Newsgroups: alt.etext From: dell@wiretap.spies.com (Thomas Dell) Subject: [bit.listserv.vpiej-l] TeleRead Proposal Message-ID: Organization: The Internet Wiretap Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 01:59:34 GMT [Note: This proposal is rather silly. --T] Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vpiej-l Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 08:23:35 EDT From: "Arthur R. McGee" Subject: TeleRead Proposal Approved-By: James Powell Message-ID: Lines: 1496 From 73577.3271@CompuServe.COM Tue Apr 27 19:53:00 1993 Date: 27 Apr 93 21:02:19 EDT From: "David H. Rothman" <73577.3271@CompuServe.COM> To: "Arthur R. McGee" Subject: File #1 ************************************************************************** TO READERS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES My proposal below calls for digitized libraries that eventually would be affordable to many individuals, not just to rich people and wealthy nations. Except for this added note, you are receiving the same material that I have posted on U.S. networks. I am aware of projects to digitize material for national libraries in English, France, and elsewhere; but in many ways, my TeleRead proposal for the United States goes further than most other plans do. Other countries may want to adapt and adopt some ideas here. Among other things, the plan tells how the U.S. could promote the manufacture of *inexpensive* computers that were far more powerful than those little terminals in France's Minitel program. Such machines would be especially designed to encourage reading and even promote literacy. The TeleRead plan also tells how to combine a central database with America's existing system of public libraries. Thousands of experienced librarians could help choose books. In yet another twist, I have devised ways to assure fair compensation of authors and publishers so that most creators of books are actually *better* off than before. I am even allowing for Wall Street to be able speculate in expected dialup fees. Also, I suggest that books are more valuable than television; and I advocate a national TV tax to finance the start of TeleRead, rather than simply pay for more television programs. TeleRead would not kill off televison. It would simply promote and help preserve books, which can convey details and emotions beyond the realm of the electronic media. TeleRead, of course, could also spread educational software, though I myself see the written word as the main priority. I conceived TeleRead to help narrow the information gap between "haves" and "have-nots" in the United States, but along the way, other countries could benefit too. For example, I propose that the U.S. require all new books to be digitized to qualify for copyrights. That could make it easier for nations to sell whole libraries to each other someday. At the same time, TeleRead might offer some hope for developing nations without well-financed library systems at present. I suggest that in the future the United States should help other countries replicate the TeleRead program and stock their libraries with their own books, too, not just those from the U.S. and other wealthy nations. Certainly, of course, I see developing countries selling books and other material to Western countries, not just *buying*. Also of interest outside the United States, TeleRead offers Americans an alternative to high U.S. tariffs on imported computer products. True, I suggest that TeleRead promote the production of American-made laptops for the program itself; and, of course, the integration of TeleRead into the U.S. public school system would make American workers more competitive and prosperous. No, I won't hide my own concerns as an American. However, TeleRead would help developing countries just as much in the end: 1) The overwhelming majority of the U.S. laptop market would remain open to all--and, in fact, would be much bigger than if TeleRead were not around to spur demand for the technology. (2) The program would drive down the cost of the technology for everyone eventually, so that the whole planet would benefit. (3) TeleRead could even be a bargaining point in intellectual property negotiations between wealthier countries and developing nations. Rich countries might help poorer nations set up TeleRead systems in return for true protection for intellectual property. Nations could be site-licensed for books or for even whole libraries, just as software is site-licensed today at large corporations. Or perhaps dial-up fee arrangements, audited by an international agency, could be worked out. Without TeleRead treaties, massive piracy of books might occur someday over international computer networks; in fact, this is already happening in the world of software. What's more, optical character recognition is declining in price, and without TeleRead treaties, even nondigitized books will be bootlegged en masse someday. So if wealthy nations are rational, they will negotiate TeleRead treaties with developing countries. (4) While respecting property rights--and, indeed, protecting them better than 100% technologically based copy-protection schemes--TeleRead provides a paradigm for every nation interested in making