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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0016  Tuesday, 8 January 2008

From:		Gabriel Egan <mail@GabrielEgan.com>
Date:		Tuesday, 8 Jan 2008 12:03:43 -0000
Subject: 19.0011 Books to Buy
Comment:	Re: SHK 19.0011 Books to Buy

Bill Godshalk wrote:

 >. . . booksellers and publishers
 >are charging exorbitant prices
 >for books. The $35 dollar copy
 >of Bradley is just an example.
 >Let me give another example.
 >Grace Ioppolo's new book sells
 >for $130 new, and $114 used.

Indeed they are. The solution is Open Access. (See the Wikipedia entry 
for a good account of it.) What is worse than Ioppolo's own book being 
so expensive (which I'm sure she cannot help) is her ongoing project to 
digitize the Henslowe-Alleyn cache of papers at Dulwich (hurrah!) but to 
then lock the resulting files up with Digital Rights Management (boo!), 
or DRM.

The point of the DRM, of course, is to be able to sell access to these 
materials rather than go the Open Access route of just giving them away. 
  Since the combined forces of all the film and technology companies 
have not been able to build digital locks strong enough to prevent DVDs 
and HD/BluRay-DVDs being unencrypted by intellectually sprightly 
hackers, Ioppolo's plans to put digital locks on the digitized 
Henslowe-Alleyn papers are of course futile. I'll be happy to report how 
to break the locks when the product appears, since it is of course 
immoral for anyone to lock this stuff away in the first place.

Incidentally, nobody should pay for Bradley's work: he died in 1935 and 
hence is out of copyright. I can send a free digitized copy of 
_Shakespearean Tragedy_ (as images, with page-numbers) to anyone who 
wants it.  One can also find a non-paginated e-text of it for free on 
the web.

Gabriel Egan

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