[bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
- From: "Donna Goodin" <goodindo@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 14:57:08 -0400
Hi Mary,
Actually, it sounds to me like we're saying the same thing. As i said in
my first post, if I purchase a book from a publisher, I expect to get
everything, and I mean everything, that a sighted customer gets when they
purchase a book in hardcopy. That isn't happening right now, and the
publishers are not at all willing to work with us on this issue, or at
least, they are willing to impose compromises that I/we would not be willing
to accept. I have no sympathy for the publishers, I do have some, though,
for the authors. I'm pretty sure that some of the mystery writers I read
aren't getting rich, and I'm glad that they do what they do so that I can
have the pleasure of reading their books. It does seem fair to me that they
should get payed for their work; I wouldn't be too happy if someone said to
me that everyone has a right to an education, so I should teach without pay.
I guess I just raised the point because I think it's complicated and
presents some interesting ethical issues. Where do others' rights start,
and ours stop, or vice versa? For publishers and authors it's about money,
for us, it's about access and not duplicating work. They clearly don't get
that, but as I said, it kind of seems like the author is the one who really
loses out. Also, it seemed sort of ironic to me that we were talking about
Bookshare as a "bookstore", when the very word store implies an exchange of
money.
If it were a bookstore we would all be paying for each book that we
download. That would of course also be problematic, because I would not be
willing to pay for any of the books that I have seen on this site that carry
either a good or fair rating. Having said that, I also don't tend to
download those, but rather I limit my selection to books with an excellent
rating. Some of them have things I wouldn't accept if I had to pay either,
but there much closer.
Hope this clarifys my position, or maybe my questioning, at least a bit.
Cheers,
Donna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Otten" <maryotten@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 2:06 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Bookshare's Purpose in Your Eyes
> Hi donna,
> As long as the vehicle which is enabling us to get these 10,000 books for
free is built on the labor of volunteers, as long as the 10,000 books are
not totally error free, or at least as error-free as those the sighted
public
> can purchase, as long as we have to wait months or years (in the case of
LOC books, to get the freebees) or some shorter amount of time in the case
of bookshare to get those we pay or work for, then the whole
> question of us paying for books is absurd. When the publishers provide
full catalogs of their books in perfect downloadable format that I can take
and read anywhere, just like a sighted person can with a print book,
> then we'll talk about me paying for each book I so download. In the mean
time, to be perfectly blunt about it, you're damned right we deserve free
books, because its our labor that's making them accessible in the first
> place! The number of books on bookshare which have been donated by
publishers is a very small fraction of those presently available, I'll
wager. I'll bet every single blind person I know would be more than happy to
> trade the notion of so-called fre books for error-free portably accessible
books at the exact same prices sighted people can get them at places like
Amazon or Books a Million, plus time limited downloadable free
> versions that would be equivalent to what sighted folks get at the local
library. If the publishers want to start talking about providing that same
level of access, then I'll talk about providing the pay. As it is, all of us
work
> for literally tens of thousands of hours per year for absolutely nothing
in return, except to be able to enjoy what our hard-copy reading friends
can get either for free or for a relatively small price, at least for
> paperbacks. Ask your hard-copy book reading friends if they'd rather pay 7
bucks for a best selling paperback novel, or whether they'd rather have it
for free, providing they put in 2 or 3 hours to scan and then clean it
> up. Let's see. For a 7 dollar book, if it took me just 2 hours to scan and
clean, that's 3.50 an hour. Know anybody who wants to work for those wages?
> Mary
>
>
>
>
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