Re: [DML] Stainless Steel Illusion

["therealdmcvegas" <DMCVegas@xxxx>]

I'm not going to take sides in this argument here. Because I can honestly 
agree with both. But, I do have one question. Exactly what makes the book 
"Stainless Steel Illusion" so valuable? With a little searching @ local public, 
and university libraries, one can almost always find the book. And there really 
isn't a week that doesn't go by that a copy isn't for sale on eBay, along with the 
classifieds on Amazon where there are ALWAYS multiple copies available.

I've read the book, and it is indeed a good one. It offers quite a substacial 
amount of information of the history of the DeLorean in both text, and 
pictorals. But the book is hardly what I would call "rare" given how easily it is 
found online. And even though I would consider it a good book, it's not one 
that I'm willing to pay $50+ for, let alone the typical $150+ reserve prices 
found in nearly every auction.

Someone here mentioned that this is exactly like what happened with 
Napster. I agree totally. But at the same time, you have to realize. If people are 
going to constatnly keep trying to inflate the value of a popular item, others 
will always circumvent it. Which is why when you look @ things, it's 
understandable as to why online file sharing services have become so 
popular. But to keep this argument on track, here's another senario.

A couple of years ago, the topic of a DeLorean font was raised. And quite a 
few people expressed interest in it. @ the time, a company called Axe 
Graphics had the font for sale for $30. Soon after though, the same exact font 
became available online for free on people's personal websites. The same 
with the Doubleback font for BTTF. But no one complained about these then, 
nor have they since when they started to be shared publicly.

To be honest, I'm surprised that it's taken this long for someone to put SSI into 
a shared document format. In this day and age, it's almost to be expected. I 
don't mean to step on anyone's toes here, but I guess everyone just has to 
take this as a lesson to be learned. If you're going to invest in something in the 
future (not that books are exactly that lucrative), don't put money into anything 
that could easily be replicated by technology, and diluted by mass 
reproduction. Although to be honest, I don't see the asking prices for SSI to be 
going down anytime soon. You might see the # of willing buyers go down, but 
the sellers will absolutely cringe to lose any profit. They'll just wait until they 
find that certain buyer.

In the end, is it "fair" that someone's "investment" may have been hurt? No, it's 
not. But alot of things aren't fair. Ironicly, a while back, a discussion was here 
on the list about diluting the marque of the DeLorean. Specificly the Tilley 
Electric DeLorean. My thoughts were that it was wrong what the man was 
doing, and that it was going to hurt the value of our cars. And the general 
concensus @ that time was that I was over reacting, and it was nothing. Of 
course no there seems to be more outcry about a simple 100MB file hurting 
the value of a book, and people seem to be more upset about that. So all in 
all, it seems more people here are concerned about a small book about our 
cars, rather than our cars themselves. I think that our priorites here need to be 
straightened out. If you really do want to keep the vaules of things up, then 
more comtrol must be exerted over what information is distributed. After all, 
they don't just call this the "Information Age" for nothing...

-Robert
vin 6585 "X"



--- In dmcnews@xxxx, "Marc A. Levy" <malevy@xxxx> wrote:
> Before I owned my own copy, I would have said it would be great if you 
could distribute this information.....
> 
> BUT...
> 
> Now that I own a copy myself, I'd have to say I would be upset because 
distributing this information will hurt the value of the real book.. I happen to 
"get lucky" and find my book for a reasonable price (not $250 on Ebay!), but 
there are a good number of people who paid over $100 for their book. Is it fair 
to hurt the value of their "investment"?
> 
> I'm sure a number of people will contact you offering you small amounts of 
money to make copies for them. Its a good bet you will go ahead and "help 
them out", but your not helping the value of the book.
> 
> If it matter to you, the book is still under copyright of the publisher. Making a 
copy of protected material IN ANY FORM (this is the law that killed napster, a 
digital copy like this is also covered in the law) is illegal.