books and educational software affordable to all. (5) The same paradigm could also benefit people in many countries by thwarting censors and increasing the range of available books and ideas. TeleRead, for example, encourages the *decentralized* purchase of books for national databases. What's more, the approval of librarians would not be needed for publication per se. In an era of rapidly falling prices for mass storage, the plan proposes that virtually all books should go online--*and* qualify for compensation if enough readers dial them up. Yes, yes, TeleRead also allows for readers to narrow their choices to avoid being overwhelmed. (6) The TeleRead paradigm would make it impossible for one nation (or racial or ethnic group) to obliterate the memories and culture of another. No one could burn down somebody else's national library. In the United States, experts talk of the time when the whole Library of Congress could be on one computer chip. If nothing else, read-only backups of TeleRead-style databanks could exist in many places--one way, too, to protect against computer viruses. There will be as many variants on the TeleRead idea as there are readers of this proposal. I would hope, however, that most readers would agree with me about our present copyright laws, national and international. They are obsolete in this in this network era. I vaguely recall the old movie in which women strolled on the moon carrying umbrellas. Today's copyright laws are about as appropriate as the parasols. We must change them to provide true protection for creators, while at the same time making books and other material affordable to all. --David H. Rothman Alexandria, Virginia, USA 73577.3271@compuserve.com ****************************************************************************** TELEREAD: HOW ELECTRONIC BOOKS COULD COST LESS AND BE EASIER TO READ THAN PAPER ONES Vice President Gore has long championed electronic books--a fine cause. But how much will books, educational software and other material cost the average American family to dial up? And is there a way to build millions of inexpensive computers with sharp, viewable screens that would be *easier* to read than books? Technology is destiny. What's our destiny, though, if video stores are everywhere but half the school libraries in California have closed since 1982? Here is a proposal addressing those issues--an expanded version of my article in the April 4 Washington Post Education Review. -- David H. Rothman, Alexandria, VA April 27, 1993 Updates: (1) Greg Simon, Al Gore's domestic policy advisor, recently forwarded the TeleRead proposal to the Office of Science and Technology Policy for consideration. (2) Michael Dirda, the steel-town native whom I mention in my argument *against* "Knowledge Stamps," has just won the Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism. ******************************************************************* TABLE OF CONTENTS --TeleRead: How Electronic Books Could Cost Less and Be Easier to Read than Paper Ones. By David H. Rothman. --Who Wins and Who Loses if Online Libraries Are Affordable? Students and teachers could be winners. On the other hand, some Washington think-tankers might not fare so well. --Stamping Out Curiosity: The Trouble with Pay-Per-Read and "Knowledge Stamps." --Nine Myths--and Responses. TeleRead should appeal to many parents, educators, researchers, librarians, writers, editors, software developers and, yes, enlightened publishers of books; but the pay-per-read gang will hate it. Here are arguments and counter-arguments. --The Origins of TeleRead. TeleRead is not a group, just one writer's idea. --Acting on the Idea. Why you should *not* fax or e-mail the White House or your local member of Congress. --How to Reach Me (David Rothman). Please reply directly to me or rather than to the network IDs of the people posting this file. --Copyright Information. Alas, TeleRead doesn't exist yet, and cumbersome copyright laws do. So please read the notice at the end of this file if you want to publish this proposal on paper--yes, the old-fashioned way--or print long excerpts from it. You are free to distribute the material online and pass out disks with the TeleRead file. --Addendum One: Is Bridgeport the Future? Without TeleRead, what happens when cities slash library funds? --Addendum Two: An African American Reflects on TeleRead and Affordable Books. By William R. Murrell of MurrellBoston Telesis (Compuserve 71521,2516; Internet: Wmurrell@Delphi.com; GENIE HOSB Advisor: W.Murrell1). ************************************************************************ TELEREAD: HOW ELECTRONIC BOOKS COULD COST LESS AND BE EASIER TO READ THAN PAPER ONES By David H. Rothman The Kid Next Door helped confirm the big bang theory. He was no longer T.K.N.D. of course--rather, a bearded professor of astronomy--but I could still see him as a gangly child perusing his father's physics journals. Ned was always a reader. Even before he could puzzle out words on paper, he was begging his mother to read to him about internal combustion engines. Years later he relied on public libraries, not just the local junkyard, when he built his first telescope. Luckily for science, Dr. Edward