E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (summer reading list txt) 📖

>cheathouse.com - make no bones about their offerings. Many of

them are located outside the USA (in Germany, or Asia) and at

least one offers papers in a few languages, Hebrew included.

 

The problem, though, is not limited to the ivory towers. E-zines plagiarize. The print media plagiarize. Individual

journalists plagiarize, many with abandon. Even advertising

agencies and financial institutions plagiarize. The amount of

material out there is so overwhelming that the plagiarist

develops a (fairly justified) sense of immunity. The

temptation is irresistible, the rewards big and the pressures

of modern life great.

 

Some of the plagiarists are straightforward copiers. Others

substitute words, add sentences, or combine two or more

sources. This raises the question: “when should content be

considered original and when - plagiarized?”. Should the test

for plagiarism be more stringent than the one applied by the

Copyright Office? And what rights are implicitly granted by

the material’s genuine authors or publishers once they place

the content on the Internet? Is the Web a public domain and,

if yes, to what extent? These questions are not easily

answered. Consider reports generated by users from a database.

 

Are these reports copyrighted - and if so, by whom - by the

database compiler or by the user who defined the parameters,

without which the reports in question would have never been

generated? What about “fair use” of text and works of art? In

the USA, the backlash against digital content piracy and

plagiarism has reached preposterous legal, litigious and

technological nadirs.

 

Plagiarism.org has developed a statistics-based technology

(the “Document Source Analysis”) which creates a “digital

fingerprint” of every document in its database. Web crawlers

are then unleashed to scour the Internet and find documents

with the same fingerprint and a colour-coded report is

generated. An instructor, teacher, or professor can then use

the report to prove plagiarism and cheating.

 

Piracy is often considered to be a form of viral marketing

(even by software developers and publishers). The author’s,

publisher’s, or software house’s data are preserved intact in

the cracked copy. Pirated copies of e-books often contribute

to increased sales of the print versions. Crippled versions of

software or pirated copies of software without its manuals,

updates and support - often lead to the purchase of a licence.

Not so with plagiarism. The identities of the author, editor,

publisher and illustrator are deleted and replaced by the

details of the plagiarist. And while piracy is discussed

freely and fought vigorously - the discussion of plagiarism is

still taboo and actively suppressed by image-conscious and

endowment-weary academic institutions and media. It is an

uphill struggle but plagiarism.org has taken the first

resolute step.

 

The Miraculous Conversion

By: Sam Vaknin

 

http://www.ideavirus.com

 

The recent bloodbath among online content peddlers and digital

media proselytisers can be traced to two deadly sins. The

first was to assume that traffic equals sales. In other words,

that a miraculous conversion will spontaneously occur among

the hordes of visitors to a web site. It was taken as an

article of faith that a certain percentage of this mass will

inevitably and nigh hypnotically reach for their bulging

pocketbooks and purchase content, however packaged. Moreover,

ad revenues (more reasonably) were assumed to be closely

correlated with “eyeballs”. This myth led to an obsession with

counters, page hits, impressions, unique visitors, statistics

and demographics.

 

It failed, however, to take into account the dwindling

efficacy of what Seth Godin, in his brilliant essay

(“Unleashing the IdeaVirus”), calls “Interruption Marketing” -

ads, banners, spam and fliers. It also ignored, at its peril,

the ethos of free content and open source prevalent among the

Internet opinion leaders, movers and shapers. These two

neglected aspects of Internet hype and culture led to the

trouncing of erstwhile promising web media companies while

their business models were exposed as wishful thinking.

 

The second mistake was to exclusively cater to the needs of a

highly idiosyncratic group of people (Silicone Valley geeks

and nerds). The assumption that the USA (let alone the rest of

the world) is Silicone Valley writ large proved to be

calamitous to the industry.

 

In the 1970s and 1980s, evolutionary biologists like Richard

Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake developed models of cultural

evolution. Dawkins’ “meme” is a cultural element (like a

behaviour or an idea) passed from one individual to another

and from one generation to another not through biological -

genetic means - but by imitation. Sheldrake added the notion

of contagion - “morphic resonance” - which causes behaviour

patterns to suddenly emerged in whole populations. Physicists

talked about sudden “phase transitions”, the emergent results

of a critical mass reached. A latter day thinker, Michael

Gladwell, called it the “tipping point”.

 

Seth Godin invented the concept of an “ideavirus” and an

attendant marketing terminology. In a nutshell, he says, to

use his own summation:

 

“Marketing by interrupting people isn’t cost-effective

anymore. You can’t afford to seek out people and send them

unwanted marketing, in large groups and hope that some will

send you money. Instead the future belongs to marketers who

establish a foundation and process where interested people can

market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get

out of the way and let them talk.”

 

This is sound advice with a shaky conclusion. The conversion

from exposure to a marketing message (even from peers within a

consumer network) - to an actual sale is a convoluted, multi-layered, highly complex process. It is not a “black box”,

better left unattended to. It is the same deadly sin all over

again - the belief in a miraculous conversion. And it is

highly US-centric. People in other parts of the world interact

entirely differently.

 

You can get them to visit and you get them to talk and you can

get them to excite others. But to get them to buy - is a whole

different ballgame. Dot.coms had better begin to study its

rules.

