, but a personalized encryption - a binary bookfile that is 1/3
the size and recreates the original text faithfully each time, letting
you jump to the original print pages, index, even do wordsearchesas if
through the pages of the corresponding print book. At the touch of a
finger, you can export portions of text with a formal bibliography
citation and footnote generated for you. It even has the publishers'
print-page number in the right spot in your footnote.  (NO!  They're only
allowing a reasonable scholarly excerpt! IF WE CAN'T PRINT ENTIRE COPIES
IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!  Nice attitude, elite. Bet that saved you a lot
of work, huh?)

-  Total production cost to a publisher per title for third-party
contractors to do the necessary production/conversion to create their
master  encryption files is only $150 per 500 pages or portion.  (WAIT A
MINUTE! TYPESETTER FILES ARE AWFUL! IT'S SO EXPENSIVE AND TIME
CONSUMING!! Yeah, well, those horrible production/conversion  costs you
moan about don't seem to be part of our complete system - why haven't you
and your print-access elite cronies traded in your high horses in
exchange for inexpensive production and universal access to thousands of
new books?  I'd love to hear the excuse.  Fat chance we'll wait - we've
already died of asphyxiation holding our breath for you guys. Too bad you
can't all just be voted out.  By the way, Do the Math - if all 50,000 new
books in the US were done, it would cost less than $10M a year - oh, my!
- and we have recently devised a way the publishers would let that
conversion happen AND give full permissions for free access by print
handicapped..... OH! NO NO, that's not the way things are done!!!! So
true - aside from your short-sightedness and ego why isn't it the way
things are done?)

-  (We have to cut out all those ruthless PROFITEERS PREYING ON BLIND
PEOPLE!!!  Hmm, where have I heard that before? You may change that
attitude when you see who the profiteers seem to be...)  Your RFB system
offers ASCII or IBM Book Manager E-text books on diskette through free
snail mail for about $20 each, right? Well, the evil publishers' own
pricing of their instant e-ditions on The Internet Bookstore is mostly
between $5 and $15 U.S. - usually about one-third of the print price.
(NO NO That's backwards from our BIG TALK!   Yeah, it sure is...) For
print-disabled users, for instance, this system and approach doesn't get
them the scope of books they need, but it does cut out the long delay,
limited selection,  nit-picking and extra price of you non-profit
roadblocks and your untouchable buddies in the print-access elite. (BUT
DELAY IS UNAVOIDABLE!!! No, it's not.) It's also good for non-print
disabled computer  users too! Many publishers even offer a full rebate of
their e-dition price against a subsequent print copy order.

-  E-ditions are still multi-accessible for any print-disabled computer
user.  (Many have questioned why we keep the straight text access alive
considering the consistent hostility or plain business-as-usual apathy of
the print-access advocates - why not just go to a graphic screen?)
Editions feeds any adaptive screen reader device directly via the DOS
BIOS for ideal speech synthesis, Braille, screen enlarging, etc and the
small RAM requirement leaves plenty of room for alternate keyboards,
voice input and other TSRs - even combinations for learning-disabled i.e.
just a word or phrase large print while it speaks... E-ditions can be
adjusted to a newspaper column for the comfort of non-disabled laptop
users. The screen layout of the decrypted screen is the user's choice.

***
All this is inconsequential, superfluous stuff, beneath response and too
late anyway, huh,  George? Right. And just to prove it, thanks to your
crowd's  influence and avoidance, where are the concerned philanthropists
or groups to fund it's development for the extreme benefit of
print-disabled? Beyond reach, that's where. In your crowd's private donor
files.  No sharing, thank you, go fish. Well, well! Don't we become
resistive and proprietary when someone wants to share our intangible
rights and assets, don't we? Oh, brother.

Lucky you - now I'll continue with what I'm sure you will call a crackpot
role - I'll even make the suicidal mistake of  talking about what some of
the funds wasted on your combined print-access hot air could have done.

Every single book copyrighted in the U.S. could be 'converted' to
e-ditions, just as these 40 publishers are doing, for a total cost of
less than $10 Million a year - Yes, do the math - that's over 50,000
books and yes, that is, just for example,  only a fraction of the current
Library of Congress NLSBPH budget that now does less than 1% of all
books. (Most of those are voice recordings too - their little
contribution to blind spelling and literacy) It is only a fraction of the
annual budget of dozens of these fat outfits.  I'll do you a favor. Now,
I'll position myself even further towards what your crowd would call
uninformed, superfluous or crackpot thought. Each of these ebooks could
be provided to print-disabled people free- of-charge with the publishers'
blessing - we know how it could be done.  The technical part is easy too
-  our system can control distribution and billing by individual key -
i.e. if you are a certified blind citizen, your key can get e-ditions
made at no charge - too good to be true thanks to you and your crowd's
well justified big talk and lack of results. Way to go, closing ranks
like that - well practiced I bet. Meanwhile would AFB or RFB or NLS or
AER or EASI or any of the other alphabet soup outfits allow any of their
dozens of millions in the bank to purchase such a technology? Of course
not! That money makes the annuity that pays their salaries and travel to
make big-talk!  Plus, don't forget, they are, after all, the leading
experts so don't worry about all this nonsense - forget it - it's
inconsequential...

