Patton,
I think you've brought up two points: funds for the Committee and
unauthorized copying.
First, there are many ways that funds can be generated by offering the
Guidelines freely, and I'll present a couple of ideas here. When being
judged, it could be required, in addition to the judging fee (is there
one?), that the owner of the car must have purchased the most recent
copy of the Guidelines from the Committee. If the Guidelines were
available on the Web, a password (paid for) could be required to get
into the "current" version of the Guidelines; previous versions could be
open to all. A donation system cold be implemented. There are probably
other methods that could be discussed as well.
A couple more things to consider: we are not talking abouts thousands or
even hundreds of copies being sold per year, but perhaps dozens. I would
estimate that almost half the revenues from the Guidelines are spent on
mailing costs and photocopying charges. Electronic distribution of the
Guidelines would bring the cost to produce them down to virtually zero.
If the price for a copy of the Guidelines was kept the same, revenue
would actually _increase_ if the numbers of copies sold remained the
same (or even dropped).
Second, there is the issue of unauthorized copying, but I would argue
that this is a problem regardless how the Guidelines are distributed.
How many of us have seen photocopies of photocopies of the Concours
Guidelines (or other Healey publications) or fuzzy 4th-generation copies
of the Moss upholstery video? I fully expect my Parts List CDs to be
copied and passed around in much the same way. Will this be money out of
my pocket? Maybe, maybe not. If the person likes the CD Parts List
enough, he may buy the next version that comes out, or maybe buy another
series of CD. Either way, the Healey marque has been helped by the
dissemination of the information.
If the Guidelines were available on a Website (not as a download), I bet
you it would be more of a pain to copy it than to photocopy a paper
version.
It boils down to this: there are those that will pay for the
information, and those that won't. Either way, and in whatever format,
people will get the information they seek, and when they do, the
preservation and the advancement of the marque will continue.
John
On Sat, 2005-05-21 at 12:16, Patton Dickson wrote:
> Don't the funds raised by selling the guidelines go toward offsetting
> some the expenses of the committee? If so, that is a valid reason
> for the charge, as well as not publishing it electronically.
>
> On 5/21/05, John P. New <jnew@hazelden.ca> wrote:
>
> > At the risk of starting an all-out flame war, I suggest that if the
> > Concours Committee truly wanted to promote the preservation and
> > continuation of the Healey marque, it should make the Concours
> > Guidelines freely available in electronic format for all to read,
> > comment on and use. The electronic distribution could be on a CD or,
> > even better, available on a web site (I would even volunteer to transfer
> > the content to electronic format and host such a site).
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