Re: Post Factory

From: Sandy King ^lt;sanking@CLEMSON.EDU>
Date: 09/20/05-07:13:25 AM Z
Message-id: <p06020404bf55b9691885@[130.127.230.212]>

Well, all I said was that the material deserves a wider audience, not
that you should give it away. If there is commercial value and you
want to take advantage of it I don't believe many would hold that
against you. I don't disagree with you at all that people should get
paid for their creative work.

In fact, you might consider assembling all of the issues in a .pdf
document and offer it for sale on your website, or somewhere else.

Sandy

>On Sun, 18 Sep 2005, Sandy King wrote:
>
>>I hope that eventually all of the issues of Post Factory will be
>>made available in .pdf format. Post-Factory was a unique
>>contribution to the literature of alternative photography and all
>>of the issues were interesting and informative. The material really
>>deserves a wider audience than that of the paying subscribers,
>>which I was from beginning to end.
>
>While I certainly appreciate the endorsement (thank you!), I'm
>blessed if I can understand why "the material deserves a wider
>audience than that of paying subscribers."
>
>Which raises the question (similar to one asked 10 years ago on this
>very list when the claim was made "knowledge should be free") of
>why folks willing and able to spend, say, $5 plus shipping for a
>single blank sheet of paper, that is, paper with nothing on either
>side, that they may then proceed to wreck with a technical error or
>other miscalculation, wouldn't spend approximately $4.50 + postage
>for 48 or more pages covered with information, not mindlessly
>stamped out by machine, but assembled painstakingly by others whose
>time (which they're not making any more of) is more valuable than a
>piece of paper.
>
>Or, why do folks deserve NOT to pay for what others did pay for...
>isn't information MORE valuable than, say, a latte, or a sheet of
>ultra deluxe paper?
>
>And another point. The History of Photography list is doing a thread
>about retrieving depth-of-field info from manuals printed ca 125
>years ago. Assuming there is a world with folks who can read, & life
>not reduced to subaquatic organisms 125 years into the future, is
>there a prayer that today's Internet info would still be readable on
>those systems? It will almost certainly be lost, while a pile of
>National Geographics, or even Post-Factory's moldering in an attic
>would be readible, that is, assuming living creatures can still
>read, not regressed from global worming.
>
>But keeping the info either way -- in printed form by reformatting
>remaining issues for digital reprint OR on website for PDF-- both
>are very labor intensive... (Malin worked VERY hard to get #1 in
>PDF-- thank you Malin!) Why should that labor be donated free to
>folks who don't care enough to spend what is of course far less than
>the actual cost to produce? (I, for instance have donated my time
>free these 6 or so years -- and actuarily speaking I have less of it
>left than most folks on this list...) And of course contributors,
>including Sandy, to both P-F AND the websites give their labor
>free...
>
>I don't blame folks for taking what's free, but I don't see why it's
>owed them...
>
>Meanwhile -- although having Issue #1 on the alternative photography
>website has been a godsend (thank you, Malin!), so far all but one
>of the new subscribers who viewed it there, wanted the print version
>of #1 when my bricks & mortar printer gets his digital machine
>re-re-refixed, although I offered to pro-rate price and postage
>without it.
>
>But then these folks were actually paying "subscribers."
>
>I'll add that by cosmic coincidence, the same day as Sandy's e-mail,
>I got an e-mail from Canada that a pack of issues had arrived (very
>far north), adding, "I am so grateful that one can still obtain such
>a delightful publication on real paper."
>
>But all these sources, real paper or virtual, are created by minds
>contributing knowledge, experience and TIME (which in case I forgot
>to mention, they're not making any more of) without pay. Websites in
>the field are also, AFAIK, subsidised by labor of the site owner
>(among others). And the formal intensive demanding labor of
>producing either a website OR a publication in print cannot be
>compared to casual fragmented discussion freely given on this list.
>
>(I do however wonder what, for instance, Phil Davis wrote for
>publication gratis, while [ironically] reflecting on how much of HIS
>information is now obsolete.)
>
>And I assume that approximately 450 pages of closely packed text are
>NOT so easily whisked into PDF (Malin worked very hard on just one
>issue) and don't see any particular reason to do so....Except of
>course expectations. Folks have learned to expect website type
>information free, though not sheets of *blank* paper.
>
>I have various problems ... but providing this material in other
>formats isn't one of them. However, I do appreciate the compliment,
>as I daresay do all contributors. Thank you.
>
>Judy
Received on Tue Sep 20 07:13:48 2005

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