🚀 go-pugleaf

From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
>Standards bodies want to control the documents to assure
>consistency among the copies in circulation, which can't be done
>with (essentially immortal and infinitely mutable) machine
>readable copies handed around by private distribution channels (a
>nicer term for piracy).

Well, this is just bureaucratic fluff. Let them attach a checksum or
whatever. Anyhow, you gets what you pays for.

Worries of mutability is an attack on the entire concept of on-line
documents. Do you have/see this problem with Unix manual pages, as an
example? That has to be solved separately, not by tossing out the
whole concept.

I would claim one of the major reasons for the success of DARPA
Internet standards was their wide, machine-readable availability.

And, similarly, I'd claim that the opposite effect for many ISO
standards (e.g. networking) has been their relative inaccessibility.
They're shooting themselves in the foot.

And "piracy" is utterly the wrong term.

No one (well, no one here) wants to do anything illegal, if I wanted
to do that I would have done it a long time ago.  I have both the SGML
standards and a very nice OCR thank you.  I want permission!

>Standards bodies pay a substantial portion of their administrative
>costs with the income from their sale of paper standards
>documents, in draft as well as final form.

Well, is that true? I don't know, and tend to doubt it.

There just isn't very much money in this kind of thing. As an example
I do know about, most journals, even very big/famous ones, sell
reprints at a net loss.

Do you know this, or are you guessing? (e.g. have you ever been in a
position to work with a standards body's budget?) I'd venture to guess
they make most of their money off of things like membership, workshops
(whatever they call them) and contributions or selling services.

>1) The price of the documents is far higher than the price of
>similar documents of similar publishing quality.

Low-volume/nuisance explains this. Fair enough. But selling say 100
copies/year of the SGML (e.g.) standard for $50 (about what it costs)
is hardly money (with mailing and labor it probably costs them that
much.)

I dunno, I just wonder if you do. You're appealing to "common sense"
where some info is sorely needed. Publishing, except for the big boys,
is almost always a losing business.

The only frequently updated type of paper stuff that really makes much
money (unless, as with the case of major journals, there's a big
library business for $1000/yr copies) are magazines etc which are
supported by advertising, many are mailed for free as you no doubt
know.

Note that many scholarly journals are just plain subsidized and lose
money like a sieve. ISO standards strike me as more similar to
journals than anything else (very limited audience, frequent "updates"
where updates includes new standards, drafts etc., hence low volume on
any particular print run.)

Anyhow, maybe I'm wrong. But working forward from "first principles"
is not satisfying. I am somewhat familiar with the economics of
publishing.

I admit I'm doing the same thing, but using some info to show that I
have trouble believing these claims on their face.

>And so it goes. Send them a check. By doing so, you help fund
>future standards efforts.

Which, in itself, is a questionable endeavor...:-)
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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