 

The Medium and the Message

By: Sam Vaknin

 

A debate is raging in e-publishing circles: should content be

encrypted and protected (the Barnes and Noble or Digital goods

model) - or should it be distributed freely and thus serve as

a form of viral marketing (Seth Godin’s “ideavirus”)?

Publishers fear that freely distributed and cost-free

“cracked” e-books will cannibalize print books to oblivion.

 

The more paranoid point at the music industry. It failed to

co-opt the emerging peer-to-peer platforms (Napster) and to

offer a viable digital assets management system with an

equitable sharing of royalties. The results? A protracted

legal battle and piracy run amok. “Publishers” - goes this

creed - “are positioned to incorporate encryption and

protection measures at the very inception of the digital

publishing industry. They ought to learn the lesson.”

 

But this view ignores a vital difference between sound and

text. In music, what matter are the song or the musical piece.

The medium (or carrier, or packing) is marginal and

interchangeable. A CD, an audio cassette, or an MP3 player are

all fine, as far as the consumer is concerned. The listener

bases his or her purchasing decisions on sound quality and the

faithfulness of reproduction of the listening experience (for

instance, in a concert hall). This is a very narrow, rational,

measurable and quantifiable criterion.

 

Not so with text.

 

Content is only one element of many of equal footing

underlying the decision to purchase a specific text-“carrier”

(medium). Various media encapsulating IDENTICAL text will

still fare differently. Hence the failure of CD-ROMs and e-learning. People tend to consume content in other formats or

media, even if it is fully available to them or even owned by

them in one specific medium. People prefer to pay to listen to

live lectures rather than read freely available online

transcripts. Libraries buy print journals even when they have

subscribed to the full text online versions of the very same

publications. And consumers overwhelmingly prefer to purchase

books in print rather than their eversions.

 

This is partly a question of the slow demise of old habits. Ebooks have yet to develop the user-friendliness, platform-independence, portability, browsability and many other

attributes of this ingenious medium, the Gutenberg tome. But

it also has to do with marketing psychology. Where text (or

text equivalents, such as speech) is concerned, the medium is

at least as important as the message. And this will hold true

even when e-books catch up with their print brethren

technologically.

 

There is no doubting that finally e-books will surpass print

books as a medium and offer numerous options: hyperlinks

within the e-book and without it - to web content, reference

works, etc., embedded instant shopping and ordering links,

divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines,

interaction with other e-books (using Bluetooth or another

wireless standard), collaborative authoring, gaming and

community activities, automatically or periodically updated

content, ,multimedia capabilities, database, Favourites and

History Maintenance (records of reading habits, shopping

habits, interaction with other readers, plot related decisions

and much more), automatic and embedded audio conversion and

translation capabilities, full wireless piconetworking and

scatternetworking capabilities and more.

 

The same textual content will be available in the future in

various media. Ostensibly, consumers should gravitate to the

feature-rich and much cheaper e-book. But they won’t - because

the medium is as important as the text message. It is not

enough to own the same content, or to gain access to the same

message. Ownership of the right medium does count. Print books

offer connectivity within an historical context (tradition).

E-books are cold and impersonal, alienated and detached. The

printed word offers permanence. Digital text is ephemeral (as

anyone whose writings perished in the recent dot.com bloodbath

or Deja takeover by Google can attest). Printed volumes are a

whole sensorium, a sensual experience - olfactory and tactile

and visual. E-books are one dimensional in comparison. These

are differences that cannot be overcome, not even with the

advent of digital “ink” on digital “paper”. They will keep the

print book alive and publishers’ revenues flowing.

 

People buy printed matter not merely because of its content.

If this were true e-books will have won the day. Print books

are a packaged experience, the substance of life. People buy

the medium as often and as much as they buy the message it

encapsulates. It is impossible to compete with this mistique.

Safe in this knowledge, publishers should let go and impose on

e-books “encryption” and “protection” levels as rigorous as

they do on the their print books. The latter are here to stay

alongside the former. With the proper pricing and a modicum of

trust, e-books may even end up promoting the old and trusted

print versions.

 

The Idea of Reference

By: Sam Vaknin

 

http://www.britannica.com

 

There is no source of reference remotely as authoritative as

the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There is no brand as venerable

and as veteran as this mammoth labour of knowledge and ideas

established in 1768. There is no better value for money. And,

after a few sputters and bugs, it now comes in all shapes and

sizes, including two CD-ROM versions (standard and deluxe) and

an appealing and reader-friendly web site. So, why does it

always appear to be on the brink of extinction?

 

The Britannica provides for an interesting study of the

changing fortunes (and formats) of vendors of reference. As

late as a decade ago, it was still selling in a leather-imitation bound set of 32 volumes. As print encyclopaedias

went, it was a daring innovator and a pioneer of hyperlinked-like textual design. It sported a subject index, a lexical

part and an alphabetically arranged series of in-depth essays

authored by the best in every field of human erudition.

 

When the CD-ROM erupted on the scene, the Britannica

mismanaged the transition. As late as 1997, it was still

selling a sordid text-only compact disc which included a part

of the encyclopaedia. Only in 1998, did the Britannica switch

to multimedia