The DOJ is going to have a problem with proof, no question. I wonder, though, about those codefendant publishers who have already settled- what cincessions & admissions did they have to make?
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Been saying it for years...
- Thread starter Dannyalcatraz
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El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
New story (Blog) on Yahoo today about this.
Y! Big Story: What an e-book might really cost, for all of us | Trending Now - Yahoo! News
Probably doesn't really have anything new in it. But it certainly highlights the prominence of this issue currently.
Y! Big Story: What an e-book might really cost, for all of us | Trending Now - Yahoo! News
Probably doesn't really have anything new in it. But it certainly highlights the prominence of this issue currently.
That article does have a couple of points to it that might bear highlighting:
Which, for our discussion, is pretty important. The DoJ isn't trying to do away with the Agency model, but have problems with how the current deals came about.
Yeah, that's not anti-competitive action by Apple at all! (That was sarcasm, folks) If you enter into this Agency model, you have to stop dealing with other sellers who are willing to sell lower?
I wonder at this one. It holds only if you buy 22-23 e-books for the lifetime of a device instead of new paper books. It seems the analysis takes into account the carbon footprint of production. It is not clear to me if it deals in other impacts - like the chemical waste inherent in the production of electronic devices (paper manufacture has wastes too, and you have to be careful in comparing them), mining operations for the rare earth elements involved, or the effects of recycling the devices (or, more importantly, *not* recycling them properly) and so on.
Which, for our discussion, is pretty important. The DoJ isn't trying to do away with the Agency model, but have problems with how the current deals came about.
Yeah, that's not anti-competitive action by Apple at all! (That was sarcasm, folks) If you enter into this Agency model, you have to stop dealing with other sellers who are willing to sell lower?
I wonder at this one. It holds only if you buy 22-23 e-books for the lifetime of a device instead of new paper books. It seems the analysis takes into account the carbon footprint of production. It is not clear to me if it deals in other impacts - like the chemical waste inherent in the production of electronic devices (paper manufacture has wastes too, and you have to be careful in comparing them), mining operations for the rare earth elements involved, or the effects of recycling the devices (or, more importantly, *not* recycling them properly) and so on.
It is my understanding that some were between 60% to 90%* of the cost of producing a book is for things which do not involve printing. This means editing, proof reading, grammer checking, page setting, royalties, among others publisher functions.
*varies from company to company.
The last 10% to 40% is split by printing, shipping, the distributes cut, the store's cut. When you bring it down to just shipping and printing you are talking about generally less than 10%.
Amazon discounts far more than that for it ebooks sales.
I have looked for books that are in the public domain and have gotten them. Amazon makes them hard to find while they come to the top on Apple's book store. A few of them I went to the Gutenberg project to get and manually added the amazon format.
I have also seen Baen book go a third route and directly sell them to the public. You order it, pay them then down load the format you want. They support Amazon's format, Apple's format, Nook's format and PDFs. They even have a section of free books, usually 2 to 4 books in a series to wet you appetite for the series. Of course they hope you buy the rest of the series.
A note that Nook's format isn't Nook's - B&N uses the open ePub format, if I recall correctly.
Been discussing this for years, too!
The paper-producing industries are among the world's top polluters- #2 here in Texas- but they lag behind others, like the petrochemical producers- #1 in Texas.
Add to that the fact that- besides lithium- many of the other metals used in making technological items (copper, aluminum, gold and the platinum-family metals) are all predominantly strip-mined. Recycling of those metals is still in its relative infancy.
And then there is the power issue. Books don't require any energy source other than sunlight or a lightbulb to read. No matter the time of day, though, an eReader always requires a man-made energy source. (Yes, there are solar cells, but they have the same materials issues as the devices themselves.)
So it's a real question as to how many plastic & metal intensive eReaders of all kinds it takes to balance out with paper books, ecologically speaking. The TREND is going in the right direction, but the state of things as they are today is not clear.
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Something to factor in is the tremendous number of paper books that are destroyed.
Higher-quality books can be pulped to create other paper products, but low-quality (many hardbacks and most paperbacks) have so little usable cellulose that one more time through the masher results in, at best, those cardboard pulp egg cartons. They either end up in a landfill or burned.
Precisely what percentage are returned/stripped appears to be difficult to say (based on my Google Fu), but even after being remaindered, the percentage is still surprisingly high. Magazines are the worst, with a crazy-high return rate.
Higher-quality books can be pulped to create other paper products, but low-quality (many hardbacks and most paperbacks) have so little usable cellulose that one more time through the masher results in, at best, those cardboard pulp egg cartons. They either end up in a landfill or burned.
Precisely what percentage are returned/stripped appears to be difficult to say (based on my Google Fu), but even after being remaindered, the percentage is still surprisingly high. Magazines are the worst, with a crazy-high return rate.
Gold mining & refining is one of the most polluting things we humans do, according to the EPA- apparently, this process accounts for more mercury pollution than from trash incineration, hazardous waste collection, and mercury mining.
About 80-85% goes into jewelry & coins, and technological/industrial uses only account for 15% percent, with dental and other uses taking up the remainder. Jewelry & coins are generally not recycled, since they are usually passed from person to person intact, making tech gold the kind that is most likely to be recycled. However, industrial/tech gold is, so far, the most difficult to recycle, since it is used in small amounts alongside a lot of other materials. In some cases, it is effectively unrecoverable.
Which means, like some paper, some industrial/tech gold is also used once and relegated to landfills.
(Amey, Earle B., 2005. "Gold Recycling in the United States in 1998"; Ingenthron, Robin, 2004. "Gold without Gold Mining? Electronics Recycling Breaks New Ground".)
About 80-85% goes into jewelry & coins, and technological/industrial uses only account for 15% percent, with dental and other uses taking up the remainder. Jewelry & coins are generally not recycled, since they are usually passed from person to person intact, making tech gold the kind that is most likely to be recycled. However, industrial/tech gold is, so far, the most difficult to recycle, since it is used in small amounts alongside a lot of other materials. In some cases, it is effectively unrecoverable.
Which means, like some paper, some industrial/tech gold is also used once and relegated to landfills.
(Amey, Earle B., 2005. "Gold Recycling in the United States in 1998"; Ingenthron, Robin, 2004. "Gold without Gold Mining? Electronics Recycling Breaks New Ground".)
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Just a few years ago I went to a local community college. I am in my 30, a wet behind the ears 18 year old made a statement that was naive. It was something like this.
Libraries are a waste of resources to heat a building just for books.
Boy, did I want to tell him that even a cheep book will last 50-100 years wit care, the ebook reader you are touting will last 3 to 5 years. Which is less polluting?
Libraries are a waste of resources to heat a building just for books.
Boy, did I want to tell him that even a cheep book will last 50-100 years wit care, the ebook reader you are touting will last 3 to 5 years. Which is less polluting?
another hundred years from now, after Google has scanned all the paper books and they've been recycled for toilet paper, and after the great cataclysm, , some guy will come out from his cave and tell his fellow cavemen, "hey, let's go to the ruins, and see if we can find knowledge that can help us rebuild our society."
They'll get there, and discover these little plastic rectangles with cracked screens and leaking fluids, and no huge repositories where the knowledge of man can be found.
I like my eBook, but I suspect even my high acid content paper library will survive longer than it.
They'll get there, and discover these little plastic rectangles with cracked screens and leaking fluids, and no huge repositories where the knowledge of man can be found.
I like my eBook, but I suspect even my high acid content paper library will survive longer than it.
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