So, George, does this ignored system that actually works ring any new
bells?  Probably not.  The disease of you print-access leadership types
is 'hardening of the categories' and is invariably permanent and fatal
for the rest of us. But, credit where credit is due,  the well
coordinated shut-out of the only system that has had a chance of
providing full access to the publishing world for print-disabled people
has been almost complete.  Except for some original test titles and
limited national K-12 textbook use by APH, this breakthrough has been
effectively starved and nullified by your 'print-access' in-crowd.

I'm tired of staying quiet and being tactful. I'm tired of seeing the
misplaced trust and half-hearted pursuit of real answers. I'm so tired of
senior decision makers in national organizations not having a clue about
what makes or breaks the technology the pontificate about. I'm tired of
your futuristic ultimatums that publishers will 'just have to realize'
they must give their assets away.  It has never been true and never will
be. Obviously, publishers are tired of being bullied in directions they
don't want to go and being misled about your so-called 'complete
copyright protection'. (FYI, George - just having people fervently
promise not to copy and distribute is NOT a complete copyright-protection
system!) Now I hear that textbook publishers are backing out of RFB's
'blanket contracts' and the ASCIIish technology you have slipped in on
them. (IT'S VERY TECHNICAL - PROBABLY A MISUNDERSTANDING! Sorry, No.
Publishers are not as gullible as your crowd has always needed them to
be.)  APH blanket contracts are suffering too by association with RFB's
credibility. APH is actually turning away ebook requests and  retreating
from technology at full speed as if  burned - in this age when efforts
should be redoubled! Oh, the wisdom of the print-access leadership! And
it doesn't affect their jobs at all!  Of course not it's affecting their
ears since I'm having trouble staying quiet - even if nobody asks me.
Somebody who knows recently suggested we should  'try RFB again now - you
will probably find them much more receptive to e-ditions than before.'
Cute problem is, even if we joined with RFB now, even our credibility
with the publishers would suffer by association.  Not that we can do much
alone, anyway.   Way to go, George - nice catch-22.

The necessary solution that works for everyone has been here all along
but it galls you that you can't steal it or have it for free - any more
than you can talk your way into getting everything for nothing from the
publishing industry then charging more for it - shame on all of you for
the situation you have wrought. Congratulations on all the
big-talk/no-results 'blindness' that you, RFB, and all the other
government agencies, non-profits and Blind organizations so 'deeply'
involved in print-access issues have insisted upon wallowing in. (I guess
the definition of 'advocacy' specifically  excludes taking any direct
beneficial action - it must...)

If anyone with resources and clout - or any of these trusted
organizations like NLS, RFB, AFB, NAB, NEA, AER, EASI or any other
so-called print-access advocating organizations or companies, foundations
or agencies wanted to 1) take a chance to peek around the blinders, or 2)
think of the ultimate good of the print-disabled person - (oh, what
sacrilege!) or 3) consider using their endowment money and influence on
Grants and Donors for something other than their salaries, they could
always come here to close-in Arlington, Virginia and discover a solution
that works - it IS just travel and talk after all which we know they can
handle. And then most could claim they had seen it all, understood it all
and now had personal insider knowledge that it really was inconsequential
for people with disabilities - and too late anyway - and it's not the way
things are done - and isn't it hard, the job we have to do. Of course,
for those who realize it actually is real and works, they will all be
able to point to some OTHER agency or person who should actually be
responsible for  DOING something about it - not themselves... Why not
spent a few years and several hundred more thousands of dollars playing
court to these drones? Well, uh, let me see....  Nice system your type
has designed, George.

Mostly, though, they won't ever hear or understand any of this, they
won't pursue any of this, they can just keep doing what befits their
professional experience and ethics and leadership - keeping their heads
down, pushing paper, attending conferences and meetings, doing studies,
seeking grants to do more studies, and giving each other awards for what
a good job they are doing against such impossible odds - for those poor
disabled people.  Good work if you can get it.

The really sad thing, though is that with only a fraction of these same
resources, we really could actually still accomplish full access to ALL
print publishing for print disabled people. Just the availability of the
material would lead to greater things. The craziest thing of all is that
this access is exactly what everybody wantsto have happen - the Congress
with bills like ADA, the American People, the disability professsionals -
the advocacy groups -the Library of Congress - the Blind agencies -
government publishing - even the disabled individual.  America would gain
a new export and tax base and establish American written culture and
knowledge as a new world leadership. (Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that
nobody's in charge of that!).

But my bet, George, - and don't you know it's true in your own heart - is
that your crowd, the entrenched print-access leadership elite, will all
automatically choose outrage, misdirection and minimizing instead.  Suit
yourselves.

Bernard C. Pobiak
Founder, The Reader Project resulting in TEXT2000 K-12 blind electronic
textbooks nationwide

Regular Speaker at Computers in Libraries conferences

Keynote Speaker - 1994 Loyola College Annual Technology Symposium
    Substitute for Daniel Dern on Internet: The New Frontier

Guest Speaker at 1994 Taos NM Meeting of Rocky Mountain Book Publishers
Assoc.

Director, The Internet Bookstore - The experimental ebook Superstore
- new ebooks from major publishers delivered in 30 seconds worldwide
- over 100 new commercial e-ditions from the shelves of today's
print-bookstores




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                 End of Issue # 1095 of the Blind News Digest

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