L. Wright grew up in affluent Fairfax County, Virginia--not in Harlem or Watts, where the libraries were wanting and where he could never have found those arcane journals. We just cannot say where potential Wrights will show up. Given current demographics, more will have to come from ghettos, barrios and other book-short areas. Suppose, however, that we live out an old dream of hackers and librarians. What if computers can drive down the cost of providing books to African Americans, Hispanics, Appalachians and, yes, Fairfax Countians? Already politicians have proposed online libraries. In the Scientific American of September 1991, for example, Al Gore wrote: "We have the technical know-how to make networks that would enable a child to come home from school and, instead of playing Nintendo, use something that looks like a video games machine to plug into the Library of Congress." A technology plan, unveiled February 22 in Silicon Valley, helped confirm the White House's interest in computer networks for the masses. With Bill Clinton looking on, Gore even summoned back his high-tech child. Questions, however, abound. How much will it cost average Americans to dial up books, articles, government records, phone directories and other material? And what about Al Gore's mythical child? Just how many books will he or she be able to retrieve without impoverishing the whole family? Will middlemen make killings at the expense of the rest of us? If commercial databases are any clue, the news will be bad. Extensive online research on just one topic can cost hundreds of dollars today, a real burden for students or small business people. What's more, special databases for education would not be the final answer, even if they were free. The Edward Wrights of this world need all kinds of information, not just facts from designated journals. Except for proprietary material, we should put almost everything online for Americans to dial up for free or at little cost; and reading-computers should be affordable to potential users of online libraries. Technology is destiny. What's our destiny, though, if video stores are everywhere but half the school libraries in California have closed since 1982? Even the libraries in Fairfax County, the ones where young Wright read about the galaxy, have cut back their hours. Pollyannas rejoice that private enterprise will take over from underfinanced public institutions, and that business people will make billions off an enlarged information industry. As a country, though, we can never grow richer just by selling bits and bytes to each other. Real wealth--for example, 100-miles-per-gallon automobiles, cures for cancer and a well-informed electorate--will come from how we use information. The fewer price tags on knowledge, the more wealth created. Let me, then, propose a three-part plan, TeleRead, which would help students, other readers, writers and the American computer industry, too. I. Impose a Five Percent Tax on TV-related Sales Many foreign countries tax television in one way or another. Why shouldn't the United States? And why can't we use the money to promote the activity with which television so often competes: reading? Extrapolating from Commerce Department and industry figures, we could collect more than $3.5 billion a year for TeleRead if we imposed five-percent taxes on cable revenue, advertising sales of TV stations, and retail sales of new television sets and other video products such as blank and recorded tapes. When TV-computer hybrids arrived, they would be taxed, too, unless the were clearly suitable for reading books online. The television taxes would hardly bankrupt consumers. You would pay the equivalent of just $3.50 annually if you kept a $350 set for five years. That's less than half the amount you might spend on a large pizza to eat on Super Bowl Sunday. If too many small merchants complained about new paperwork, the government might instead collect at the wholesale level. Unlike many taxes, this one would directly benefit millions of Americans. Go to typical suburban public libraries on weekends, and you will see crowds of frugal citizens borrowing books to improve themselves professionally. Some college texts can cost $75 or more. Reeling from local property taxes, even some of the most rabid tax-haters might champion TeleRead as a way to slash the cost of buying books for local libraries and schools. II. Make Powerful, Affordable Laptops Available to All The student-computer ratio in American public schools is about 16-1; imagine a bureaucrat at Agriculture or Exxon sharing a PC with 15 colleagues. So let's use part of the $3.5 billion a year to help subsidize a long-range program to buy laptops that schools and libraries can lend to students and the public at large. Eventually the schools could even give away "TeleReaders" to many students from low-income families. By encouraging mass production, the TeleRead program would make laptops almost as cheap as calculators, so that middle-class children could buy them without any subsidies. The procurement program would award contracts in stages, of course, to avoid locking into outdatable technology. Using TeleReaders or substitute machines, stude