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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Well said, Israel! Your writing reads like a good
book. May I have permission to copy and re-publish your prose?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Fenton</FONT></DIV>
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style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=custos3@comcast.net href="mailto:custos3@comcast.net">Israel
Stein</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=pianotech@ptg.org
href="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, March 02, 2008 7:44
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Copyright (was: alleged...
behavior)</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>I am changing the subject line in order to minimize
inflammatory language and promote a civil discussion of this
subject.<BR><BR>At 04:33 AM 3/1/2008, Dean May wrote:<BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite"><FONT color=#000080 size=2>As far
as the premise that distributing information electronically for free
detracts from sales and royalties, the whole Napster episode seems to
demonstrate otherwise. At the height of all the music file sharing where
people were getting music for free the sales of music went through the roof.
While it is true that some utilized Napster to rip off the music companies
and get all their music for free, many more simply used it to preview music
before going out to purchase their own copies. The result was more $$$ in
the pockets of the music industry. They only shot themselves in the foot by
shutting Napster down. </FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>That analysis is hardly
applicable to the current problem of Pierce Piano Atlas. The recording
industry was taking advantage of its ownership rights over a product that
appealed to a wide worldwide audience counting in multiple millions of
potential buyers, by keeping prices on CD's artificially high and restricting
distribution by making the music available only in an album format - which
forced buyers to pay for music they do not want in order to acquire music they
want. Had the recording industry been smart enough to allow the sort of
distribution model represented by i-Tunes, Napster and all that other stuff
would have never gotten started - or never would have caught on in a big way.
While the popular recording industry suffered a reduced profit margin as a
result of file-sharing, some specialty labels with small distribution - such
as classical - were forced to shut down because the reduced sales made the
business unsustainable. Others reduced operations. That's a major loss for
some music lovers, for musicians, for orchestras and opera companies - and
indirectly, for us... <BR><BR>A much more relevant example is what happened to
the music publishing industry as a result of its product being copied through
new technology. It is a shadow of its former self. Sheet music is only
available commercially for the best-selling old chestnuts - because carrying
inventories of slower-moving items is financially prohibitive (there are
commercial space and tax implications), and whatever is available is
exorbitantly priced in order to account for all the copying that inevitably
happens from each purchased copy. So now, instead of going to a music store
and being able to find a wide variety of reasonably priced sheet music often
available as single works (rather than collections), for most music one must
go to a specialized music library (typically at a university or conservatory -
restricted access) and make copies at a high per page cost (because they don't
allow the stuff to circulate - for obvious reasons).<BR><BR>The potential
clientele for Pierce is very limited. Piano technicians, piano dealers and
salesmen - who else? In the US, that's a maximum of what - 15,000 potential
buyers? 20,000 potential buyers? Over the lifetime of an edition priced
at $36 - that's $720,000. If you subtract the costs involved in
production, promotion and distribution and divide that by lifetime of an
edition, you end up with not a terribly large annual figure. Maybe it's
worthwhile to keep the old edition going as long as people are willing to buy
it. But would anyone do the research and reformatting that an updated edition
would require? I don't know... In any case, I suspect that any significant
drop is sales volume would make this business not worth maintaining -
especially since the owner has other sources of income... And this is why, I
suspect, he has not created an on-line version of his database - because that
would likely kill an awful lot of further sales. I suppose an electronic
edition on a protected disk (a la Ancott - who, by the way recently ceased
operations) might be something he should explore... <BR><BR>Now, David Boyce
in his message titled "dating pianos" states: "But the internet has brought,
and continues to bring, a "paradigm shift". So much is available on there to
be found out, on any topic, and increasingly people tend to go straight there
and dig for themselves. <BR>I'm pretty sure that the quantity of piano-related
information available on the internet is going to increase, and it may not be
all that long before someone puts a website together that has much of the
factual information in the piano atlases."<BR><BR>All very true. But this is a
short-term, unsustainable phenomenon, in my opinion. Much of it has to do with
the novelty of the on-line medium and the availability of large amounts
of "low-hanging fruit" - information that is readily available and can be
transcribed, digitized and posted without too much effort. So lots of folks
who think that they are providing a valuable public service post all this on
websites - just for the fun of it. But, information that needs to be
laboriously collected, verified and put into some sort of usable order is not
quite so attractive to these information Robin Hoods. I suspect that as the
novelty of the Internet wears off and further posting of information would
require extensive research, this "information sharing" will slack off. Very
few people have the resources to spend large amounts of time and sometime
money to actually dig for information from disparate sources for no
compensation. But unless some new business model emerges where researchers and
compilers could somehow be compensated for their efforts that are posted on
the Internet, the results will be much like the results of copying sheet
music. At first there is the rush of "wow, look at all the good stuff we can
get without paying for it" followed by "why can't we find anything we need any
more? Everything on the Internet is at least twenty years old! Where's the
current data?" Well, there is no longer any incentive for anyone to compile
it... <BR><BR>So I suspect that it is in our interest to make sure that some
sort of adequate financial incentive remains to compile and publish
information about the ages of pianos from 1996 going forward. Because in the
current information climate as David Boyce describes it - it just ain't gonna
happen unless some independently wealthy guy with lots of time on his hands
who just loves pianos undertakes the job. Or some foundation endows the work.
<BR><BR>I repeat - there is no free lunch. You either pay now, or pay later.
Sooner or later it will catch up with the Internet too... <BR><BR>Israel Stein
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