Author Topic: Low Vision, Fair Use, Asset Protection, Making Information Widely Available  (Read 2165 times)

mdsalemi

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Since none of these items specifically have anything to do with PW #30 and the issues surrounding that troubles, time to break it out.

1. Low Vision. The font sizes for text in ALL magazines generally run between 10-12 points. If you don't know specifically what that means, a point is 1/72 of an inch. Typography measures fonts in points, and getting technical here, the "font size" of a font refers to the font's "em height", which isn't necessarily the same as the height of particular characters in the font. Usually the em height of a font is  set to the distance from the lowest descender or accent (such as the bottom of the letter g) to the highest ascender (such as the top of the letter h). . Photo captions and legalese fine print may be smaller--sometimes as low as 6 point. Headlines are larger of course.

If you have low vision issues, it is incumbent upon YOU to use the tools and techniques of low vision to compensate. Bright lights, magnifying glasses, are simple; that's why you often see people in restaurants trying to read a menu. They pull out their phone, turn on the "flashlight" and it's easier to read. There are more sophisticated low vision tools out there and your ophthalmologist or your local vision support center should help you.

With the exception of the rare magazines that are published in a giant font for people with vision issues, such as the Reader's Digest Large Print Edition, most publishers just use industry standards.

2. Fair Use. Copying our magazine, printing out items from the tech manual, downloading a particularly important thread from the forum for your own use is fair use. Copying our magazine, and putting digital copies up on some website for anyone to download and use is not fair use. You can read more about it here if you are interested. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html  A number of articles we've published over the years in PW have been the copyrighted work of others; in those cases, we've sought out permission from the copyright owners.

3. Asset Protection. In the morphed thread on PW #30 it was explained that keeping our PW magazine in analog format is one way of protecting our asset. It was pointed out that people could scan copies and that's true. But that is a royal PIA to do. Hence, the analog format is by itself a way of protecting our assets.

It was suggested by Cees that "Fact remains that it would be very easy for this to happen, and our protection against it is rather weak." Well, if anyone has any bright ideas on how to protect a magazine against copying, without infringing on our member's "fair use", please speak up; I'm keen to hear.

Magazines today exist in two formats: digital and analog. Of the digital versions, some are locked to certain platforms for reading that make it difficult to read without access to that platform; there are a number of e-book formats out there. In addition, if you want to implement DRM (digital rights management) to protect against unauthorized copying, that's another complication. If we were to move to some kind of protected e-book reader format, with DRM implemented, we'd be forcing some members to read PW in a format they don't presently want. It's kind of complex and I don't think we need to go to those lengths yet.

Having been involved in design, printing and publishing for over 40 years, I can tell you that the onus of scanning 24 pages of each magazine for some nefarious reason is just a pain. I've been doing scanning of all kinds for years. The easiest solution? Just pay the paltry sum of $30 and you'll get the magazine!

4. Making information widely available. Yes we have that in our bylaws. Similar information is in the bylaws of most car clubs. We do that, and are doing that. However in no interpretation of that is it suggested that we make everything available at no cost to anyone. Our bylaws are for the members, not for the general public. I think we do a good job of living up to them.

Making it all available for free to anyone means stop charging for membership. Then as soon as our bank accounts are exhausted we cease to be.
Michael Salemi
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