From: Howard C. Berkowitz (hcb@gettcomm.com)
Date: Sat Jan 04 2003 - 00:47:24 GMT-3
At 10:28 PM -0500 1/3/03, Chris Home wrote:
> >
>> Training workbooks are small-volume items. Yes, the profit margin on
>> an individual sale is quite good, but the market is limited. While I
>> don't sell any such material, I can very well see the logic of the
>> training vendors in having tight use restrictions, comparable to
>> licensed software.
>> .
>
>
>But who is to say when that logic is to apply. By number of employees,
>volume of inventory, sales or profit maybe. Then it could always be made
>into a matter of greed. I do not think IPExpert is about greed and I know
>they are only trying to protect themselves, but why is a copyright not good
>enough anymore?
All copyrights, to begin with, are not equal. There are several
different types -- I speak from working for several years at the
Library of Congress, home of the Copyright Office.
I haven't seen the IPexpert contract, so I don't know who retains
ownership of the materials. That would be a critical issue, and
copyright has nothing to do with it -- right-to-use licensing is
contractual, not copyright law.
>
>The license doesn't stop piracy anymore then the copyright does so what is
>the point? When will it lead to the types of things that you were stating
>about the music industry?
When? It's doing it right now in the music industry. Sony and
Christina Aguilera, however, are making a bit more money than the
whole Cisco study industry. Now, if you REALLY wanted revenue, you
could have a back end server study guide from J. Lo. :-)
>Aside from these discussion points, doesn't it
>just strike you as somewhat draconian or in fact maybe greedy or downright
>mean to expel someone from a forum simply because they were using the
>material with their study partner?
Personally, I might agree that use with a specific study partner
could be reasonable, especially if it were disclosed the way you
specify a secondary driver on a car rental. But I have neither seen
the specific license agreement in question, nor am I privy to Wayne's
business model. A license is a contract that can override copyright
provisions.
Copyright is also sublicensed for specific purposes. For example, as
an author, the copyright is usually in my name, but I assign it to
the publisher. In my contract with them, I may reserve the right to
produce derivative but noncompetitive materials, to make the
sublicense last only for a designated period of time, to use the
material freely for my employer or in personal classes, etc. Things
like this are negotiated daily. My contracts with different
publishers are all different.
>What is up with that and what does that
>say about IPExpert. Here is a guy who spent 500.00 bucks on material that is
>easy enough to simply download for free and he got kicked for using it with
>his studying partner. Is that really necessary.
I'm confused. Download for free? Certainly, the principles underlying
the labs can come free from Cisco, the RFCs, etc. The labs, so far
as I know, are not downloadable except to licensed users with a
specific update or service agreement. With minor variations, this is
true for all study guide vendors with which I am familiar.
Different people have different models. Fatkid, Gett, and others
allow free downloading of their labs, expecting to make revenue in
ways other than document sales. Typically, those still have download
agreements, with the restriction that the user cannot distribute
copies or use them for profit.
The restriction on distributing copies of downloadable labs,
incidentally, has nothing to do with restricting access. Anybody can
download them. At least where I'm involved, this is for quality
control -- if we find and fix a bug in a lab, we want to be sure that
people download the most recent version. Getting it from a friend may
mean that someone gets an old version.
.
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