At 12:29 17.11.98 -1000, you wrote:
>    This same discussion took place on mediev-l a year or two ago
>regarding the PL, with the same reactions, except that a Chadwick-Healey
>representative did respond with an explanation of their philosophy.
>Unfortunately, I cannot find the discussion in the Mediev-l archives nor
>do I remember their exact line of argument.

Dear Karen,

It seems to me that the discussion you are referring to actually took place
on medieval-religion. I recall the contribution of the C-H representative,
because I found it so unconvincing.

>    Clearly, though, C-H is pricing it for institutional purchasers
>only.  One reason to do that is to maintain long-term control over the
>content.  Any library that buys it at that price is going to abide by
>the conditions of access.  If it were cheaper--well, anybody could buy
>it and make copies very easily, at which point sales would drop
>precipitously.  That is why some publishers go the route of online
>access (paid)--to maintain some kind of copyright control over the
>content.

This argument is new to me. But I am not really convinced. Once you sell a
CD-version -- and C-H is already selling a CD-version of the PLD --, there
is no safe way to prevent illegal copies, regardless of what the original
price is. Maybe with C-H's astronomic prizes the number of illegal copies
will be smaller for an initial period, because the CD will pass through
fewer hands that can dispose of it without control. But high prices are
also the best way to incite and promote illegal copies: members of
libraries have the same human weaknesses as the rest of us when being
tempted by the possibility to draw within minutes a copy of something that
claims to be worth $ 45.000 (and they have all the necessary technical
facilities easily at hand); and illegal copies are the only option for
scholars working in smaller universities and colleges who think that they
definitely need this tool. I am dead sure that the black market will soon
be (or maybe already is) swamped by illegal copies of the PLD. Other
software producers facing the same problem have learned very fast that low
price policies or even share-ware marketing are a good and maybe the best
way to protect their interests again software pirates.


>    Remember that the price of published material is not just derived
>from the cost of production plus profit.  The price reflects the value
>of the content over time--and certainly the PL, despite its MANY flaws,
>had and has some inherent worth that transcends a single sales effort
>(as would be true of a top selling novelist for example).  C-H has a
>historic right to that value (ie, their company invested in it long ago
>and wants to maintain that investment).

I don't know where you got this theory of price reflecting value over time,
but it does not strike me as realistic. It is true that a product like the
PLD needs other marketing strategies than a short time best seller, but
this does not mean that the current C-H marketing strategies are the best.
Quite to the contrary, they seem short-sighted to me. The only "historic
right" that C-H or any other producer of media products can claim is to
make more money or less money or to go bankrupt.

  As long as C-H has an interest
>in maintaining copyright control of the PL, they will have to balance
>price and access in this way.

C-H has no copyright of the PL, only a copyright of the PLD. There are
several ways to protect this latter copyright, and high pricing policies
are not necessarily the best way. In my opinion, C-H is acting against his
own financial interest (as well as against the interest of the scholarly
community, but this should not be his problem).

  Otherwise, the PL will quickly slip into
>public domain usage, legally or not, and C-H will be out of the loop.

In my opinion this is what will happen with the PLD under the conditions of
the current pricing policy, maybe not quickly, but infallibly.

  Otfried

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