TAG Back-issue archive

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

Karen writes:

> I don't have a problem with the idea that TAG is being stored on the
> web as is, as a complete magazine.

FYI, I'm not planning on "releasing" it on the public website.  What I
think we should do is sell (at fairly low cost) CD-ROMs of the archive as
part of back issue sales, with an eye of eventually replacing the older
isses instead of having to xerox them. 

The last thing I would want is anyone taking the 300+ megs of data
involved and trying to make a copy of it via my already-limited bandwidth.  
I already get torqued when people auto-download the entire 40-megs
comprising the Krib.  Perhaps if someone else wanted to put it on their
own website, it might be OK.  But I doubt they would, for the same reason.

> I do think that we should probably put something in
> saying that nothing can be used in anything other than a non-profit _paper_
>  hobby publication without the express written permission of both AGA and
> the author. (same rules we have for TAG currently, but state them again,
> and make it clear that web sites need specific premission)

Yes! I was planning on putting the current reprint policy notice in where
I have the placeholder "Reprint Policy".  Perhaps I will include it in
small print on each webpage too.  Neil and I have debated several people
who wanted to reprint TAG articles on their website ("It's non-profit, so
I should be able to do it, right?"  "No.  Our exchange policy says that
you must mail two copies of the publication to us.  How are you going to
mail two copies of your website to the original author?  And what happens
when you change the website?  Do you have to keep mailing it?")

So I'll probably just use our current policy, maybe ammend it with "this
means don't put it on a website."


Paul writes:

> An article available on the internet in text format seems to me to be in a
> more "available" format that can be copied, pasted and modified easily by
> other people who can take chunks of it and send them to friends or
> incorporate them in other articles, hopefully giving credit to the original
> author.  I think a text format article is the intellectual property of the
> author and of TAG just as much as a graphics format article or any other
> kind of photocopy.  

Perhaps we disagree on this point.  I beleive that the AGA has no rights
to the article, except as it was published within the context of the
particular magazine.  I would not feel comfortable doing so without
obtaining author permission.

>  With the articles in graphics format, the same things
> can be done; it just takes a little more work.  One has to retype the
> passages he or she wants to use. 

Of course.  But that's not why I do it.  This addresses Karen's point
about "making it more difficult for people to copy":  I'm not doing the
scan-and-wrap technique as a means to bar someone from quoting things or
to make information harder to distribute.  I'm doing this because my goal
is to preserve the issues of TAG, *as they were printed*.  The difficulty
of cutting-and-pasting the format is just an incidental annoyance or
benefit (depending on whether you are Paul or Karen).

OCR'ing selected articles is a different task, and perhaps one which I
will accomplish as well.  I did this on the first three years, hoping that
the later ones we'd have the source document. But I just found out that
John Cogwell will be sending me PDF's of the later TAGs, not original
source material, so *every* article I want to convert to text will have to
be OCR'd.  This will be a somewhat daunting task.  But I hope to complete
it.

I guess my point is, I am trying BOTH angles.  I am doing the bitmap thing
as a literal TAG back-issue alternative, and I am doing the text file
thing to make individual articles available on our website.  The latter
will be a subset of the former because we must start over for obtaining
permission.  It will not have the original graphics in many articles.

> Erik, Will you be asking permission of
> authors primarily to get their permission for modifications of their work
> that will be done in order to post it, or is it primarily to get their
> permission to have their work in a more available, down-loadable, form?

Both.  Actually I beleive the second point covers the first.  If you say
"is it OK to post your article to the AGA website?" that pretty much
covers it.  Actually, if I could get some volunteers to help ask for
permission, I'd probably get more articles on the website. :)

  - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com